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The war between Hamas and Israel in the “liberation” act affected Palestinians born in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel or France. Disappointed by the French response since October 7, they tell of the fear they feel for their loved ones who have been bombed and caught up in a conflict that has lasted 75 years.
One evening in the north of Paris. Wearing a keffiyeh, stocky and shaggy, Shadi enters a bistro. A sudden pause; Conversations fail. Customers who sit quietly look away. Others question, between embarrassment and curiosity, even compassion. “I never wore it, but since the war it has been a duty and a source of pride,” says Shadi. The 42-year-old painter from Gaza has lived in the capital for seventeen years. Duaa, his companion and future wife, appears as a frail shadow nearby. The thirty-year-old left Gaza for the first time in her life in 2021. It's a one-way street for now. They exist, but also Saud, Ahmad, Jadd, Rawan and Zineb. They grew up under bombs in what is now the enclave of Gaza, but also in the occupied West Bank – in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Bir Zeit – or even in Israel, in Jaffa. They arrived in France a few months ago or many years ago. Sometimes they were born here, to Palestinian parents, and some have never or barely set foot there, like Rawan, Marseillaise from Bir Zeit, who was never able to enter Jerusalem, where she was born. Liberation met about twenty of them.
Since October 7, after the brutal Hamas attack in Israel, “everything is worse than in the past, we are all helpless and hurt,” cries