Shaadi Muqtasen worries most about his children, who are going crazy with boredom after nearly four months stuck at home without school; and his dogs, which are going wild with frustration after more than 100 days caged in a tiny yard.
His family live in the centre of old Hebron, one of the most heavily contested, heavily militarised places in the West Bank. For Palestinian residents there, life all but stopped when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October.
Israeli security forces who control Muqtasen’s area, and have a guard post across the street, imposed an immediate lockdown, that in effect constituted house arrest, even for children.
“For the first month, we weren’t allowed to leave the house at all,” he said. “If we even started to open the small grille on the door [to look out], we could hear them cocking their guns.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Shaadi Muqtasen worries most about his children, who are going crazy with boredom after nearly four months stuck at home without school; and his dogs, which are going wild with frustration after more than 100 days caged in a tiny yard.
Palestinians living in the centre of Hebron are used to violence and a web of controls that dates back more than 20 years, including bans on walking down some streets that are open to Israelis.
Unharvested olives hang heavy on the terraces of ancient trees that ring the city and the ground is dotted with small, pale green irises, but the only people enjoying the scenery are a settler herding sheep and a group of Israeli soldiers on a tour.
Hebron is the most important economic hub for the Palestinian Authority, the second largest city in the West Bank, and for deeply entwined religious and political reasons, a nexus of conflict.
Communities are now at the mercy of ill-defined armed groups that look and act more like paramilitary factions than tools of state power, said Nadav Weiman, deputy director at Breaking the Silence, an NGO that documents Israeli military abuses in occupied areas.
The confusing mix was on display at the entrance to the Hebron settlement of Kiryat Arba, when three people with assault rifles manning a checkpoint verbally abused an Israeli human rights activist and two journalists.
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