Tulkarem, occupied West Bank – In the heart of the Tulkarem refugee camp, in the occupied West Bank, in the Hammam district which is a frequent target of Israeli raids, is the house of Akram Nassar, a 36-year-old former police officer, and his two children.
The street leading to the house is littered with rubble, broken pipes and other debris, and sewage flows down its sides.
Closer to the house, Akram’s two sons appear, Rahim, five years old, and Bara, four years old. Bara is in shorts and a T-shirt in the mild weather of mid-September.
They are visible from the street because the entire front wall – and much of the side wall – of their house disappeared after Israeli raids tore them away.
Their front room is sterile – except for two red plastic chairs; a single gray armchair; an old computer monitor without its case; and a black-framed mirror hanging from the damaged interior door.
The floor tiles are broken, there is dust and rubble everywhere.
The tiles on the two remaining walls offer a glimpse of what the house may have looked like and how it was maintained in the past.
On September 2, an Israeli soldier used a bulldozer to destroy the facade of Akram’s house, like several others on the street.
Akram’s barely standing house, without the privacy or protection that the idea of a house evokes, fits into the devastated landscape of Tulkarem.
Since October 7, “anti-terrorist” raids by the Israeli army have damaged or destroyed most of the homes and infrastructure in the refugee camp.
Each of Tulkarem’s many narrow streets is lined with houses and shops that have no walls, doors or windows.
Many buildings are completely uninhabitable. Some families, like Akram’s, are trying to survive in the ruins of their homes, without knowing what the next raid will bring.
Akram appears in the front room, carrying two plastic buckets. He goes out with his two boys and they walk to the corner to get water from a tank donated by the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee.
When they return, Akram goes to the small kitchen to prepare coffee, the smell of burning lingers in the air and burn marks are visible on the walls.
Coffee is a rare luxury that they could still enjoy at home, Akram says. “Coffee is easy to make, I can still make it in my destroyed kitchen,” he says.
“As for meals, we usually eat at my mother’s house, just… in the alley in front of our house.”
Akram and his wife separated three years ago and he kept the children.
As he brews coffee on a single-burner electric stove, he reflects on the disarray around him.
“The occupying forces left nothing intact,” he said.
They deliberately destroyed everything, even the simplest kitchen utensils, just to make sure we lost everything. »
He no longer clears rubble or tries to repair broken walls, he says, because he assumes his house will soon suffer further damage in another raid.
As Akram speaks, Bara rummages through a pile of ruined clothes and other belongings, looking for something to play with.
After a moment, he lets out a cry of jubilation: “I found one of my toys!” » and runs around holding a small, colorful stuffed cat designed to hang in a mobile above a bed or on a pram.
Clinging to the small handle on his head, Bara waves the cat excitedly.
“Rahim and Bara used to spend most of their time playing, but even their game has changed now,” says Akram.
“They lost most of their toys and belongings. They no longer have colored pencils or drawing books.
He points to two birds chirping in a cage on the wall. “These two birds are the only things left of their lives before the devastation,” he said. “My children lost everything except these birds. »
As Akram sits with his coffee, the children begin to collect bird food from the ground, which was scattered around the house by Israeli soldiers during their last raid.
“The birds survived, even though the house was filled with smoke after the side room exploded,” says Akram. “They witness the destruction of everything that is happening inside this house.”
“Let our father go!” »
This destruction was caused by repeated raids since that of Israeli forces in March.
“That day, the army was destroying everything in the camp and the sound of explosions kept getting closer,” says Akram.
He feared that the army would arrest all the men as it had in the Nur Shams camp a few days earlier, so he sneaked into his mother’s house with his children.
“Suddenly, the door to my mother’s house opened and soldiers armed to the teeth burst in. They immediately started breaking everything. They beat me, then arrested me.
Rahim, who had listened attentively to his father’s story, jumps up. “They hit him with their weapons and tied his hands,” he exclaims, reliving the scene of his father’s attack.
Akram’s arrest was the hardest part of his entire experience, he says, because of the terror it inflicted on his children.
“The children clung to me, shouting: ‘Let our father go!’ But the soldiers ignored their cries. »
The children tried to follow their father and the armed soldiers, but their grandmother held them back and took them back into the house.
Akram says he remained under arrest in a makeshift detention camp set up in a nearby field until the next day.
After his release, he was unable to return home for a day because Israeli soldiers had surrounded the Tulkarem camp and would not let anyone in.
Since that day, Akram takes the children to their grandmother’s house whenever there is a raid nearby.
His mother’s house was also damaged, its contents and front door vandalized, but it is still in better condition than Akram’s.
Being near their grandmother comforts and calms the children, he adds.
While the March raid was perhaps the most traumatic for his family, Akram’s home suffered the worst damage in September, during an Israeli raid – dubbed “Summer Camps” – on Israeli camps. refugees in the northern occupied West Bank, including Tulkarem.
That’s when an Israeli D9 bulldozer demolished the front wall of Akram’s house and razed an entire room, leaving the house completely exposed.
The soldiers attacked everyone and everything they saw, he said, and razed several houses around theirs.
“When the bulldozer arrived in our neighborhood, we were at my mother’s house. The noise of the destruction and the machine sounded like an earthquake shaking the camp,” he says.
As he does after every raid, he rushed home when the situation calmed down, only to find that most of the building had been reduced to rubble.
“Less than ten days after this first demolition (September 11), the army blew up another annex room with an explosive, starting a fire which filled the entire house with smoke,” he adds.
Akram says the effect the raids have had on his and his children’s lives goes far beyond the destruction of their home.
The bus that carried her children to school can no longer reach their neighborhood because the roads have been destroyed.
Now Akram must accompany them there every morning and afternoon, fearing for their safety due to the rugged terrain and the ever-present risk of a sudden military raid.
He says it is also more difficult for the children to visit their mother who, since their separation, has been living in the family home in the Sualma neighborhood, just five minutes from home.
“The raids have badly damaged their mother’s house, so it is not safe for them to stay there either,” he says, adding that there is also a risk posed by bulldozer raids.
As he speaks, Akram examines a pile of clothes, covered in dust and partially burned, to see if any of them are usable.
Finally, he chooses a few items and puts them in a plastic bag. “Thank God,” he exclaims sarcastically, “I found half pajamas and two shirts.”
Given the constant threats and damage, Akram says, “I stopped trying to repair or even completely clean the house because at any moment the army could attack us again and put us back to square one . »
Akram could be forgiven for considering moving his family elsewhere, but, he says, he has “no intention of leaving.”
“We know the destruction will continue. Now, after each raid, I just remove some of the rubble. Most of the household items are ruined and we had to get rid of them.
Akram says sleeping in his house these days is not much different from sleeping on the street, as large parts of the house have collapsed and windows have been destroyed.
Dust and dirt constantly fill the air, and there is no protection against insects or any other pests that might enter, especially with sewage flooding the streets outside.
But for Akram, none of this can make him leave.
“If the army comes back and destroys my house further, or even demolishes it completely, we will stay in our house. We will stay even if everything collapses.”
Every day, Akram and the children move between the living room, the corner where their birds are kept, and the destroyed entrance to their house, trying to live a somewhat normal life in the ruins of their old house.
As they travel, they sometimes stop to greet their neighbors through the gaps that once made up their walls.
“Nothing in our lives is normal anymore,” he told me.
“But we will stay here, even if we have to live half a life, in half a house.”