Occupied Land

In the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem, Sarah, her hands trembling, filmed with her phone the harrowing death of her fifteen-year-old brother Taha, shot down by Israeli soldiers. Her father Ibrahim’s desperate attempt to revive him ends in tragedy when he too is shot, succumbing to his injuries after months of suffering. These cruel, everyday episodes paint a stark picture of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank’s refugee camps, which have morphed into dilapidated districts of resistance, where life unfolds amidst raids, explosions, and arrests. Homes offer fragile refuge under black tarps stretched between buildings to evade Israeli drones. At the same time, young fighters face an unequal war, wielding weapons or dreams of martyrdom in a world where violence is passed down from one generation to the next.

In East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood, resistance takes on different forms. The family of Jmailat Al Raibi, rooted there for generations, fiercely opposes the demolitions imposed by Israeli colonial expansion. Offers of millions of euros are rejected as bulldozers tear down homes in the dead of night. Despite this, Jmailat and his family rebuild what is destroyed, selling everything they own to fund a doomed legal battle. 

Tensions in the occupied territories escalate with no end in sight. In the Nur Shams camp, barely adult fighters prepare for war with makeshift weapons and experience that seems far beyond their years. While Israeli oppression fragments Palestinian lives and communication, the resistance refuses to fade. Checkpoints multiply, turning every journey into a nightmare, and repression grows, with undercover agents infiltrating the population. Meanwhile, children play war games in front of the spot where Taha fell, brandishing toy guns and dreaming of becoming martyrs, feeding a cycle of violence that seems unstoppable. The scars of war run deeper through the streets, and hatred becomes the mother tongue of the new generation.

On the international front, the situation spirals further. Iran retaliates with a massive attack on Israel after the bombing of its embassy in Damascus, intensifying the conflict. Simultaneously, Israeli forces escalate their raids, causing dozens of civilian casualties in Palestine. The violence spreads rapidly across the region, threatening to erupt into a catastrophe of unprecedented scale. With the hope of a two-state solution now reduced to an unattainable utopia, the occupation and colonization seem to condemn future Palestinian generations to lives of oppression, deprivation, and shattered dreams.