In the backyard of the war

A sudden glint of light. A grenade explodes. It is early February and in the middle of the night when the army moves in. No one seems surprised.

"They usually come a little later," says Manal Tamimi – a female Palestinian activist.

From the window, with the weapons aiming at an M16 pointing in her direction, she starts reporting directly to a local Palestinian television station.

Six or seven soldiers jump out of their armored vehicles and spread out into the streets. They shoot in the air; shock grenades – bombs that stun and confuse, but do not harm anyone. Suddenly, there is tear gas everywhere, and on the roofs and in the backyards you can immediately see Palestinian silhouettes respond with slings and stones.

The raid does not seem to have a specific goal anyway. The soldiers are not looking for anyone. They don't go into any house. Everyone seems relaxed.

"We have gone out of fashion – today Kurdistan is the trendiest thing."
- Bass Tamimi 

The new Malala. Nabi Saleh is a regular cluster of houses in the middle of the West Bank, but the area has created international headlines for months; This is where 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi – after her cousin ended up in a coma with a bullet in her head – noticed a soldier in front of her home.

As she asked him to leave, she began to yank at him. Finally she got to him. A few hours later, the army returned and took her with her. Since then, Ahed has been jailed, accused of attacking Israeli security forces. For international activists, she is the new Mandela – or the new Malala.

But in Israeli eyes, she is an actor. The Israeli state parliament, Knesset, ordered an investigation to verify whether Ahed – with his blonde hair, blue eyes and lack of hijab – is in fact Palestinian. Or if she may have been paid, along with the rest of her family, to build up the longstanding resistance Nabi Saleh has provided to the Israeli settlement of Halamish since 2010. As a result of the conflict, 350 of Nabi Saleh's 600 residents have been injured, while 50 – including Ahed's father – has become permanently disabled.

A bare landscape. Nabi Saleh may be reminiscent of southern Italy – the remote areas where nobody lives anymore. During the day all the Palestinians are in Ramallah, which is half an hour drive from Nabi Saleh and about 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem.

In Nabi Saleh one finds only one-
decayed buildings, placed around an open space that appears as a void. There is a gas station and a small grocery store, but nothing else. Among the chickens and grasshoppers and plastic bags fluttering in the wind, you can hear a drone hum – a reminder that you are never alone.

It is tempting to think that if the residents here had not had to oppose the Israelis and defend their homeland, everyone would probably have moved from here a long time ago. The same can be said of Halamish and the surrounding Israeli settlements – built on top of these barren, god-forsaken mountains – sun-drenched and at best suitable for goats.

«Keep your mouth open.» On the bedside tables in the bedroom, the Palestinians have both an alarm clock and a gas mask. "Ultimately, it is safer in prison than outside," says Manal.

She speaks from experience. Like most Palestinians, she has been arrested several times. But water hardly comes from the water taps in her house. Water is now a sought-after resource that is being fought for in Palestine – on a par with land. When she talks about the prison, Manal remarks sarcastically: "Fantastic showers."

"Keep your mouth open so that the eardrums do not smoke."
- Ibrahim Tamimi

Since the construction of the 708-kilometer-long wall began in 2000, Israel has stopped both the suicide attacks and the second intifada – the Palestinian uprising against Israeli repression. But the wall also fragmented the West Bank and turned the lives of Palestinians upside down. They started protesting every Friday. But now it is different; one no longer has daily clashes – no actions or reactions.

Still, when the morning comes and you walk among the waste from the raid the night before – among broken glass, stones and empty sleeves – you suddenly smell gas. Then you start coughing, gasping for air and spitting blood.

Ibrahim Tamimi – one of Ahed's cousins ​​- lives right at the entrance to Nabi Saleh. They are all relatives in this area. While serving coffee, a stone suddenly whizzes by. A boy missed his goal; we hear bullets screaming and then two stun grenades.

"Do not worry," he says. "Keep your mouth open so that the eardrums do not smoke."

