At first, I hesitated to write. Expressing pain has never been easy for me. I have long struggled to find the right words because they collapse even as I try to articulate what truly hurts.
Some feelings and fears are too vast, too abstract, for language to contain – especially when the trauma is still unfolding before our eyes, growing more brutal by the day. The suffering and loss in Gaza are beyond my comprehension.
My silence, however, was not apathy. It came from a place of deep respect for a people carrying immeasurable grief. How could I, when our brothers and sisters in Gaza are being annihilated before the whole world, dare to speak of pain? Yet silence itself becomes a very heavy burden.
I am from the West Bank, where life is being suffocated in ways that do not compare to Gaza’s catastrophe, but are nonetheless devastating.
In recent weeks, Israel has advanced the E1 settlement plan, a step towards formal annexation that would carve up the West Bank and extinguish the prospect of a Palestinian state, while its forces escalate raids, detentions and daily assaults on our towns and camps.
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Jewish settlers likewise continue to terrorise Palestinian communities with total impunity – burning olive groves and uprooting trees, expanding outposts, attacking families in their homes and on the roads.
Over time, I came to understand that breaking my silence is not a betrayal of our people in Gaza. Speaking, while difficult, is necessary, and even if my words capture only fragments of the cruel reality we endure each day, they must still be preserved in history. To record this truth is itself an act of resistance against erasure.
We share this land, its history, and its deep pain. The genocide in Gaza is immediate and merciless, but across the rest of Palestine, it advances more slowly but inexorably.
Return to Tulkarm
Growing up in the West Bank, I spent years of my adult life working and volunteering for Unrwa, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency. Later, I had the chance to pursue postgraduate studies in the UK.
Last year, I was sitting in my small studio in Oxford, gazing out of the window and listening to reports from back home. The news has always filled me with frustration and rage. The situation in Palestine was worsening by the hour: Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had threatened to flatten my hometown of Tulkarm and to reduce it to rubble as they were doing in Gaza.
By July 2024, the death toll in Gaza was nearing 39,000, and the entire strip lay in ruins. The West Bank was boiling with turmoil, and my colleagues at Unrwa were facing severe repression as the agency came under threat of dismantlement.
At each checkpoint, the pace and ease of one’s journey depend entirely on the soldiers’ moods – their whims, their patience, and whether they choose to show any compassion that day
Although the UK provided a safe environment, I was overwhelmed with guilt. My heart has always been deeply connected to my hometown, my people and my cherished memories.
I travelled to the West Bank not long after and remember my first day back as if it were yesterday. The drive from Jericho to Tulkarm, which should have taken less than an hour and a half, stretched to over four hours due to the numerous military checkpoints along the way.
The pace and ease of one’s journey depend entirely on the occupation soldiers’ moods – their whims, their patience, and whether they choose to show any compassion that day.
Before travelling, friends advised me to uninstall any apps that might reveal my engagement with Palestinian news.
As I inched through each checkpoint with other passengers, their warnings echoed in my head. The anxiety of living under constant surveillance and threat, which I had been able to let go of during my time abroad, came flooding back.
At every stop, soldiers pointed their guns directly at our faces, treating us as criminals while they searched us. They demanded our passports, IDs, and mobile phones.
There were eight of us in a large yellow Ford, including our driver, a man in his late sixties. Among us was an elderly woman in her seventies, two young men in their twenties and a family – an older couple with their daughter, no more than 12 years old.
At one checkpoint, the soldiers ordered only the two young men out of the vehicle. They forced them to take off their shoes, raise their hands above their heads, and searched them aggressively while shouting in Hebrew. One soldier recorded the scene on his phone while the others kept their guns trained on them.
After several long, humiliating minutes, they of course found nothing and finally let us go.
Living under siege
The first thing one encounters upon entering Tulkarm is the Nur Shams refugee camp. I was deeply shocked by the extent of its destruction. Many buildings were reduced to rubble, and several stores were either destroyed entirely or partially damaged. Some homes and stores were demolished by the bulldozers or reduced to debris.
