Evaluation and Design of Infrastructure in the Palestinian Camps Case study: AL-Arroub Camp

Abstract

After 1948 the Palestinians start a new stage of their life, About half of them immigrate to West Bank, Gaza Strip and all over the world to live in temporary Camp. UNRWA "United Nation Relief and Work Agency" is the organization which works on rehousing the refugees and looking after their needs. 25% of the Palestinian refugees live in West Bank distributed on 19 camps from Jenin in the north to Al-Fawwar in the south they live in bad conditions, high population density, environmental problems and absence of physical infrastructure. In the present study an evaluation of the Palestinian camps is to be done through studying the environmental, cultural, economic, social and infrastructure characteristics of three camps Jenin in the north, Qalndia in the middle and AL-Arroub in the south, then choose the worst one to design and /or redesign the basic parts of the physical infrastructure. Project team concern with AL-Arroub camp as the worst camp, it’s located in south of WestCamp, 11 KM north of Hebron and It has an area 242 donums, its population is about 10444 in 2007 with 328 person/hac as population density. The most important part of physical infrastructure will be designed for this camp which are: wastewater collection system, storm water drainage system and roads redesign. These parts of infrastructure reduce the environmental problems in the camp and make the life of the refugees better. The results of the present study show that the Palestinian camps face an environmental problem caused by absence of physical infrastructure.