In part one of this piece, Mustafa Hammad, Mayor of Farkha, said that the Israelis are carrying out an “occupation of the mind, not just the occupation of the earth.” One way this is achieved is through violence and intimidation.
Violence and Intimidation
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In Beir Zeit, I met Aya and Ramez, along with their friends Hannah and Amani. Ramez told me about his brother, who was martyred in the home he now shares with his family. As we ate lunch, he switched on the TV and played a YouTube video showing his brother being blown up and his body subsequently retrieved. He said, “We are always being harassed. Being beaten and arrested has become part of everyday life.”
Meanwhile, his wife Aya unrolled an X-ray showing two bullets lodged in her pelvis, where she had been shot at a protest. She held it up like a treasured photograph. She also told us that her leg had been fractured by soldiers who struck it with a gun while trying to gain access to her home when Ramez was at work.
These stories are not unusual – everyone has one. Hannah, who was recovering from a stroke, told me she had once lived in the UK. One of her children was born there, and her sister still lives in Liverpool. Now, she is unable to return because she has no status or rights in the West Bank, and it is not safe for her sister to visit her. Amani said her 18-year-old son is in prison for allegedly throwing stones at soldiers. He was first arrested while still in high school and held for eight and a half months. Shortly after finishing school, he was arrested again. She does not expect him to be released until his twenties, a common tactic, she said, to prevent young Palestinian men from becoming politically active.
There is a jarring normality in the way these stories are told, suggesting lives lived on a different plane. Sitting in front of a TV watching footage of a relative being killed is not normal – it is deeply uncomfortable. Yet for those living under occupation, it is everyday life. The result is a kind of desensitisation to violence that dulls emotional connection, something I have seen before in people who have experienced trauma – the emotional impact is buried, and events are recounted in a flat, factual way, a dissociative coping response.
Destruction of Hope
I witnessed the same in Balata refugee camp. Home to 32,000 people, it has existed for 77 years on land rented from Balata village by UNRWA. It is overcrowded, unemployment is high, and people live in “units,” not homes. Snipers surround the camp, firing from observation posts on nearby hills. Children grow up knowing they could be killed at any time.
Every night, there are incursions – the army enters, arrests are made, bombs are dropped, and there is settler violence. People stay indoors because anyone, man, woman, or child, can be killed without reason. This was described to us by Mariam, who works at the Yafa Centre and supports people with chronic diseases. She ended by saying, “Sometimes they leave behind small incendiary devices in the form of a toy.” Those words, and what they imply, will haunt me.
Mariam has five children, aged between eight and twenty. She explained: “We think differently because we live in an occupied place. We feel we should have many children because of our struggles. As mothers, it is very difficult to think this way, but the reality is that we may lose one, or more, to death, imprisonment, injury, or disability.”
Like others in Balata, Mariam simply wants to live in peace with her family in Palestine, without the constant noise of gunfire, explosions, invasions, arrests, and demolitions that prevent sleep and stability. Yet children I met playing in the street during a birthday celebration told me, “We have the right to dream. Kids have the right to dream.” The occupation, they feel, is trying to take that hope away, to rob them of a future and break their spirit.
Tulkarm refugee camp, established by UNRWA in 1950, was once one of the largest and most densely populated camps in the northern West Bank. In 2023, it was raided, and in October 2024 an airstrike killed 20 people. Eleven months ago, residents were evicted and forced to flee to neighbouring villages.
Fadwa Ofeh was one of those who resisted. She remained in the home she had lived in for 25 years, with her son bringing food via the Red Crescent, until she was finally forced to leave. Now she lives facing what was once her home. We could not visit the camp due to the presence of snipers, so instead we sat in a newly built children’s playground nearby. She is relentless in her resistance, as we drank coffee, sat on swings, we were intermittently watched by a drone, laughing she held her hand up giving them the middle finger as she said, “let’s give them a picture”.
Soon we were also surrounded by children, mostly boys, eager to talk about football in limited English, especially when they learned I lived near Chelsea’s ground. They thrust football cards at me, asking me to identify players (I failed their test). These children were not interested in war. They wanted normality – football, conversation, play. One boy asked me, “How can I leave here?” All I could say was, “I’m sorry, that’s a question I can’t answer.”
Destabilisation in the ‘48’
Abed Abu Shehada, a political scientist, described the many insidious ways Palestinian communities within Israel, referred to by Palestinians as the “’48”, are destabilised.
Around 20% of the population are Palestinian citizens of Israel and hold Israeli passports. Told that being an Israeli Arab can offer more opportunities and freedoms, but at a cost – prioritising a colonial identity over one’s own heritage creates a deep psychological tension.
Even here, inequality takes different forms. In Yafa, for example, gentrification creates economic division. Palestinians descended from those displaced during the Nakba are concentrated in underfunded areas receiving only 30% of government resources. Meanwhile, the old city has been transformed into an “artisan market,” and its main street branded the “Champs-Élysées of the Levant,” accessible only to wealthy, predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish residents and shop owners.
In Haifa, Walaa Sbeit spoke about increasing restrictions on free speech and rising arrests of Palestinian citizens for protesting. Jaafar Farah, from the Mossawa Centre for Palestinian Arab Rights, explained that inequality persists through land confiscation and socio-economic discrimination. Although the OECD recommended reforms to improve equality, initiatives such as “Budget 500” have reportedly been diverted toward security and prison spending. The Mossawa Centre continues to lobby international embassies for pressure on the government to free the funds to those they were intended for.
Farah noted that since October 7th, conditions have worsened. Arrests have increased, and Palestinian voices face greater suppression. While few wish to leave their homes and become refugees, many young people now struggle to stay, work, and build a future. He also described a paradox – Jewish citizens often live more linguistically isolated lives, while Palestinian communities frequently speak multiple languages.
In Lod, a poor, mixed Palestinian Israeli city near Yafa, drug trafficking and crime have contributed to social breakdown. Rap artist and actor Tamer Nafar, whose work reflects the experiences of displaced Palestinians, spoke about systemic marginalisation. He argued that flooding communities with drugs, alcohol, and weapons fosters internal division. “If they can’t wage war on us,” he suggested, “the next best thing is to let us turn on one another.”
This returns us to Mustafa Barghouti, who argues that the only way to break this system is through international sanctions. He calls for sustained global action against Israeli policies, insisting that the world must no longer ignore the situation. Only through collective pressure, he believes, can the cycle of oppression be broken.
Guest post for Real Media – Words and photographs ©2026 Denise Laura Baker
Thanks to Eyewitness Palestine for their invaluable assistance
Read the first part of Denise Laura Baker’s Palestine photo essay:
Palestine – The Occupation Of The Land
