Nablus, any given day. A group of journalists arrived at the Balata refugee camp, the oldest in the West Bank. We coincided with the funeral of a young combatant who died that morning in one of the routine clashes with Israeli troops.
We were going to something else, but we decided to wait. Many of us did not know Balata and others had never been to the funeral of a Palestinian militiaman.
The Balata refugee camp, in the city of Nablus, was established in 1950, shortly after the founding of the State of Israel. Initially, some 5,000 Palestinians displaced by the conflict lived on its 25 hectares. Today in the same area more than 30,000 people live in precarious conditions. Nablus has historically been a focus of resistance and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades emerged in 2000.
It was raining. I confess that I was quite bored, when out of nowhere I see a group of armed men arrive, no more than 30 years old and surrounded by children, heading towards the entrance of the camp. They stop, talk on their mobile phones. They look suspiciously everywhere. Others arrive, greet each other with hugs, and gather together in the tiny doorways that protect them from the at times intense rain.
They are members of the Balata Brigade. Combatants with no affiliation to any political party or recognized armed group. They are, like their predecessors, the Lions Den – which emerged a year or so ago in the old city of Nablus. Tired young people, many of them unemployed, with no prospects for the future and tired of the immobility of Palestinian institutions. They take up arms against incursions by the Israel Defense Forces into their territory. The Balata refugee camp is their home and also their stronghold.
They only speak Arabic, so communication with them is impossible for me, except by gestures. But they allow themselves to be photographed and some even pose proudly showing off their weapons. Many have their faces covered; but others don’t mind showing their identity. The children, who are growing in number, flutter from one side to the other and gaze blinded at the weapons and at these men, who today are their heroes, but tomorrow could be their martyrs.
Belonging to generation Z, some are almost teenagers. They are flirtatious, wear trendy hairstyles, and have well-groomed beards and eyebrows. Discounting the olive green of some pants or vest, they wear rigorous black sportswear.
Columbia, The North Face, Nike, Lacoste, Louis Vuitton and Adidas —above all Adidas— are brands (probably imitations) that these young people combine with their lethal M-16 rifles and the occasional grenade. Children of the 21st century, these urban guerrillas coordinate their actions through social networks, especially TikTok.
Suddenly they go out onto the avenue, walk about 500 meters and take the lead in the funeral, in which other young Palestinians, unarmed, carry on their shoulders on a stretcher and covered by the national flag the body of Mahdi Hashash, a member of the of the Balata Brigade. He was 17 years old.
He had been at such a funeral in Ramallah, when hundreds of people accompanied the body of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on a tour of the city center. But in that human avalanche, in which it was difficult to walk and even more difficult to take photos, there were no weapons. And much less shots.
In Balata there was lead. And a lot. The cries of “Allah is great” and others in Arabic that I cannot decipher were accompanied by bursts into the air. Dozens of M-16s, the usual rifle among Palestinian insurgents, and the occasional AK-47 were heard everywhere, sometimes very close to my camera while the human tide that participated in the funeral entered the alleyways of the camp. No salute, they were ordinary bullets, the kind that kill.
We left there when the body of the young Hashash and his companions entered the mosque. I would have stayed to continue photographing the funeral, but I couldn’t separate myself from the group.
I left there with a heavy heart and the rumble of shots still ringing in my ears. We don’t get used to death, much less when young people leave. By age, any of those boys could be my son. The son that I have far away and whom, from a distance, I try to protect from so many things.
A friend in Cuba saw these photos and told me that images like this are only seen on the news; another that seemed taken from a movie. But they are real and now I see them up close. For Palestinians, burying their children is an everyday tragedy.
