News|Israel-Palestine conflict
Trying to heal the trauma of Israeli
raids in the occupied West Bank
In Tulkarem and Jenin, dedicated volunteers work to help the people traumatised and displaced by Israel’s raids.
Jenin and Tulkarem, occupied West Bank – Omaima Faraj bows her head in silence for a moment – she’s tired, but the work does not stop.
She arrives at a school-turned-shelter near Tulkarem where her first patient, an elderly displaced woman who greets her tenderly, is waiting for her to measure her glucose and blood pressure. Then she moves to the next classroom, the next patient, walking down an open passage drenched in late-February sunshine.
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Faraj, 25, has been volunteering to help residents devastated by the Israeli raids for weeks. She is one of the young Palestinians working to address the emergency Israel is creating across the occupied West Bank as it raids refugee camps and displaces thousands.
Rushing into danger
When Israel’s military occupation and displacement of the camp began in what the Israelis have called operation “Iron Wall”, on January 21, Faraj rushed into Tulkarem’s refugee camp instead of running away from the violence.
She stayed there with her fellow volunteers for more than 12 critical days when the attacks were at their fiercest and people were still trying to organise to flee the camp.
They focused on delivering aid to people in need – the injured, the elderly, and people with limited mobility. Nobody could get to a hospital because the Israeli soldiers wouldn’t let them.
Israeli soldiers harassed the volunteers, Faraj recounts, describing how they would threaten her and her colleagues, telling them to leave and never return or they’d be shot.
One incident particularly haunts her, of an elderly man who was trapped in his house for four days.
The team kept trying to reach him, but Israeli soldiers blocked their path. Finally, the International Committee of the Red Cross intervened, coordinating with the Israelis to allow safe passage for the volunteers.
When they reached the man, he was in dire straits – lacking food, water and hygiene for four days, but they were finally able to evacuate him.
As they were leaving, they were goaded, warned not to return – or risk being shot.
Backpack medics
“We didn’t have an emergency plan for this,” says Alaa Srouji, director of the Al-Awda Center in Tulkarem.
Al-Awda and the Lajee Center of Aida Camp in Bethlehem are training volunteers to document the expulsions of people and camp conditions so they can assess the aid needed.
The volunteers are about 15 mostly female nurses and medics who came together when the Israeli raids began, to provide medical aid and distribute essentials to the thousands who were harmed.
Their young faces show the toll of nearly two months of working nonstop with people displaced by the Israeli attack on the Nur Shams and Tulkarem camps.
They are struggling to fill a huge gap left when Israel banned the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) from helping people in the occupied West Bank.
These volunteers don’t have headquarters, they spend all day walking around to serve people with nothing more than their backpacks and determination.
They go to one of the 11 temporary, hurriedly set up shelters or wherever their patients have managed to find a place to live.
They bring medical and psychological support and also clothes, food, and other necessities to those who have lost everything to Israel’s raiding soldiers.
In their backpacks are gauze, portable glucose monitors, gloves, bandages, tourniquets, manual blood pressure monitors, notebooks and pens.
“Our role as a local community is so important,” says Alaa.
The volunteers must also support each other emotionally, holding group sessions to cope with the toll of working within their devastated communities.
Many of them are from the camp, so they are also displaced, targeted, and have seen their neighbourhoods levelled by Israeli bulldozers.
Faraj is no different. Like many Palestinians, she is marked by loss and violence after her 18-year-old brother was killed by an Israeli drone in January 2024.
The camp is a no-go zone. Some displaced residents take the risk of returning to their homes to try to retrieve some of their belongings.
They navigate rubble-filled streets, the stench of rotting food left behind in now-abandoned houses, and sewers torn open by bulldozers, while Israeli soldiers patrol and drones hover overhead, searching for movement inside the camp.
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