This newspaper the leader of the most powerful militia in Jenin: “We want Palestine to rise in a third intifada” | “We just want to live a normal life, not get up every morning and just have to think about how to survive,” he says.
In it Jenin refugee camp, death is present in every corner. Dozens of young faces, already disappeared, star in the posters that are superimposed on the walls. showing off weaponThey look into the eyes of another generation ready to die. Those branded as terrorists by Israel They are considered heroes thousands of Palestinians condemned to an occupation that does not seem to have an end. Helped by these “martyrs”, abu mujahedunder a pseudonym meaning “father of fighters“, it has been promised that “this will be the last occupation in history.” “We want Palestine to rise in a third intifada so that the whole world hears our suffering,” he proclaimed from behind a ski mask, dressed in the traditional Palestinian kufiya.
It hurts Abu Mujahed to talk about life in Jenin. “Only we want to live a normal lifenot getting up every morning and just having to think about how to survive”, he told El Periódico de Catalunya, from the Prensa Ibérica group, from a safe place, above the field that is his home and his hiding place. The Israeli authorities want him for leading one of the most powerful militias in the countryside. During last Thursday’s raid by the Hebrew Army that claimed 10 Palestinian lives, he lost five friends. “We fought together, we lived together, we ate together, we did everything together“, she explains in front of the demolished house where they were murdered. She speaks with just a hint of sorrow, and a great hint of pride. Her friend Thawra Staiti jokes. “I never know if this is going to be the last time he sees him, if he will be alive or dead tomorrow,” she admits sardonically.
no future
Thawra, whose name means revolutionembodies the hardships of living in Jenin. A lawyer By profession and actress by devotion, this mother of two little ones knows no dignity. “My father spent 30 years in Israeli jails, so I didn’t meet him until I was eight years old and he didn’t recognize me,” she recalls. This Palestinian knows that if she hadn’t born in Jenin, his life would be another. “Each night we went to bed with bad news only to wake up to something worse,” she laments. With no job opportunities – Jenin is the city with the highest unemployment rates in all of the West Bank – she sits at home all day watching the news.
“I worry that my children are not safe Going to school“, he affirms, “most days they cannot even go because of the presence of Israeli soldiers.” This 2023, they have already eight children killed by Israeli fire. “We don’t have a normal life at all,” Thawra admits. When the shooting continues day after day, she is left without excuses. “I always lie to my children when they ask me what those noises are, I tell them that they are shots at a wedding,” she admits. The word future loses its meaning in Jenin. “On an economic level, the city is completely unstable, there are no jobs and young people just want to diekill to go to heaven”, she says, resigned.
Great battle in 2002
more than Two decades that Jenin is under the crosshairs of the Israelis. During the second intifada, the refugee camp was the scene of one of the largest massacres. In the Battle of Jenin, the Israeli Army occupied the field claiming that it was a hotbed of Palestinian militancy. More of 400 houses they were destroyed, leaving a quarter of the population homeless and displaced. The Palestinians claim that 500 people died during the Israeli invasion, but the UN considers that there were only 52 on the Palestinian side and 23 Israeli soldiers. “Now, the people who are in the resistance are those who suffered the loss of their families or houses in 2002,” says Abu Mujahed.
Also, during that offensive, the the only theater in town, located in the refugee camp. At the end of the second intifada, in 2006, they rebuilt the project under the name of Teatro de la Libertad. Mustafa Sheta He has been running it for six years, exercising his own strategy of resistance. “The response to Israeli violence by the camp’s inhabitants is not a revolution in itself, it’s a reaction“he says. “While the Israelis have been crushing us for years and making us believe that we are lesspeople have decided to respond and they will not do it with docility, because we are not being treated with docility”, claims the also activist.
“We love life”
During the last year, the Israeli military raids over Jenin have increased. The 10,000 Palestinians from the camp They have not slept peacefully for months, since the raids and massive arrest campaigns occur at dawn. Also in Nablus, another city north of the occupied West Bank, dominates insomnia due to the constant irruption of the Israeli Army. At least 167 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in 2022, making it the deadliest year since the second intifada. Between Nablus and Jenin, have died 90 citizens.
Sheta is very aware of that violence. In 2002, while drinking a glass of water in her kitchen, his father was shot and killed. “Anyone you ask in the field has at least one martyr in his family“, he admits. For this reason, in that shared mourning, lies its need to continue fighting. In the main stronghold of the Palestinian resistance, they honor their “martyrs” by looking into their eyes every day. from the corners, their looks remind them that there are a thousand reasons for battle. “We love life and we fight to live,” says Abu Mujahed. “That’s our goal: we want to live like the rest of the world,” he concludes, before hiding his face behind his ski mask.