He sets up the chairs facing the soldiers as if we were at the cinema. "We have become accustomed to it. That's the way it is all day, "he says, before adding:" Every day. "

When I return, Manal's house has disappeared in a white cloud. But inside, they dance and party. However, the dangers are lurking all the time. After a while, a 17-year-old is transported to the hospital in a hurry with a bullet in the ankle. The nearest hospital is an Israeli hospital. "Sometimes they even send a helicopter," says Manal's husband Bilal Tamimi.

With his camera, he has filmed the whole story of Nabi Saleh. The only video he did not film is the video of his own arrest. "First they shoot you, then they save you," he says. "It makes no sense."

«A double occupation». As a result of Trump's statements about Jerusalem, and in the wake of Ahed's arrest, many experts have predicted the outbreak of a new intifada in the area. But in Ramallah, the only demonstrations today are for the installation of a 3G network.

"Because Oslo changed everything," explains Manal – referring to the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995. "Its main idea was to postpone negotiations on all the most difficult issues, such as the future of settlements, or refugees, and begin building this famous independent state." Developments have eased tensions and made negotiations easier. And yes, in a way, our lives have gotten better, "she says.

As a consequence of the Oslo agreement, the occupation has been outsourced to the Palestinian Authority, which spends a third of its budget on the police.

It is Hamas and Fatah – not Israel – that are now responsible for public order; that is, to gag dissent in exchange for monopolies and economic privileges of all kinds. That is why the Palestinians today live under what is called 'the double occupation.'

"But the prosperity you see around you is an illusion – an illusion and a trap. Our finances are based on debt, on bank loans. And if you work around the clock to repay your debt, you have no time for an intifada. You do not have time for anything […] most of the job opportunities are in Israel or in the public administration, and for both you must first undergo a security check. Which means: To get a job, it's best not to be politically active. "

An Israeli training camp. A few years ago, the Israelis in Nabi Saleh were drawn into fighting every Friday. But now the videos on Bilal's YouTube channel are history. Nobody cares anymore – not even the foreigners in the many non-governmental organizations in the West Bank.

"They spend weekends on the beach in Tel Aviv," said Bassem Tamimi, Ahed's father. "You arrived to teach us about democracy, but you ended up destroying it. "You destroyed our civil society by replacing it and by replacing politics with technology," he says, looking through the footage of the afternoon clash on his phone – like a football game in slow motion.

"But how can we compete with the jihadists?" he asks. «Syria, Iraq? Beheadings? What's really going on here? Nothing, 'he concludes.

'Just a little gas. We have gone out of fashion – today Kurdistan is the most trendy thing. "

For the Israelis, the West Bank is now a single large training camp – a military exercise and nothing more. They're on patrol, and they yawn.

Only the journalists seem happy as they film the Palestinians while watching a Belgian documentary about the Israeli settlement of Halamish just north of Ramallah. They are fascinated by the lawns, the swimming pools. It looks like another world – a world they have never seen before.

In Halamish – on the other hand – they have never seen Nabi Saleh. To the Israelis here, the Palestinians are invisible, or at best equal.

The Israeli army even tends to confuse twins Loai and Odai Tamimi, arresting the wrong person from time to time.

The backyard of the war. "Today everything is calm," I am told by an Israeli soldier. And indeed, on this very day – February 10 – Israel has just shot down an Iranian drone in Syria and continues to bomb Damascus.

But it's evening now, and Bassam's home – which during the day looks like a community center, a meeting place for all activists and journalists – is empty. It is also messy, the day after the party. There are bottles everywhere; plates, cigarette butts.

He is alone with his three sons, now that his wife Nariman Tamimi is in prison for filming Ahed's ear piercing and thus for inciting violence.

They are eating at a small square table now – between the fridge and the aquarium that all the families in the area have – the symbol of the sea they cannot reach.

In the background, the number of signatures that have been collected to support Ahed's release is constantly updated. The sign now says 1.728.106 names as they eat alone, in silence and with lowered heads.