“Aida is a grave of Palestinian dreams,” describes Said Zain, 25, dressed from head to toe in black. “There are only two ways out here: either you go crazy or you become very imaginative and creative.” He prefers the latter and this is what he devotes himself to in his role as a psychologist in the youth center in the Aida refugee camp (West Bank). Their speech includes a series of disasters that they all encounter in their daily lives. But since the war broke out on October 7, the world of misfortune has only gotten worse, he adds. Israel's military incursions occur several times a week, although with less violence than in other West Bank camps such as Jenin or Tulkarem.
So far the soldiers have marched in on Monday and Tuesday this week. The neighbors show videos of the two days. The number of people imprisoned in Aida since the outbreak of war is almost fifty, including some minors. In addition, on November 10, a teenager was killed by a gunshot. The increasing level of violence and military presence has brought daily cultural, recreational and sports activities to an almost complete standstill, especially for minors, who make up about half of Aida's population, approximately 5,500 people.
Among those arrested in the last few days are the two top officials of the youth center, who are also two of the community leaders. According to Said Zain, the uniformed men took Munther Amari from his house on Monday evening after attacking one of his brothers and locking his wife and children in an outbuilding. Amari is a well-known peace activist and a member of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, a nonviolent resistance movement in Palestine. On November 28, the army captured Anas Abu Srour. The two are in administrative detention, meaning without charges or access to a lawyer. “With these two prisoners, we are lost, blocked…” laments Zain, while highlighting the work of both in all kinds of relief work and ensuring that residents remain united. “They expect the collapse of the community, I think there is no other reason,” the young man concludes, burying his head on the computer keyboard.
“After October 7, arrests and raids increased. Sometimes they break into the homes of minors they have imprisoned (in Israel) and commit destruction. The soldiers are very aggressive. They feel unpunished and that is very dangerous,” says Mohamed Alazaa, 33, director of the Lajee Cultural Center (which means “refugee” in Arabic). Their headquarters were attacked in the raid on the 10th. One of the areas of this Aida institution that has had to pause its activities is football, whose team is Lajee Celtic (or Aida Celtic). The name comes from its association with the Green Brigade of Scotland's Glasgow Celtic, an openly pro-Palestinian fan base.
During a UEFA Champions League match in 2016, they greeted their rival, Israeli club Hapoel Beersheva, with Palestinian flags. They were fined €10,000, but the Green Brigade managed to raise more than €200,000. Some of this money was donated to Aida Celtic. Some of the seven watchtowers of the Israeli wall are these days appearing above the artificial turf field, onto which some smoke canisters have fallen, as Alazaa shows. “We had to stop because of responsibility,” he argues, stroking the scar left on his face by a gunshot in 2013 as he looked out on the balcony of the cultural center. But it is not just the siege by the army that worries the population of Aida, Alazaa admits with regard to Gaza. “It makes no sense to maintain our normal lives with what is happening there,” he says.
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“We are all terrorists”
“The situation here has always been very bad: arrests, destruction of houses, lack of privacy, shootings, tear gas… But since that day everything has gotten worse. Young people are a danger at military checkpoints, we are all considered terrorists, so I am much more afraid than before,” explains Zain. Last month he was deeply saddened to learn how the military had arrested his neighbor Jader Lofti, a father of three daughters. They blindfolded him, tied him up, forced him to kneel and began punching him repeatedly in the stomach until he collapsed, while one of them recorded everything. They then published it on social networks, to the ridicule of Aida's family and neighbors. “If they are able to do this in front of the camera, imagine behind it,” he comments while showing the pictures.
A giant black key on a castle-shaped arch welcomes the Aida Field outside Bethlehem. It represents the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in 1948, when Israel was born, and the determination to return. But not just the key, the whole of Aida is a powerful reminder that, although it is a makeshift settlement 75 years have passed and the original tents are now brick houses. The 0.71 kilometer space granted in 1950 by the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for just over a thousand displaced people from twenty cities to settle is the same plot of land on which they are crammed today. about 5,500.
“I was born and raised here,” says Said Zain. “My grandfather was expelled from Jerusalem and even though we are only seven kilometers away, I have never set foot there in my life. I didn't see the sea either. “That’s my dream,” he adds. Another is buried in the grave to which he refers. He is aware that the beach is only 50 kilometers away, an insurmountable distance for someone like him who lives under Israeli occupation. “I often wake up in the morning and think: Why did this life happen to me?” Her priority, however, is currently educating the children whose living conditions, already complicated under normal circumstances, have been affected by the war. “They are traumatized and the best treatment would be to remove them from this environment, but that is impossible.” “There is no possibility that they will receive proper treatment,” he says, describing the dead end in which they live.
100% of the 236 residents of Aida who underwent a study by the University of California, Berkeley (USA) in 2017 reported being exposed to tear gas. Neighbors assure that in view of the current conflict, smoke canisters are fired almost every day. The large number of shell casings fired by the Army prompted a local jeweler to use them to create items such as souvenir pendants and earrings, which are sold in his store, The Key of Return.
A traditional Palestinian ceramic painting on the door of the Lajee Cultural Center indicates that Jerusalem is 7.8 kilometers away. In front, a few meters from the building, the large concrete monster of the Israeli Wall reminds us that this distance is now more false than ever, with the road closed by the war. In the attack on the club's headquarters on December 10, soldiers climbed onto the roof and tore down the flying Palestinian flag and its mast. They used this pole to hang an Israeli flag on the wall. “We had doubts about whether we should return it. There was a fear that they would come back and cause harm or arrest someone. But we replaced it the same day. “This is even bigger,” says Mohamed Alazaa defiantly, looking at the positions of the Israeli troops where they have taken over the mast. “And we decided that if they remove it again, we will fill the whole of Aida with Palestinian flags. It is not just a flag, it is the symbol of all Palestinians,” he decides decisively.
Graffiti in the Aida refugee camp, next to Bethlehem (West Bank). Luis de Vega
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