Another Day, Another Death—Another Israeli Military Incursion Into Nablus

By Isabelle Humphries


	Israeli shells have left their mark on buildings in Nablus’ Old City (Photo Isabelle Humphries).

IT IS RAMADAN as we walk past the clock tower in the heart of the Old City of Nablus. The sun will soon be setting and across the Islamic world people are hurrying back home with last-minute provisions to break the fast. After a leisurely hour eating they will pour onto the streets to enter the mosques, play backgammon with friends, or visit cousins, sisters and neighbors.

But for the residents of Nablus it’s not quite like that. There is nobody here who hasn’t lost friends, cousins, sisters and neighbors to Israeli bullets or prisons. Hussein, for example—a refugee from the Jaffa region, and a resident of Balata, the city’s largest UNWRA camp. “I used to love the feeling of the Old City in Nablus,” he recalled. “I couldn’t walk a few meters here without being greeted by a friend. Now there is nobody left—they are all killed or in jail.”

While foreigners can usually reach Bethlehem, Jericho and other cities of the southern West Bank, in recent years Israel has increased the obstacles for visitors from northern cities such as Nablus and Jenin (not to mention Gaza). The day before our recent visit we had heard that Israeli troops were invading the city and its camps, and wondered if we should try to enter. But our hosts in Balata camp told us that this particular round of military assaults was in a different area.

Days without any Israeli invasion are few and far between. “You recall the recent prisoner release?” our hosts asked. “For sure they have kidnapped more than that number back into prison since then.”

Unlike the smiles and tears of the released prisoners, the international media rarely report that kind of ironic statistic.

More often than not in Israeli media the word “Nablus” is twinned with the word “terror.” Of course, Israel would prefer that one apply that adjective to the entire Palestinian community, but it has been more successful with the places such as Nablus, Jenin and all of Gaza that it has isolated from the significant number of foreign visitors who continue to enter Palestine. It’s no accident that the majority of foreign print and television journalists report from Ramallah, East Jerusalem or perhaps Bethlehem. The tightened closure, the frequency of Israeli attacks, and the time it takes to reach Nablus means that tourists and journalists alike tend to visit those easier-to-reach destinations. As a result the everyday experience of Palestinians in the city, and in other northern towns such as Jenin, is reported less and less frequently.

As I wander through the streets of the ancient souq I recall reading that Nablus was labeled “Little Damascus” by the 10th century scholar al-Maqaddisi. Considered for centuries the jewel of the West Bank, in former days it was a center of Palestinian commerce and tourism, with ancient soap factories, Turkish baths, and fruit and vegetable markets overflowing with the produce of this area rich in spring water. In 1882 there were over 30 working soap factories exporting their products throughout the Middle East.

Nablus is situated on the site of one of the world’s oldest towns, first settled in 3000 BC by the Canaanites. With a population of 150,000 it is the largest city in the West Bank, sheltering thousands of refugees residing throughout the city and in three refugee camps. While today’s residents are predominantly Muslim, a significant Palestinian Christian minority remains, and an ancient Jewish community—the Samaritans—lives in the foothills of Mount Gerizim.


Tourists have stayed away since Israel’s 2002 shelling of Nablus which caused the collapse of ancient soap factories (at bottom) in the Old City (Photo Isabelle Humphries).

There is no conflict among these three religious groups, all sharing Palestinian identity. The problem is not religious belief—the three have lived side-by-side for centuries—but the imbalance of power between Israelis and Palestinians. Nablus is surrounded by Israeli settlements and army installations, whose residents’ attitude and wielding of power, not religion, contributes to the hell in which Palestinians live. On our tour of the city our Balata guides take us to the beautifully renovated Greek Orthodox church—built on what is believed to be the site of the ancient Jacob’s Well. The guardian points to a painted icon of a former priest, hacked to death with an axe inside the church sanctuary by Jewish settlers in 1979. “Later on they came back for more,” he says, pointing to a shattered step marking the spot where settlers threw a bomb into the same sanctuary, almost killing a nun on the site.

In April 2002 the international community was alerted to the devastation and killing in Jenin camp, but many missed the extent of devastation in other West Bank cities. During an 18-day siege more than a hundred residents of Nablus were killed, including whole families buried alive as their houses were bombed over their heads. Schools, homes, hospitals, clinics and factories were destroyed, and ancient buildings from mosques to soap factories to Turkish baths collapsed.

How does a people survive under such circumstances? Five years later, I am in the Jaffa Cultural Center in Balata camp, which is home to some 24,000 refugees, most from the city and villages of the Jaffa area, only about 30 miles away. The Jaffa Cultural Center was established in 1996 to promote awareness of refugee rights among the camp’s young people.

We ask how often the Israeli military enters Balata. “Every night,” replies Nada, who studied IT at Nablus’ al-Najah University and offers computer classes and reading sessions to children of the camp. “Well, I guess sometimes we might have a night off,” she acknowledges. How does she know when the Israelis are coming? “When I hear the shooting,” she states simply.

The news going around today is that a disabled man who failed to understand that he should hide when the soldiers came around has just been shot in the chest in a neighboring camp.

Established in 1950—two years after the Nakba—Balata’s residents still hope that the camp is but a temporary residence prior to their returning home. We wander through the ridiculously narrow streets where sunlight fails to reach through the windows, keeping damp on the walls and disease in the body.

In her 80s, Umm Waleed sits in her house, where she lives with one remaining son. She hasn’t been able to gather all her family around her since 1967. When her Balata residence was occupied by Israel 20 years after the family’s 1948 exile from the village of Kafr Ana, another of Umm Waleed’s sons was studying for an MA in Cairo. The Israelis refused to issue him a permit to return. Two other daughters are in the same situation in Amman. Their elderly mother must travel to Jordan for family reunions.

Hussein says it has been 25 years since he and his brothers all sat at home together. “We’ve always had at least one of us in jail,” he explains, “and now two have been martyred.” Like Umm Waleed’s and those of countless other residents of Balata, Nablus and the rest of Palestine, Hussein’s family, has been torn apart not by accident, but deliberately, by the guns and bureaucracy of occupation.

Yet a Nablus citizen who takes arms to resist the military power responsible for tearing apart Palestinian family life is usually described by the international media as a “terrorist.” The arrest or killing of a Palestinian, whether bystander or participant in the struggle, is usually reported as a “raid on terror”—that is, when it is reported at all.

Isabelle Humphries, based between Nazareth, Jerusalem and Cairo since 2000, currently is conducting doctoral research on internally displaced Palestinian refugees. She can be contacted at <isabellebh2004@yahoo.co.uk>.