The hotbed of hopelessness

“These are bad people,” the soldier shouts out as justification for blocking the entrance into Sa’ir. “There’s no way in,” he barks before stopping in his tracks and lowering the gun to his side.

Taking a 15 mile detour through poverty-stricken al-Aroub refugee camp, and around the hills and valleys that make up the southern occupied West Bank, a small road leads into the back of Sa’ir village. A route little known to individuals outside of the village, but in recent weeks, one that has often been the only route in and out. While solders may claim there is no way in, more correctly, there is no easy way in.

Inside, the village’s streets are in disrepair. The concrete grey homes are cramped together, each housing large families that share close quarters.

Disposable income is a foreign concept here.

During the recent violent upsurge in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, the village of 20,000 has seen thirteen of its sons killed over the past three months becoming an unlikely hotspot in the unrest. The village makes up just 1% of the Palestinian population of the West Bank, yet 8% of all Palestinians killed (including Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of Gaza) in the recent escalation have come from the rural, underdeveloped settlement.

In the centre of Sa’ir, posters and freshly printed plastic banners emblazoned with youthful faces dot the walls that flank the main street of the village – the faces of village youth killed by Israeli forces. Villagers trudge the streets looking downwards, the cold rainy weather that shrouds them appearing to complement their mood. Further down the main street and a large partially built concrete structure comes into view, the ‘martyrs’ house, a place where the families of the dead talk and console each other, and where other members of the village come to pay their respects. Inside it’s cold and the atmosphere sullen. Here, the men chain-smoke cigarettes with sad, dejected faces, attempting, but often failing, to avoid showing teary eyes.

“I don’t know what happened,” Abu Ahmad Salim says on the verge of tears as he talks about the death of his son Ahmad, who the Israeli army shot earlier this month. The army accuses the teenager of attempting to stab soldiers at a junction near the village.

“I had no idea of anything,” Salim continues. “None of the older people know what the youth are thinking.”

From the 13 young men of the village killed, 10 have been shot dead after attempting stabbing attacks on the Israeli soldiers that surround the village. Like other knife attacks in the region since the beginning of the unrest, these so-called lone wolf attacks have not been ordered by Palestinian political factions – unlike previous escalations in violence – and in the vast majority of cases appear to have taken place without the knowledge of attackers families.

Sa’ir, a previously quiet, unremarkable village, has become a hotbed for such attacks.

While attacks from Sa’ir youth have been directed at soldiers, other attacks around the region have also targeted Israeli settlers in the West Bank, and Israelis inside Israel. Twenty seven Israelis, and 162 Palestinians have been killed, while another 290 Israelis and over 15,000 Palestinians have been wounded during the recent wave of unrest.

“Most of them didn’t consult anyone,” Qasim, the head teacher at one of the village schools tells the Sunday Herald when asked about the youth involved in the attacks. “We don’t know what they [Palestinian youth] are thinking.”

Walking around Sa’ir, it is obvious that anger and frustration is high. Surrounded by settlements, the village has been clamped down on hard within the last few months. While the occupying Israeli army has raided the village often over the years, such raids have become more frequent over the past four months. Residents say over 100 children under the age of 15 have been arrested and dragged from their homes by soldiers in terrifying night raids since October. Tear gas and live ammunition is fired frequently at villagers if they gather in numbers or attempt to protest.

While living under an often brutal Israeli occupation has been the norm in Sa’ir since the occupation began in 1967, residents say that over the past few months life here has worsened substantially.

“What can we do?” Abed Qawarsma, a local businessman asks exasperated. “All of this, it’s almost become normal now. My son was badly injured while working in a construction job in Israel, he’s in a hospital there. In the past I was able to visit him, but now Israel won’t let me, it’s like a punishment they’ve put on my family. They are punishing us all.”

The feeling of collective punishment is echoed on every street corner in Sa’ir. Women of the village talk about having their hijabs – an Islamic headscarf – pulled off their heads by taunting soldiers. Men say they’ve being forced to strip naked at gunpoint in the street in the freezing cold.

“What can we do?” Qawarsma asks again, as though hoping an answer will surface the more he asks. “We have no faith in human rights organisations anymore, no-one wants to help us.”