The day after my arrival, a military incursion killed four Palestinians. That led to a city-wide strike. Within days, an Israeli sniper gunned down a child on the street and an elderly woman in her home.
On another day, a drone “mistakenly” targeted a woman, and in yet another attack, Israeli forces bombed a house in an attempt to strike one fighter. Instead, four unarmed people were killed and several others wounded by shrapnel.
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Before returning to Tulkarm, I had already read many such accounts of “collateral damage” – a repugnant term that reduces Palestinians killed to mere numbers.
I cannot forget the bereaved woman who lost all four of her children in a single attack. She wept uncontrollably, crying out: “Why couldn’t they leave me one?” Her children had been standing on the porch of their home when the attack occurred.
Drones fly overhead constantly, while tear gas and gunfire have become a grim routine to which we have been forced to acclimatise. During incursions, even looking through a window is too dangerous, let alone stepping outside.
Snipers on rooftops and drones hovering above are ready to fire at any “potential threat”, which can mean anything that moves, even a stray animal. Killings in this way – of people spotted through windows, on rooftops, or simply walking in the street – have become tragically common.
I feel drained whenever I listen to the harrowing stories of people enduring daily injustice at the hands of the Israeli military. But it is precisely for that reason that I set out to document them, drawing on my own experience and on conversations with Palestinians in Tulkarm and Jenin whose lives have been devastated by Israel’s violence and subjugation, to preserve their truth amid systematic erasure.
One young man, aged 23, recounted how soldiers tied his hands, forced him to kneel, and stepped on his head with their boots while filming themselves abusing him. They spat on him repeatedly and called him “ben zona”, Hebrew for “son of a whore”.
Another young man working at a restaurant told me how soldiers stormed in, slapped him, and shouted: “Why are you looking at me?” His grave and unforgivable “mistake” was daring to meet their eyes.
The stories and images from Tulkarm’s camps are profoundly heartbreaking.
I spoke to a woman whose house was seized by the army and turned into a military outpost in February 2025.
After expelling her family, soldiers called her husband, cursed at him in Hebrew and demanded the wi-fi password. She said they had just recharged their prepaid electricity with 550 shekels ($168) – usually enough for five or six months. The soldiers drained it in less than a week, then called her husband again, cursing and ordering him to top it up.
When the family eventually returned, they found the house vandalised and turned upside down: the soldiers had urinated in all the corners, scattered rubbish everywhere, defaced the walls, stubbed out cigarettes on the furniture, thrown belongings outside – including electrical equipment and mattresses – and burned the family photo albums along with countless personal mementos.
Shattered lives
The repercussions of these operations reached far beyond homes. I spoke with farmers whose livelihoods depended on their nurseries, greenhouses and crops. These too were destroyed or confiscated by Israeli forces without warning, stripping them of their only source of income.
I documented their testimonies, though no words can capture the depth of their loss. They are struggling not only with financial hardship but are also confronted by an occupying army intent on erasing their livelihoods.
One elderly farmer, aged 65, nearly broke down in tears as he described his losses. He owned one of the largest nurseries in the West Bank, in the al-Aqsa neighbourhood, about five kilometres north of Tulkarm’s city centre.
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“The army burned my heart when they entered my nursery,” he told me, his voice trembling. “I swear to God the seedlings alone cost me more than 1.5 million shekels ($459,000).”
There had been no warning. The army had launched an unannounced operation across the neighbourhood, bulldozing all farmland, including seedlings, greenhouses, olive groves and other crops.
Another farmer, in his early sixties from Bal’a, a town located nine kilometres northeast of Tulkarm, told me that he and other farmers saw a large truck arrive and release hundreds of wild boars onto nearby farmland.
“It was the Israelis,” he said. “They have done this before. Everyone knows these animals devour crops and spread diseases. It is a tactic to damage our land and make us ill.”
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Settlers, too, regularly vandalise farmland, set fire to groves and uproot ancient olive trees that have stood for generations.
Across the medical sector, the situation has been equally dire. Doctors described in painful detail how Israeli forces routinely obstruct their work during military incursions.
