“I still have the blood stains.” Yaser Abdelgafar, who will soon turn 50, takes out the shirt he wore on October 16, 2000, from his bedroom. That day, at three in the afternoon, an Israeli bullet pierced the head of 14-year-old Moayad Jawaresh. Neighbor of the Aida refugee camp, next to Bethlehem (West Bank). A soldier shot him from the fortress that then surrounded Rachel’s Tomb, a controversial historical site for Muslims, Christians and Jews but which Israel has closed to its citizens. Today, this Bethlehem defense complex is integrated into the more than 700 kilometers of strands of concrete, metal bars and barbed wire that make up the separation wall built by Israel since 2002, which mostly winds through Palestinian territory.
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The reason given for the construction was to ensure security from attacks for the population of the West Bank, which is even separated from Jerusalem, where the wall also runs. Back in 2004, the United Nations International Court of Justice ruled it illegal. Over the years, it has become a tool that allows us, in times of war like the one that began on October 7, to further close the fence of occupation, control and usurpation of land to which the Palestinian population falls victim tighten. EL PAÍS visited several points of this magnificent work that is constantly evolving, a scar that remains even two decades later.
Moayad Jawaresh after he was shot on October 16, 2000 near the Aida refugee camp (Bethlehem) where he lived. Right: Yaser Abdelgafar Luis de Vega
That Monday afternoon, Moayad Jawaresh had just left school in uniform and was still carrying his backpack on his shoulders when he was shot. These were months in which the Second Intifada (the uprising between 2000 and 2005) was in full swing. Children often responded to the presence of Israeli soldiers by throwing stones. Yaser Aldelgafar and other adults, including members of the Red Crescent, collected Moayad’s body and transported her, now lifeless, to the hospital.
Abdelgafar remembers exactly the place, at the entrance to the Aida field and just a few meters from where today stands the gray monster, a dozen meters high, which, crowned with barbed wire, looks full of graffiti and protest graffiti. There are even some by Banksy, although tourists don’t see them these days.
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The name of Moayad Jawaresh as a martyr to the Palestinian cause is still very present in Aida 23 years later, even though her mother Iman is afraid to speak. Apart from the construction of the wall, little has changed. Young people today still receive bullets like those of the Second Intifada generation. The last death was Mohamed Azeha on November 10th. His image appears on numerous posters on the walls of the refugee camp, a colorful network of narrow streets. Like Moayad, they shot him from the wall.
Abdallah Saquer, 14, was also injured on November 1 when a bullet penetrated his right leg at thigh level. The young man arrives in a bedroom of his home with the help of his mother Ataf, 37, writhing in pain while leaning awkwardly on crutches. “We were playing in front of the tower and there was a sniper. “Someone threw rocks at him, he responded with real fire,” he says. His mother remembers the times when, without a wall, they could go into the surrounding fields to get olives or shop in the direction of Jerusalem, whose border is barely two kilometers away.
Abdallah isn’t sure what he wants to do when he grows up. He is content to work as a merchant in a small grocery store like the one his uncle runs in the Aida refugee camp. While he explains it with a few words and some reserve, his older brother Ahmed, 16 years old, arrives. He is also injured and on crutches. In his case, according to the story, which he backs up with photos on his cell phone, a bullet caused significant damage to his right foot in mid-October while he was riding his electric bicycle near a military checkpoint in the town of Al Khader, also in the Province. Bethlehem area.
Abdallah Saquer, 14, is supported by his mother Ataf after he was injured by a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier from the wall in the Aida (Bethlehem) Álvaro García refugee camp on November 1
The path of the wall was largely shaped by the location of illegal settlements in the West Bank, where around half a million Israeli settlers live. Alvaro Garcia
Ali Abu Aker, 36, looks at the wall from the roof of his house. “It’s like I never got out of prison.” After nine years in Israeli prisons, he returned to Aida last March.Álvaro García
A soccer field attached to the wall in the Aida refugee camp north of the West Bank city of Bethlehem. Alvaro García
A boy rides a bicycle in front of the wall in Camp Aida in the West Bank. Alvaro García
Abdallah Saquer, 14 years old, and his older brother Ahmed, 16 years old. Both were injured in their home by Israeli army gunfire. Alvaro Garcia
Two women walk past the wall in Bethlehem in the West Bank. The more than 700-kilometer-long barrier leaves Palestinian homes surrounded by settlements and makes it difficult for residents to access their land. Alvaro Garcia
“It’s as if I hadn’t left prison,” complains Ali Abu Aker, 36, looking at the wall from the roof of his house. After nine years in Israeli prisons, he returned to Aida last March. He does not want to discuss the reasons for his imprisonment and claims that he was simply urging the Israeli soldiers who were harassing his father-in-law. It is clear to him that he has not regained his freedom.
