\n<\/p>\n
It has been a week since the ceasefire was announced in Gaza. When we heard the news in the occupied West Bank, we celebrated. We felt relief and hope that the genocide is finally over. But we also realised that there is no ceasefire for us.<\/p>\n
The daily violence we have been subjected to for decades is showing no signs of abating. Since October 7, 2023, the brutality of our occupier has only intensified. Today, life in the West Bank has become almost impossible.<\/p>\n
After the ceasefire deal was announced, a friend\u2019s little daughter cheered; she then asked to go with her grandparents to pick olives. He told her that it would be difficult to do, to which she responded, \u201cWhy? Isn\u2019t the war over?\u201d<\/p>\n
How do you explain to a child that the war ending in Gaza does not mean Palestinian families in the West Bank still can access their land to harvest olives? People still cannot reach their groves because of barriers set up by the Israeli military or they fear attacks by Israeli soldiers and settlers, or both.<\/p>\n
There are daily violent assaults on Palestinian farmers and their land. Since October 7, 2023, there have been\u00a07,154 attacks\u00a0by Israeli settlers on Palestian people and property \u2013 some of them deadly.<\/p>\n
Almost 1,000 Palestinians have been\u00a0killed\u00a0by the Israeli army and settler mobs, including 212 children; more than 10,000 Palestinians have been displaced. Settlers and soldiers have destroyed\u00a037,237 olive trees since October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n
Even life in urban areas has become unbearable.<\/p>\n
As a resident of Rawabi, a city north of Ramallah, I, too, feel the suffocation of the occupation every day.<\/p>\n
If I need to travel outside my city to run errands, shop, obtain official paperwork, or anything else, I could get stuck at a checkpoint for hours and never make it to my destination. There are four iron gates, a military tower, and a barrier between Rawabi and Ramallah; they can make the 10-minute trip between Rawabi and Ramallah last an eternity.<\/p>\n
Throughout the West Bank, there are\u00a0916\u00a0Israeli barriers, barriers and iron gates, 243\u00a0of which were constructed after October 7, 2023. These open and close at the Israeli army\u2019s whim, meaning a Palestinian can get stuck at one barrier for hours. This disrupts every aspect of life \u2013 from family visits to urgent medical care to school attendance and transportation of goods.<\/p>\n
We have also been\u00a0denied access to\u00a0Jerusalem\u00a0and thus our freedom of worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.\u00a0Few Palestinians are given the special permits needed to enter the city. We last had access to\u00a0Jerusalem more than\u00a020\u00a0years ago. This means\u00a0an entire generation of young people know nothing about the city except from the pictures and stories told by their parents and grandparents.<\/p>\n
Even at night, the Palestinians are not left alone by the occupation. Any Palestinian\u00a0home may be subject to\u00a0a\u00a0raid\u00a0by the Israeli army, with soldiers breaking the front door, terrorising the family inside and detaining without charge some of its members. Neighbours would, too, be terrorised with Israeli soldiers firing tear gas canisters for no reason, just to cause more suffering.<\/p>\n
The right to a normal life\u2014to worship, to spend quality time with friends and family, to move freely, to access regular medical care and education \u2014are all denied to the Palestinians in the West Bank.<\/p>\n
Over the decades since the occupation of 1967, Israel has managed to control\u00a0almost half\u00a0of the land of the West Bank. It has done so by constructing settlements and confiscating land from its Palestinian owners by declaring it either \u201cstate land\u201d or \u201cmilitary zone\u201d. The theft of Palestinian land accelerated after October 7; at least 12,300 acres (4,9787 hectares) were seized in two years.<\/p>\n
In many cases, confiscated land is used to establish new settlement outposts or to expand existing settlements.<\/p>\n
Settlement construction in the West Bank is not random. Rather, land is selected in a way that encircles Palestinian villages and towns, creating a settlement belt around them that prevents any form of geographical continuity between Palestinian territories, thus thwarting the dream of a future state.<\/p>\n
To maintain these illegal settlements, Israel has also laid its hands on the West Bank\u2019s natural resources. It has seized almost all water resources. This has ensured a massive water reservoir in the West Bank to serve the settlement expansion.<\/p>\n
For the Palestinians, this has been disastrous. They are now almost completely dependent on Israeli water company \u201cMekorot\u201d, which gives very small quotas of water to densely populated Palestinian areas, while settlers receive several times the\u00a0Palestinian share per capita.<\/p>\n
Every summer, when drought settles in, Palestinians are forced to buy extra water at exorbitant prices from Mekorot. Meanwhile, Palestinian wells and rain water tanks are often attacked and destroyed.<\/p>\n
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli government has accelerated its efforts to carry out annexation. We feel that the seizure of Area C \u2013 an area established by the Oslo Accords where Israel has full civilian and security control \u2013 is imminent. This would mean razing Palestinian villages and communities and expelling people towards Area A, which constitutes just 18 percent of the West Bank. Area B will follow. The process of forced expulsion has already started with Bedouin communities in the two areas.<\/p>\n
This is our reality here in the West Bank. While peace conferences and meetings were held and peace in the Middle East is declared, we know nothing of it. Every day, every hour, every minute, we are harassed, intimidated, dispossessed and killed.<\/p>\n
For\u00a0decades, Israel has rejected political solutions and pursued a policy of controlling land, people, and resources.\u00a0It has continued to wage war on us even when its bombardment has stopped. The only way to achieve true peace is to acknowledge the occupation and end it.<\/p>\n
The views expressed in this article are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera\u2019s editorial stance.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has been a week since the ceasefire was announced in Gaza. When we heard the news in the occupied West Bank, we celebrated. We felt relief and hope that the genocide is finally over. But we also realised that there is no ceasefire for us. The daily violence we have been subjected to for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[3189,267,3771,1758,3188,261,2187],"class_list":{"0":"post-28940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-bank","9":"tag-conflict","10":"tag-continues","11":"tag-israelpalestine","12":"tag-occupied","13":"tag-war","14":"tag-west"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}