The Israeli army routinely closes the roads leading in and out of the village, effectively putting the village under siege. The youth unemployment rate stood at 40% before the recent escalation in violence, but unable to get to and from work, villagers are now losing employment every week. The financial situation has become dire. Protests against the army’s siege have been futile, and have resulted in three young men being shot dead during clashes between stone throwing village youth and fully armed Israeli soldiers.

“Sa’ir is a good example of what’s happening in the West Bank right now,” Mahmoud Kawazba, a relative of one of the recently deceased confides, “but even worse.”

His words are gloomily verified by the small village graveyard that is quickly filling up. Square, nearly identical grey gravestones engraved with the name and age of another young man take up a new space every week.

“The atmosphere in this village is one of depression, it’s tense,” Mohammed Kawazbah says as he sits amongst his family in the martyrs house. As he smokes, he begins to show on his mobile phone the pictures of three dead men from the village, all shot in the upper body or head – they’re his cousins. All recently killed by soldiers. All in alleged attempted stabbing attacks. While Kawazbah claims there are many villages like Sa’ir around the West Bank who have a similar dire situation from continued occupation, it is the close proximity to the illegal Israeli settlements, and the consequent aggressive Israeli army tactics he says, that have turned the rural village into a hotbed of the recent escalation in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“The settlers around us threaten us, destroy the trees and crops, they stop us from working on our families land,” Kawazbah adds with a clear anger in his voice. “We have dreams, we have hopes and ambitions, but we can’t make any of it happen because of this occupation. The young people here have nothing apart from hopelessness, this is why they are reacting.”

As Kawazbah speaks, news comes in that another young man from Sa’ir has been killed. Without a name known yet, men and women frantically punch numbers into phones in a desperate attempt to contact family members, willing them to pick up so they can confirm that they are safe and well.

The worry is obvious. Faces look panicked. Terrified fathers and mothers pace the ground scared that in the coming minutes they’ll find out that it is their son that has become the latest death in the village.

“This reminds me of before,” Kawazbah says worriedly as the scene evolves around him. “Maybe this time it could be my brother, or one of my other cousins killed. This is becoming so normal now, it’s all the time.”

A few long minutes pass before a name finally comes through. It is Kawazbah’s cousin – his namesake Mohammed – shot during another attempted stabbing attack on Israeli soldiers at the nearby Beit Einun road junction. It is his fourth cousin killed by the army this month, all in attempted stabbing attacks.

There is a palpable sadness in the air, but there isn’t shock. Hearing such news has become normal, even expected.

“You know, it’s like they [Sa’ir villagers involved in knife attacks] are off to die,” Mahmoud Kawazba says on hearing the news.

“They have no hope, only hopelessness, the young generation in the village has nothing.”

“The attacks against the soldiers are pointless,” he says suddenly. “They get shot straight away, before they get anywhere near. They all know this.”

None of the ten killed from Sa’ir who have been involved in attempted attacks against Israeli soldiers have caused any injury. Kawazba and others believe however that some of the attackers may not be trying to carry out a form of violent resistance against the Israeli army, but instead, may be trying to commit suicide.

Martyrdom in Palestinian society – dying at the hands of Israeli soldiers through resisting the Israeli occupation, either violently or non-violently - is respected and celebrated within the occupied West Bank. Suicide, on the other hand, is still seen as a taboo in the largely religious conservative society. For Kawazba, the strain of living under occupation, along with the humiliation, economic problems, and bleak future that Palestinian youth live with under Israeli army rule, may be driving youth to suicide – but in a way that may be accepted more socially, through the concept of martyrdom.

“Can you imagine a girl or a young boy with a knife, and a soldier fully armed with a gun, those youth can’t do anything against the soldiers,” Hussein Foqha, the director of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), an organisation that is documenting increasing unemployment rates in Palestinian youth, told the Sunday Herald. “The youth are depressed, they are going out on a suicide mission, they’re going to die.”

“Money makes money, and martyrs make martyrs,” a local remarks outside of the so-called martyrs house. As the escalation in the area continues, residents don’t expect the death toll to remain stable for long. With a continuing siege on the village, army raids, and the dire economic situation, they also say they feel powerless to stop it.