At Thabet Thabet Hospital, a 42-year-old physician recounted how vulnerable patients suffered severe disruption, especially those needing dialysis and kidney transplants. Life-saving immunosuppressive medication was out of stock for more than a month, leaving many to suffer serious complications.
A younger doctor, aged 26, explained how patients suffering strokes or heart attacks rarely survive, since Tulkarm has no catheterisation lab to perform life-saving interventions. Transfers to Nablus can take hours, and the critical “golden hour” – the first 30 to 60 minutes when a patient can still be saved – is often lost.
Perhaps the most heart-wrenching moment came when he spoke of patients with brain haemorrhages: “They are simply left to die. Israel restricts the entry of crucial medications, and hospitals in Tulkarm, Jenin and Qalqilya lack the equipment to treat them. We watch them die. We feel helpless.”
This is not only a medical emergency but a moral one, as Israel deliberately suffocates and obstructs the health system, turning it into a weapon of war.
Unrelenting cruelty
In Jenin, particularly in the refugee camp, I heard more harrowing accounts. Friends and colleagues described acts of cruelty that were both unjustifiable and incomprehensible.
One story, in particular, is seared into my memory. Soldiers reportedly lost the signal of a fighter they were tracking, and what followed, witnesses said, was egregious: they unleashed hell on several innocent families living nearby.
Among them was one household with no connection to the fighter. Nearly 20 soldiers stormed their home, opening fire on the rooftop despite knowing children were inside. Three terrified children screamed as soldiers pointed their guns at them. One soldier shouted while others dragged two young men from the house.
One cannot help but wonder how children can recover from witnessing such brutality or process memories so scarring
Both were beaten, tortured and imprisoned for a week before being released without charge.
In that time, soldiers occupied the home, humiliating the family at every turn and tightly controlling their access to water and even the bathroom.
The family’s 13-year-old son, a diabetic who required regular injections and bathroom access, was forced to kiss a soldier’s boots and prostrate himself just to be allowed to use the toilet or take his medicine.
The soldiers trampled on the children’s toys, smashing them to pieces with fierce aggression. One cannot help but wonder how children can recover from witnessing such brutality or process memories so scarring. What kind of future awaits them?
Another resident, aged 54, told me the worst humiliation of his life came when soldiers forced all the men in the camp to strip naked and walk barefoot at gunpoint.
“I wished they had shot me instead of making me undress in front of my 13-year-old son – whom they considered a man – and my other relatives,” he said.
Women and children were also forced to walk barefoot. Though he had not personally witnessed sexual assault, he said: “These people do not fear God. Anything is possible.”
A slow death
As weeks passed, everyone I spoke to in the West Bank braced for further escalation and bloodshed. The brutal and indiscriminate nature of Israel’s occupation meant nothing was unthinkable, no matter how horrific.
When I turned 30 in early March, both the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and my birthday coincided with an intense military operation in Tulkarm.
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I had never felt as depressed as I did then. Like so many families, we were scattered across the city. Snipers on rooftops shot at anyone who dared to step outside or even glance through a window or door.
For an entire month, we were unable to open windows or doors, or even risk looking through them. Such simple acts had become dangerous luxuries. This became the norm whenever soldiers were present.
I remember listening to birdsong on some days, and on others hearing only rain or the soldiers’ loud voices. The world outside felt close, yet utterly beyond reach.
This collective punishment continues across Tulkarm, Jenin, Tubas and throughout the West Bank – unlawful house demolitions, night raids, inhumane treatment, humiliation and violence. Even during Eid, when Muslims worldwide were celebrating, we could not.
We are human beings. We deserve the right to live with dignity, free from constant threat and intimidation. We deserve to live in peace – not in a reality where we are treated as criminals and punished for simply existing.
Today, even amid a so-called ceasefire, I grieve for my Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza who continue to endure the aftermath of genocide – mass death, starvation and devastation on a scale that defies comprehension.
In the West Bank, Israel’s assault advances more slowly but no less deliberately, stripping away the fabric of daily life. To speak of our suffering does not diminish Gaza’s catastrophe, but affirms that this slow death, too, is part of the same genocidal project.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
