On the evening of Monday 26, Israeli occupying forces carried out an aerial bombardment through an Israeli drone strike on one of the houses in the Nur Shams refugee camp, northeast of the city. After the residents of the camp gathered to assess what had happened, the drone fired another shell at the area. Palestinian Civil Defense crews rushed to the scene, along with medical teams.
More than five injured Palestinians were transferred from the camp to the Thabit Thabit Government Hospital in the city. According to the Palestinian Health Organization, five Palestinians were killed, two of them minors, including one from the city of Qalqilya, who was with other young men in the camp.
The martyrs are Adnan Al-Jaber, Mohammed Sheikh Yusuf, Mohammed Aliyan, and Muhannad Qarawi, all from Nur Shams refugee camp, and Jibril Jibril from Qalqilya.
It is reported that martyr Muhannad Qarawi is the brother of Moamen Qarawi, who was killed near the village of Bala by an Israeli airstrike while he was inside a car with other young men on the 3rd of this month.
It should be noted that both Muhannad Qarawi and Jibril Jibril had recently been freed from captivity as part of the freedom deal between Hamas and Israel.
Funeral of the martyrs.
The 20-year-old martyr Jibril Jibril, from Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, had been pursued by Israeli occupation forces attempting to arrest him again. He decided to go to the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm to resist the occupation. However, fate led him to be martyred there alongside his comrades, both in captivity and in the field.
A state of sadness and anger swept through the city of Tulkarm, especially in the Nur Shams camp, as the Israeli occupation forces continued to carry out assassinations of Palestinian youth through drone strikes in Tulkarm, Nur Shams camp, Jenin, Qalqilya, and Tubas, all in the northern West Bank.
On Tuesday morning, the city of Tulkarem announced a general commercial strike and a state of mourning in honor of the five martyrs who were killed in the Israeli airstrike on Monday evening, the 26.
Hundreds of Palestinians participated in the funeral of the five martyrs. Jibril Jibril’s body was transferred to his hometown of Qalqilya, where his family and friends bade a final farewell. They prayed for him in the Return Garden in the camp before he was buried in the cemetery.
According to the Palestinian Health Organization, there have been more than 600 martyrs in the West Bank as of October 7.
Tucked within the antiquated corridors of the municipality of Bethlehem, there lies Aida Camp, established 1950. The densely populated cement structures, thinly outlined by narrow passageways, are a living summation of the occupation of Palestine itself.
Scraping elbows with the massive checkpoint pathway between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, hedged by the West Bank apartheid separation wall and situated nearby two large illegal Israeli settlement blocs, Aida camp sits on the front lines of the Palestinian struggle to exist in the grim face of an ethnic cleansing.
For the internally displaced residents of the camp, a predominant feature of life inside Aida is the near daily child arrests that occur. This specter links arms with prolific doses of teargas that are hurled by occupation forces over the wall, drugs being smuggled inside, staggering unemployment rates and regular military incursions.
Conflating the elements of imposed unrest in the camp, Aida has been termed a ‘gateway’ for drugs being that it is located in the space yawning from the physical intersection of occupied and occupier. Resident’s note a common scenario that unfolds in the camp. “The soldiers raid the camp and everyone goes running to hide. The outside drug dealers come once the soldiers scare everyone away and hide the drugs in the cemetery and then the local drug dealers retrieve the drugs and deal them inside the camp.”
From his office in the vibrant center of the non-profit Alrowwad, an “independent, dynamic, community-based” bastion of culture and empowerment in Aida, Dr. Adbelfattah Abusrour, Alrowwad’s founder, poetically unfolds the organization’s vision for the people of Aida camp. “We believe it is important to introduce creative elements for the children. Games, theater, photography, painting. I call this beautiful resistance. Children should have access to this experience.”
In the face of overpopulation and occupation, camp resident Dr. Abdelfattah knows the emotional pipeline that Aida’s youth faces, “Aida is a hotspot because it is so near the border. They want us to be silent on every level. They target the young to be collaborators. The high unemployment rates lead to despair. And when children feel despair, they feel unsafe. At that point, the best thing is to want to die.”
But with Alrowwad injecting an intoxicating blend of art and fire into daily camp existence, the trajectory manifests, colorfully so, “We want children to express themselves in the most beautiful ways. To want to live for Palestine. Not to die for Palestine. The issue is that people cannot tolerate injustice for eternity. It varies, our tolerance for injustice. For me, I can make a play or a painting, for someone else, he will blow himself up.”
