Jenin and Tulkarem occupied the West Bank – Omaima Faraj embodies her head in silence for a moment – she is tired, but the work does not stop.
She arrives in a school that has become Shelter near Tulkarem where her first patient, an elderly woman moved who greets her tenderly, waits for her to measure her glucose and blood pressure. Then, she moves to the next classroom, the next patient, walking in an open passage soaked under the end of February.
Faraj, 25, volunteers to help residents devastated by Israeli raids for weeks. She is one of the young Palestinians who work to address the emergency that Israel creates in the occupied West Bank while it promotes refugee camps and moves thousands of people.
Rush in danger
When the occupation and military trip of Israel of the camp began in what the Israelis called the “Iron Wall” operation, on January 21, Faraj rushed into the Tulkarem refugee camp instead of fleeing violence.
She stayed there with her volunteer colleagues for more than 12 critical days when the attacks were their fiercest and people were still trying to organize to flee the camp.
They focused on providing help for people in need – injured, elderly and people with reduced mobility. No one could go to the hospital because Israeli soldiers would not leave them.
Israeli soldiers harassed the volunteers, says Faraj, describing how they would threaten her and her colleagues, telling them to leave and never come back or they would be killed.
An incident haunts her particularly, of an elderly man who was trapped in his house for four days.
The team continued to try to reach him, but Israeli soldiers blocked their way. Finally, the Red Cross International Committee has intervened, coordinating with the Israelis to allow a safe passage to volunteers.
When they reached man, he was in a desperate situation – lacking food, water and hygiene for four days, but they were finally able to evacuate it.
While they were leaving, they were acute, warned not to come back – or risk being slaughtered.
Backpack
“We did not have an emergency plan for that,” said Alaa Srouji, director of the Al-Awda Center in Tulkarem.
Al-Awda and the center of the Lajee of the Aida camp in Bethlehem form volunteers to document the expulsions of people and camp conditions so that they can assess the necessary help.
Volunteers are around 15 nurses and doctors for most women who met when the Israeli raids started, to provide medical aid and distribute essential elements to the thousands of people who were injured.
Their young faces show the record of almost two months of work constantly with people displaced by the Israeli attack against the camps of Nur Shams and Tulkarem.
They find it difficult to fill a huge gap when Israel has prohibited the United Nations (UNRWA) Palestinian from helping people in occupied West Bank.
These volunteers do not have the head office, they spend all day walking to serve people with nothing more than their backpacks and their determination.
They go to one of the 11 temporary shelters and in a hurry or wherever their patients managed to find a place to live.
They provide medical and psychological support as well as clothes, food and other necessities to those who have lost everything against the soldiers of the Raids of Israel.
In their backpacks are gauze, portable glucose monitors, gloves, bandages, tournies, manual monitors of blood pressure, notebooks and pens.
“Our role as a local community is so important,” says Alaa.
Volunteers must also support each other emotionally, organizing group sessions to deal with the review of working in their devastated communities.
Many of them come from the camp, they are therefore also moved, targeted and saw their districts leveled by Israeli bulldozers.
Faraj is no different. Like many Palestinians, she is marked by loss and violence after her 18 -year -old brother was killed by an Israeli drone in January 2024.
The camp is a prohibited area. Some displaced residents take the risk of returning home to try to recover some of their personal effects.
They sail on the streets filled with rubble, the stench of rotten food left in the now abandoned houses and the sewers torn by bulldozers, while the Israeli soldiers patrol and drones hover over the head, seeking a movement inside the camp.
Laugh, cry, shout the trauma
An hour’s drive from Tulkarem is Jenin, and 10 minutes from Jenin is a village called Kafr Dan where unusual filter sound in the air – children’s laughter.
About 20 children wander in the garden of a large house. They are gathered in a rough circle by coaches who encourage them to speak – loudly – to let their fear and anger escape.
The activity is organized by the Freedom Theater of Jenin, who came to Kafr Dan to provide this moment of respite for the displaced children to be simply, at least a moment.
They started inside Jenin camp as a space where children and young people could participate in cultural activities but were blocked by the Israeli army to be there.
So, “we bring the theater to children,” explains Shatha Jarrar, one of the three activity coordinators.
Children are encouraged to be as noisy as they wish, to shout the fear and anger they hold inside after the violence to which they were exposed.
A game involving a small balanced ball on a spoon is the next one, making the children and their mom who looks at smile laugh, happy to see their children happy.
Sitting next to is a smiling UM Muhammed, 67, who led some of the children to join the activities.
It is not her children, however, because she offered a shelter in her house to a family of seven people who have recently been moved from Jenin.
Um Muhammed was moved in 2002, during the second intifada, his house in Jenin’s refugee camp destroyed by Israeli forces when her three children were small.
They are older now, she said, her eyes rushing when she remembers the trauma of the trip. They have their own children and she is a grandmother.
Um Muhammed knows that the fear of Israeli tanks that are driving and the resonant explosions too well. This is why, now she insists on helping people get through the same thing.
Shatha, 26, and his two co-organizers are starting to store their equipment, putting it in backpacks. The activities are carried out for today.
Shatha became aware of the Freedom Theater when she attended a program there as a child and later decided to devote her time to the inheritance of the theater.
“Theater is a different world and a lifestyle. My work with children is part of this world. Children are our tomorrow, ”she says.
Near her is a mother – who prefers to refuse her name – who looked at her children.
She, her husband and two children experienced the dystopian view of the Israeli drone quadcopters which are orders to evacuate. Then came the Apache helicopters hovering in the sky, drone attacks and a fleet of invasive armored vehicles, accompanied by heavily armed Israeli soldiers.
His eyes widen and his speech accelerates, fresh memories by telling his story.
Finally, as they left, they had to stand up while Israeli soldiers scanned their faces and arrested some of the men trying to leave.
When they left for the first time, she had kept the hope that they would be allowed to come back in a few days.
But the reality of their displacement settles slowly.
