Pope Francis will spend less than half an hour in this Palestinian refugee camp during a jam-packed Holy Land tour this weekend, but residents hope even a brief visit will shine a light on what they say is their forgotten plight.
Some 190,000 of the West Bank's 2.4 million Palestinians live in refugee camps and face tougher conditions including higher unemployment and overcrowding than their neighbors in towns and villages.
Many feel increasingly neglected by the Palestinian self-rule government and the United Nations agency responsible for their welfare. Resentment can be seen in the rise in stone-throwing protests by camp youths and a recent two-month strike of thousands of local employees of the UN aid agency demanding higher wages.
Underlying the discontent is fear of open-ended limbo.
Israelis and Palestinians remain far apart on a solution for the refugees who were forced or driven out in the war over Israel's 1948 creation and today, along with their descendants, make up more than 5 million people scattered across the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
Last month, another round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks ended in failure.
"Through time, the suffering in the camps has grown," said Ishaq al-Natteti, 66, who was only a few days old when his family was uprooted from what is now Israel and has spent his life in Dheisheh, a camp of 13,000 people near Bethlehem.
"There no return to our homes and land, no real life, no space, no jobs, no services, no economy."
The Pope will visit a Dheisheh community center for about 20 minutes Sunday and will meet dozens of children from three camps.
Francis said yesterday that his visit to Jordan, Israel and the West Bank is "strictly religious," tempering expectations that he might take sides in the Mideast conflict.
Some argued that Christianity cannot ignore one of the world's most entrenched refugee problems.
"Truly, the Palestinian refugees are the dispossessed of the earth, a people languishing in exile," said Chris Gunness of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees.
The pontiff will meet the refugee children at Dheisheh's Phoenix Center, which hosts workshops and weddings and also offers a library and a computer center.
