The Dheisheh refugee camp was established after the
1948 Palestine war, to accommodate those displaced in the
1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. The camp was built on land that had been owned by a subsidiary of the
Jewish National Fund. The people who gathered in Dheisheh originated from more than 45 villages west of
Jerusalem and
Hebron. Towards the end of the 1950s the UNRWA started to build very simple living units: A single room of 10 square metres, 10 cm thick and 2.45 m high walls, a steel roof and a floor made of rough concrete. Refugees began to build their own houses so as not to live in the UNRWA's shacks any longer. Since the
Six-Day War in 1967, Dheisheh has been under
Israeli occupation. During the years between
Israeli occupation in 1967 and the camp coming under
Palestinian Authority jurisdiction in 1995, Dheisheh was under curfew an average of 3.5 days a month, at one point lasting for 84 consecutive days. Throughout the
First Intifada, a six-metre high barbed wire fence was installed around the camp, and thirteen of the camp's fourteen entrances were barricaded. On 6 June 1987,
Israeli settlers attacked the refugee camp. In response, the Israeli military imposed a curfew on the camp. Two days later on 8 June, thirteen settlers were arrested over the incident. On 15 April 1989, during the early months of
First Intifada, Imad Karaka was shot dead by
Israeli soldiers. The following day the army broke up a group of youths gathered outside Karaka's home. During the incident Nasser Ibrahim Elkassas, aged 16, was shot in the back and died shortly afterwards. Because of the curfew Elkassas' funeral was held in
Atras. It was here that a soldier shot bystander Rufaida Khalil Abu Laban, a 14-year-old girl. She died almost immediately. In March the following year Defense Minister
Yitzhak Rabin wrote to MK
Yair Tsaban stating that the incident occurred when an army patrol tried to disperse a curfew-breaking riot; they ran out of
rubber bullets and the sergeant in command fired two
plastic bullets, "deviating from operational orders", one of which killed the girl. The
Military Advocate General recommended that the battalion commander "give him a severe dressing down for deviating from orders." A medical examination found that Rufaida had been shot in the back of the head at close range. On 23 February 2015, during an operation to arrest a resident of the camp, Israeli soldiers shot dead a 19-year-old man. Majid Faraj, the
Palestinian Authority's chief of General Intelligence since 2009, was born in Deheisha Camp in 1962. He is a long time member of
Fatah. He first experienced an Israeli prison at the age of 15 and has spent a total of six years in Israeli custody. His father was shot dead by the IDF in April 2002 during
Operation Defensive Shield. == Population ==