After 15 months since the start of the genocide in Gaza, the cease-fire has arrived.

January. After 15 months since the start of the genocide in Gaza, the cease-fire has arrived.
As a consequence of the ceasefire, the situation in the West Bank is steadily escalating.
Since the beginning of the ceasefire in Gaza, military assaults in the Jenin refugee camp have resulted in the deaths of dozens of people.
Since the beginning of the cease-fire in Gaza, various attacks by soldiers but also by settlers in the villages surrounding the main cities throughout the West Bank are the order of the day.
Since the beginning of the ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli army has increased its collective punishment policies against Palestinians. Checkpoints and gates have increased as never before. Israeli military checkpoints scattered across the occupied West Bank have grown to 898.
The Israeli army has closed hundreds of these checkpoints. Further blocking Palestinians’ freedom of movement. Trips from one city to another, which should take 40 minutes, can take up 8 hours for Palestinians.
Al Khalil, better known as Hebron, is one of the 8 Palestinian cities that, after the Oslo II agreements of 1995 that sanctioned the division of the West Bank into three different areas (A,B and C), constantly experiences Israeli occupation.
In the old city, in front of the school that used to be attended by Palestinian children, now guarded day and night by Israeli soldiers and not accessible to Palestinians, there is one of the historical shops. The owner shows me on the TV hanging inside his shop of Palestinian ornaments, the video of the 1994 massacre known as the “Ibrahim Mosque Massacre”.
A Zionist extremist settler, Baruch Goldstein, who lived near Hebron, in Kiryat Arba, the largest settlement in Hebron, entered the Mosque during prayer time in the month of Ramadan and, armed with a rifle, killed 29 Palestinians, wounding hundreds. Since that episode, the old city has changed its face.
The centre, once the hub of Hebron’s commercial life, has witnessed a gradual exodus of the population, but also a radical decline in commercial activity due to closure orders issued by the Israeli military authorities against hundreds of shops.
The urbanism of the old city is marked by a clear separation between Palestinians and Israelis. A world on two floors, with a line dividing the occupiers, above, from the occupied, below.
It is the only city, apart from Jerusalem, where Palestinians and Israelis live separately. Here, metal barriers accompany the walk of passers-by. Settlers occupying houses who belonged to Palestinian families, are used to throw things (rocks and rubbish) from the heights of their flats to intimidate and injure Palestinians.
Moreover, Al-Khalil experiences a territorial division all its own, between the Palestinian ‘H1’ zone and the ‘H2’ zone, where Palestinian families live with more than 800 Israeli settlers. Also established after the Oslo II agreements, the division of the city came about to accommodate the Israeli settlers who had been trying to occupy the historical and religious centre with violent actions for years.
While a tourist is free to go as and where wants, a Palestinian living in Hebron does not the right of free movement. To go to the most culturally important place, the Ibrahim Mosque, or to return home for more than 15,000 Palestinians, it is possible to access it by passing through one of the army-guarded checkpoints, which means having to pass from an H1 (Palestinian) zone to an H2 (Israeli) zone. Doing so is not easy and often depends on the arbitrariness of the soldier on duty.
Since 7 October, life for a Palestinian in the city has become even more complicated and on constant alert.
Being exposed to violence and oppression on a daily basis is not, however, the condition in which Palestinians accept to live.
Resisting the occupation happens in many different ways.
The association Human rights defenders, which was used to organised peaceful actions calling for the Palestinian right to self-determination, organises awareness-raising activities for young people who wonder how to cope with this deprivation of rights.
“How does a little bird feel inside a cage?” A drama teacher asked a group of girls which are attending the class.
The question stimulated personal considerations of an everyday experience.
Situations related to the lack of freedom of movement they experienced, such as being inside a car for five hours on the way home from Ramallah.
“It’s like always feeling surrounded by something that doesn’t allow us to live our lives peacefully,” one gentleman told me.

“Existence is resistance is”, is written on the walls in Al-Khalil.