The French newspaper Liberation said that the territories administered by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank have been rocked since October 7 by a storm of anger against the brutality of the Israeli occupation, fueled by the explosion of unemployment and inflation and images of the bombing of Gaza that brought to mind the shock of the Nakba in 1948, until… For those who did not believe in resistance before, freedom is no longer negotiable for them.
The newspaper explained – in a report written by its special envoy to the West Bank, Lawrence Defrano – that the concrete wall surrounding the West Bank has been tightly closed, since October 7, to Palestinian youth, due to roadblocks, as nervous Israeli soldiers target anyone who dares to ask for help. Information, and the wait lasts for hours before the road reopens.
Although the October 7 attack was carried out by the Islamic Resistance Movement (agitationIt has major repercussions on the West Bank, which is run by Fatah, where 3 million people reside, two-thirds of whom are under the age of 30, and the unemployment rate among this group reached 44% in 2019, especially since the conflict in Gaza occurred within one month – according to estimates by the International Labor Organization. – With the loss of a quarter of jobs in the West Bank, that is, an additional 208 thousand unemployed, with the cost of living rising to enormous levels.
Gaza is small
In a barber shop in Jenin, Rami (30 years old), who works as a truck driver, joked with the newspaper’s envoy, saying that he wanted to live in Belgium and visit Switzerland. Not far from him, Aya (19 years old), who runs a cosmetics products stand in Jenin, said, “My goal was to “I’m starting my own perfume business, but nothing works anymore in Palestine. We are always at risk of attacks and bombings,” she said, adding, “Since October 7, nothing is possible here except war.”
The Israeli army strikes almost every night Jenin camp For refugees, the center of armed resistance in the West Bank, where about 30 people have been killed in two weeks, and where the Palestinian Authority is powerless to protect the population from the abuses of settlers who have been spurred into action by the war, “I am sad for all the lives,” says Ismail, 25, who works in the Palestinian government. “Which was lost. But all my friends rejoiced over the attack and the taking of the prisoners on October 7. It’s a fair game after all the assassinations committed by the settlers and the army over the past two years.”
“What is happening here is terrible. Jenin has become like a small Gaza,” says Najat, a mathematics teacher, who is preparing to attend the funeral of her best friend’s son, listing the names of teenagers who died in the previous days, expressing her concern about the mental health of her students in elementary school. However, it is said that Golda Meir The former Israeli Prime Minister was wrong when she said that “the old Palestinians will die and the youth will forget.”
Nothing pleases the outside
In Nablus, the second city of the West Bank, there are no longer tourists in the fortified streets or among the Roman ruins, and water and electricity continue to be cut off, says Ahmed (26 years old), who sells milk and lives with his parents and five of his brothers in a three-room apartment in the Askar refugee camp, which He was raided by the Israeli army that same morning. “My father kept the key to the house in Jaffa. He never gave up the idea of returning. I would like to have my own business and have a family,” he said, adding that he would like to visit Jerusalem, but that was impossible without a special permit.
As is the case almost every day, a demonstration is held in Nablus in support of the Palestinians who are being bombed in Gaza. Jalaa Abu Arab (29 years old), editor-in-chief of the online magazine Doz, which has a million readers on social media, says that the Palestinians were shocked by how easily Hamas was infiltrated. For Israel, which supposedly has one of the best armies in the world, but “the violence of the Israeli response pushed us from one dimension to another,” explaining, “When we received the first pictures of the Hamas attack, we did not publish them immediately. We thought that was impossible.”
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