“Home of Hope, Dream, Imagination and Creativity”
The Alrowwad center features a bright classroom area stocked with books on arts and history of various countries and cultures, a radio station, theater and more. With an arts unit, media center, women’s program and environmentally centered project, Alrowwad leaves no creative stone un-turned. They have taken their programs on international tour to share the beauty of their creations, as well as to “show the children what life in a free country is like.” However, the occupation, insecure with the world gaining view of expressive, dignified Palestinian life, has harassed and even gotten their international shows cancelled, “The Zionists have contacted our venues around the world and told them that we are terrorists and they need to shut down the show, and sometimes they have.” But Alrowwad presses on.
On this warm afternoon, children crowd around computer monitors while teachers and volunteers sweep busily through the room, guiding and interacting, a conference of cheerful sounds. Juxtapose this scene with the tragic display just over one year ago when 13-year-old Palestinian youth Abed al-Rahman Shadi Obeidallah, was shot in the chest by Israeli forces, “by mistake” as he made his way to his home in the camp after school. Abed’s murderer was held to no accountability.
Dr. Abdelfattah’s mission is to create safe, expressive spaces for the Palestinian youth of the camp, to abolish the pipeline and create a life not prescribed from the miseries of injustice. “The international community doesn’t care about our politics. Nothing is fine being reduced to a humanitarian cause, a political cause. This is more humiliating than occupation itself. And it’s challenging to change that. Arts and culture are not a priority. But this is what are pure bridges between us as human beings. It’s what brings us closer rather than marginalizes us.”
Through daily military incursions and the arresting theft of Aida’s children, the beautiful resistance that Alrowwad conjures and enforces is the importance of education as a weapon against oppression. But an education that is rewritten from traditional norms, “Education has always been based on dictation and memorization. It is up to the teacher to bring out the student’s excellence. We don’t want to be these gods of knowledge. We teach them to have fun. The essence of this is to give these possibilities and build the human before building the knowledge.”
With a nearby, illegal separation wall force-instilling a sense of otherness, along with the grinding oppression and onslaught against Palestinian tradition, life and identity itself, it is the beautiful resistance of Dr. Abdelfattah and the Alrowwad organization that is painting, for Aida’s youth, a dynamic and electrifying way forth.
January 17th 2016 | InternationalSolidarity Movement | Bethlehem, occupied Palestine
This Friday, on the 15th of January, hundreds of Palestinians gathered on the main street of Bethlehem to protest against the recent killing of Srour Ahmad Abu Srour, who was killed by Israeli forces in nearby Beit Jala last Wednesday. Israeli forces fired tear gas, rubber-coated metal bullets and live ammunition at the protesters.
On Wednesday afternoon, 21-year-old Srour Ahmad Abu Srour, origanally from Aida refugee camp, was killed during protests against the Israeli military invasion of the western part of Bethlehem, Beit Jala. Palestine news network reported that 4 Israeli army jeeps entered Beit Jala and set up a flying checkpoint and started raiding homes and shops on the busy Al-Sahl street in Beit Jala. Srour Ahmad Abu Srour was hit in his chest by a live bullet, and later succumbed at Beit Jala public hospital. The director of the Red Crescent ambulance and emergency crew in Bethlehem, Mohamed Awad, said that many young men were injured by rubber-coated metal bullets or by suffocation due to the large amount of tear gas fired during the protest.
Every day since the killing of Srour Ahmad Abu Srour, Palestinians from Bethlehem have marched the streets in protests of Israel’s ongoing violence. On this Friday demonstration Israeli forces entered the streets of Bethlehem and fired hundreds of tear gas canisters towards the protesters. Protesters, passersby and residents of the neighborhood were severely affected by the amount of tear gas that was fired. One passerby was taken away from the scene in an ambulance due to the excessive inhalation of tear gas.
Tear gas on the streets of BethlehemA private car is passing through the tear gas,fired by the Israeli soldiers.
2 injuries by rubber-coated metal bullets were reported, one of which was a journalist. One protester was shot in his lower leg with live ammunition, and was taken to hospital.
Blood from the protester who was injured in his lower leg by live ammunition
According to medics, 5 people were injured with rubber-coated metal bullets and 5 people with live ammunition during protests in Bethlehem with its surrounding villages. One medic was injured when a rubber-coated metal bullet was fired at the windshield of his Ambulance during protests in near by Em Rokbaa.
Medics standing in front of the ambulance with a broken windshield
Injured medic with the broken windshield in the background.
