It all started on Saturday evening, October 8, with the murder of an 18-year-old Israeli soldier at the entry checkpoint into the Shuafat refugee camp. The police, looking for his killer, surrounded the area. The Palestinians denounce “a collective punishment” and observe Thursday, October 13 a general strike.
In the Shuafat camp, it smells bad: the inhabitants set fire to the garbage in the large metal dumpsters, the smoke attacks the nose and the eyes, and the police activate their water cannon which sprays a liquid with a terrible stench. Shuafat, which is officially part of the Jerusalem municipality, is under siege. A reality reinforced by the concrete wall that separates it from the rest of the city. The inhabitants are exhausted: “The Israelis put us under pressure. The Shuafat camp is in Jerusalem, and yet we were walled up in 2006. Since then, we have been locked up. The only way to get to Jerusalem is through the checkpoints. Israeli control. The soldiers arrest our young people, they humiliate them, they slap them. And when, because of this injustice, one of ours lets out his anger and commits an attack, the occupying forces wake up, and come back here to impose their law. The Israelis now fear that the Shuafat camp will turn into Jenin or Nablus? It’s too late, it’s already Jenin or Nablus.”
“Go for a walk in the camp to see how we live. We are strangled. Here we are collectively punished, and the media only take an interest in our fate when a security incident occurs. The Israeli checkpoint in the entrance to the camp must disappear. Subjecting us to more security restrictions will only make things worse!”
A resident of Shuafatat franceinfo
Jenin or Nablus, these cities also the scene of violent clashes since March, are in the West Bank, far from here. But for four days, the entire eastern part of Jerusalem has been on fire. The districts of Sheikh Jarrah, Beit Hanina, Issaouia have changed.
“Jerusalem is on fire”, writes the Israeli press on Thursday morning. From midday, in streets strewn with debris, young people throw bottles and stones at the police. Fridges, charred carts serve as improvised barricades, the rubber bullets of the police respond to small homemade bombs… And it’s like that until the end of the night. “The security situation is only deteriorating, confirms a resident. The incursions of the Israeli forces are multiplying. They make no difference between an innocent person and a guilty one. In their eyes, we are all guilty.”
60,000 people live in Shuafat and can hardly leave it: because of controls, it takes four hours to reach the city center, 13 kilometers away. The police are still looking for the killer of the Israeli soldier. Faced with the uprising, four companies of border police reservists will be deployed.
Clashes in several neighborhoods of East Jerusalem: report by Frédéric Métézeau
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