On the right side is the tower embedded in the wall from which, according to the neighbors, the shots come. Other times, the huge gate opens and several vehicles enter from the other side to conduct a raid and arrest people, as happened in Gaza ten days after the war began. And as is happening almost daily in other places in the West Bank, where violence has skyrocketed since October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel. The Palestinian death toll is around 200 and the number of prisoners is around 3,000.
On the other side were some olive groves that Ali Abu Baker could look over. The young Mohamed and Yaser collect olives there, but to get there they have to take a detour of almost an hour and several military checkpoints due to the road closures imposed during the war. One of them was attacked by three Hamas militants on a road shared by Jewish settlers and Palestinian citizens last Thursday, a day after this newspaper’s visit to Aida. The three were killed by shots fired by the Israeli security forces, and one of their soldiers died from his injuries on the same day. A few meters from the site of the incident is the wall, which has gaps and does not achieve the impermeability that Israel is striving for.
Its layout was largely shaped by the location of illegal settlements in the West Bank, where about half a million Israeli settlers live. This “laid the foundation for the de facto annexation of most of the settlements and many lands for their future expansion,” according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, which estimates that through the enormous work Israel has absorbed about ten percent of the West Bank, the one Has an area of about 5,700 square kilometers, similar to the province of Alicante.
“The colonies are like a cancer that doesn’t stop eating us,” describes Yaser Abdelgafar, illustrating the growth of these communities, encouraged by the Israeli government, in particular by the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who pays for their security and well-being will cause inconvenience to residents. Palestinians.
Saadat Ghryib, 42, in the hallway leading to his home, which has been swallowed up by the Israeli settlement of Givon Hahadasha in the occupied West Bank. Alvaro Garcia
Very close to Jerusalem, 42-year-old Saadat Ghryib shows off his home, which is officially located in the West Bank town of Beit Ijza for Palestine. While three of his four children walk around, the man lets visitors pass through the electronic gate controlled by Israeli security forces and down a thirty-meter-long corridor until they reach the house.
The construction of a facility is an anomaly that has affected the regular road layout of Givon Hahadasha settlement. They live very close to each other, but not mixed. This close separation is controlled by twenty cameras that monitor this Palestinian family 24 hours a day. The Ghryibs live surrounded by a high metal palisade that separates their home from the adjacent chalets. There, five or six meters away and between Israeli flags fluttering in the wind, live the settlers.
“What happens in Gaza will happen to you if you don’t emigrate from this country,” says Saadat, who has been shouted at in recent days by neighbors whose names he doesn’t even know. They point guns at them, they insult them and every movement the family makes since sunset is suspicious for them, he describes as an expression of the atmosphere of tension created by the war in Gaza. “We are victims of the army’s aggression every time something happens, be it in the West Bank or, as now, in Gaza. They harass us, they attack us…” he adds.
Sabri Ghryib, Saadat’s father, who died in 2012, had refused to sell the family’s ten hectares when settlers pressured him to demand a price for it starting in 1979. “They came with a lot of money,” but “he said he wouldn’t get rid of a single hectare,” says Saadat.
Corridor as the only entrance to the Ghryib family home, surrounded by security measures to separate it from the Israeli settlement of Givón Hahadasha, built on land usurped by this Palestinian family. Alvaro Garcia
After a few years of what they describe as hellish attacks and pressure that they were unable to stop despite a victory in court, the family was ultimately left without money and four of the acres that the settlers had “stolen” for their settlement to what they claim. The son. Sabri Ghryib visited then Palestinian President Yasser Arafat more than once to give away his property to prevent looting. However, according to Saadat, he was involved in negotiations with Israel and avoided the issue.
Later came the wall that eventually separated them from the other six hectares on whose crop, essentially olives, they depend. The highlight was the imprisonment of Sabri Ghryib and her two children in 2006. When they returned home after four months, the Israelis had fortified the corridor around the house. In 2008, they equipped the hallway with an electronic gate that can lock them at home at the agents’ request. But you are not alone with this problem. Beit Ijza is one of the 150 Palestinian towns separated from their fields by the barrier.
Ruba Ghryib, 10 years old (left), and her sister Haya, 8, look at the house that Jewish settlers built on the land of this Palestinian family, whose home was taken over by the Israeli settlement of Givón Hahadasha.Álvaro Garcia
The arbitrariness in the permits to take a 45-minute detour to reach the family’s six hectares and make them enter their property to harvest olives will not be affected this year. The authorization was simply revoked in the shadow of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. “That means a loss for us of about $7,000.” [6.400 euros]“, calculates Saadat.
His eldest son, Sabri, 11 years old, enters the room and bows, lowering his head until he places his forehead in his father’s hand as a sign of respect. Seconds later, he takes her cell phone and isolates himself from the conversation, in which it becomes clear that as a member of the Ghryib family, he will also inherit the problem of the occupation. “The Israelis’ plan is for us to leave, but we won’t move a single muscle in this country. Even if they close the gate and it is our last day, we will not leave,” says Saadat Ghryib.
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