Mahmoud Abu Latifa cut his nephew’s hair into a shiny black bowl cut and fretted to the soundtrack of cable news describing bombardments of Gaza. “This is all I do: I cut hair and watch the news – it’s making me sick. I want to get rid of this ugly war,” he said.
The previous day, he had decided to get bread from a town that required him to pass close to the nearby Qalandiya checkpoint, a shuttered fortress of watchtowers and charred concrete walls covered in graffiti and murals of Palestinian political figures.
“I realised how stupid I was to pass by there. They can shoot you easily and they don’t care,” he said, referring to the Israeli military stationed at the checkpoint.
“They want revenge. It feels like they’re saying: ‘Either we die or you die’ – there’s no compromise.”
The unprecedented attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,300 Israelis, with an estimated 130 more held captive inside Gaza, has been met with a harsh crackdown by Israeli forces across the West Bank.
Beyond the closed checkpoints and the empty roads, residents across Ramallah feared the rising violence from the Israeli military and security forces, as well as some of the estimated 700,000 Israeli settlers spread across the area.
The Palestinian health ministry said that 54 people, including children, had been killed with more than 1,100 injured in the West Bank since Hamas’s attack. Monitoring groups said the dead included minors shot in the head, chest or abdomen with live rounds.
Fatal violence from Israeli settlers was twice caught on video last week. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem circulated footage of a settler in the village of At-Tuwani, to the south of Hebron, shoving a Palestinian man before shooting him at point blank range as the man dropped to his knees, with an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldier standing nearby.
The day before, video footage showed armed Israeli settlers attacking the village of Qusra, south of Nablus. “Five settlers came into the village from the south-east. At least one of them had a gun. They went to the house of Awad Odeh, who was already killed by settlers in 2014,” said Abdul Azim al-Wadi, the leader of the village council.
“They shot his son, Awad, and he is critically injured, and his eight-year-old daughter, who was injured in the shoulder. They were looking to kill – they aimed at the head. The villagers came out, and the IDF arrived too. They shot at the villagers,” he said. In total four were killed in the attack.
Settlers also attacked the funeral procession in Qusra the following day. “My brother and my nephew were killed,” said Wadi.
“They were clearing the road so the funeral procession could pass through and they were attacked by both the settlers and the IDF. They shot my brother Ibrahim Wadi and his son Ahmed in cold blood. I am at their funeral now,” he said, his voice strained with grief.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since capturing the area in 1967, enforcing a patchwork system of control where hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers can access water and expand their homes, as well as use the smooth, fast transport into Israeli territory.
Palestinians and Bedouin in the West Bank have for decades endured an entirely different reality, one of crowded checkpoints, difficult transport and little freedom of movement. Multiple human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and B’Tselem characterise this system of discrimination as “the crime of apartheid”.
Sitting among the piles of piping and cans of paint in his hardware shop, Abu Mahmoud drank coffee, and took drags on a cigarette while complaining about the Israeli soldiers who had raided the adjacent Qalandiya refugee camp early that morning.
“This time, things are really tough. These are hard days,” he said. “You could smell the teargas out here in the street.”
The road to the nearby Qalandiya checkpoint was covered in acrid black soot from tyres burned during clashes with Israeli military stationed there and the deserted crossing was shut. Days earlier, two minors were shot at the Qalandiya checkpoint during a clash with soldiers, who fired back with live rounds after a group threw stones and molotov cocktails.
“All the checkpoints are closed, so no workers can get to work. Everyone’s just at home watching the news,” he said. “Everything has stopped, the economy is failing.
“Qalandiya is a way for thousands to get to work, and now it’s closed, so what can we do? It’s affecting their financial situation. How can they sustain themselves? Hebron, Nablus, all of the cities across the West Bank are alone, isolated from one another,” he said.
A wave of even greater violence rippled through the West Bank at the end of the week. Friday, traditionally a day of protest, brought news of armed clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians in rural pockets and roads leading to checkpoints across the West Bank, as well as attacks by settlers. At least 14 were killed in little more than 24 hours.
Many across the West Bank bemoaned the sclerotic and ageing leadership of the Palestinian Authority, particularly its 87-year-old president, Mahmoud Abbas, who has been in power for almost two decades and has delayed multiple scheduled elections during that time.
“If settlers attack Ramallah, the first people to protect them would be the Palestinian Authority,” said 24-year-old Ramez Abu Jaber from the Qaddura refugee camp, making avocado juice inside his shop near Ramallah’s Al Manara Square. “The Israeli military protects the settlers. But the Palestinian Authority protects them, not us.”
He added: “If the Palestinian Authority can’t handle their obligations, they should leave and let people do their job – we can handle it.”
As most muttered or chanted their frustration at the lack of political leadership, the story that emerged from the West Bank is one of increasing brutality, with some frantically sourcing guns or turning to violence, fearing no other option exists in the face of rising and increasingly deadly pressure from the Israeli security forces and settlers.
Israeli media, meanwhile, reported that the country’s extreme rightwing national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, ordered 10,000 assault rifles to be spread among the West Bank settlements and cities with mixed Israeli and Palestinian populations, including 4,000 that were distributed immediately.
As vendors and patrons haggled at the nearby Ramallah vegetable market, pharmacist Ola Sherif leaned against a car in a white lab coat while taking a break from work.
People across the West Bank, including a lot of her customers, she said, had begun frantically stockpiling medicines fearing a continuing lockdown and the possible outbreak of fighting, not to mention the effects of a drastic slowdown in goods entering the West Bank from Israel. Many, including Sherif, complained that food prices, particularly for fresh produce, had shot up.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “People are panicking as they’re afraid that medicines will run out, so they bulk buy. Some of the medications are stuck in the port. Meanwhile, I have no Nexium [used to treat stomach and oesophagus conditions], no baby formula – I have none.
“We fear there will be severe shortages. People are descending on the supermarkets to buy up everything. You go in and see there’s no bread. We can’t find flour.”
Her son’s school, she added, had switched to online lessons as they feared the school buses of children passing a network of roads that included nearby settlements and Israeli military installations. “Of course people are afraid,” she said.
