AILSA CHANG, HOST:
For Israel, the death of a top Hamas leader in Tehran was celebrated as a threat eliminated. But for some young men in the West Bank, his death has tapped into a growing desire to give their lives for a cause. NPR's Hadeel al-Shalchi brings us this report from two refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
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AHMAD ASLAN: (Non-English language spoken).
HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, BYLINE: In a video released a day after his death, 18-year-old Ahmad Aslan sits in a cemetery and sets out his will.
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AHMAD ASLAN: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "I'm the martyr Ahmad Aslan," he introduces himself with a wide, shy smile.
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AHMAD ASLAN: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "Bury me right here," he says, pointing to an empty grave next to his best friend, Yasser, who was killed last October. Ahmad ends the video by sending love to his mother. It's been a week since Ahmad was killed, and his mother, Amina, sits in her living room, surrounded by women who've come to pay their condolences.
AMINA: Ahmad (non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "Ahmad was a compassionate, kind young man," she says. His family says that on July 24, the Israeli military entered the Qalandiya refugee camp where they live, just outside of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. They say Israeli soldiers started breaking into homes, searching them. Ahmad's parents say the soldiers surrounded the camp, and he was stuck in his uncle's house with his cousins. They ran to the roof to look down. That's when they say Ahmad was shot. The Israeli military told NPR the raid was to demolish the home of a man who had killed two Israelis at a gas station in the West Bank. It said that during the raid, soldiers opened fire at people gathered on rooftops to throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at them.
ASHRAF ASLAN: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: His cousin, Ashraf Aslan, says he dragged a bloody Ahmad down the stairs. Ahmad was pronounced dead in the hospital.
ASHRAF ASLAN: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "We're used to these killings in the camps now," Ashraf says. Ahmad is part of a rising number of young men in the West Bank with a death wish, according to the Palestinians in the camp. The Gaza war has made the prospect of a Palestinian state ever more distant. Unemployment is high, and with no future in sight, hopes are even lower. Like Ahmad, many young men say their only choice is to fight the Israeli occupation. Some take up arms and join militant groups. Others throw rocks at Israeli soldiers during raids. Ahmad's mother says that every time there was an Israeli military incursion, he would rush to join the youths on the streets.
NIDAL: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: Ahmad's father, Nidal, points to items laid out neatly on his son's bunk bed - a baseball cap, cigarette lighters, a piece of clothing blotted with blood. Nidal says these are all mementos Ahmad collected from his friends who were killed in Israeli raids. He says his son's ultimate wish was to join his friends in heaven.
NIDAL: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "Ahmad used to say, sure, I have friends, but those who have gone are dear to me," says Nidal. Ahmad's mother says she was afraid of losing her son and would fight with him, forbidding him from talking about being killed.
AMINA: (Reading in non-English language).
AL-SHALCHI: She reads a text message exchange with him from a few days before he died.
AMINA: (Reading in non-English language).
AL-SHALCHI: "Go die," Amina wrote. "I will never forgive you."
Up in the north of the West Bank, it's eerily quiet in the Damaj neighborhood of the Jenin refugee camp. A drone faintly hums overhead. Someone has spray painted the words - the alley of death - on the walls of homes. This is the neighborhood where the camp's fighters are normally found. They sleep during the day in preparation for potential Israeli military night raids. Driving through the camp, it's dusty and bumpy. The roads have been bulldozed by the Israeli military, who say have to be torn up to neutralize improvised Palestinian bombs planted underneath. Mosques and families' homes are bombed to rubble. The military says that's where militants operate from.
More than 20,000 Palestinians live in the Jenin refugee camp. It was the site of several battles during the Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s, known as the second intifada. While the Palestinian authority is meant to be policing the camps, it's really the fighters who control things around here. Jenin was a flashpoint even before October 7.
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PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: In July last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after a major raid into Jenin, he was launching a new crackdown on militants from these camps. "If Jenin will return to terrorism, then we will return to Jenin," Netanyahu said. Since the October 7 attacks by Hamas, the Israeli military has stepped up its incursions into refugee camps. Israel says they are breeding grounds for new militants.
At a supermarket in the center of the Jenin camp, 30-year-old Tareq Abu Muhamed fidgets with the strap of his automatic weapon. The fighter sits on a stack of soda cans in a grocery store cradling his gun. He says he was in and out of Israeli prisons for about five years. After October 7, he got a call from Israeli security to turn himself in. Instead, he picked up his weapon.
TAREQ ABU MUHAMED: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "Whoever sees the injustice we go through in those prisons comes out and continues fighting," Abu Muhamed says.
ABU MUHAMED: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "Kill one of us, 1,000 will pop up. Our morale is high," he says. Abu Muhamed says that while his goal today is to die for the sake of his land, it's not what he actually wishes he was doing with his life. A farmer by trade, he says he's always wanted a wife, children, a job, but there's hopelessness under occupation.
ABU MUHAMED: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "We all want to live," he says. "We're fighting so we can live, not just for the sake of dying."
AHLAM ISMAIL: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: A new cemetery has been built in Jenin to accommodate the rising number of deaths since October 7. Nearby is a center where Ahlam Ismail runs programs for the camp's women and children. She says that before the war, kids would come to her center to play after school. Now...
ISMAIL: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "The kids go to the cemetery," Ismail says. "The graveyard," she says, "has become a playground, a place for young school children to be close to their dead family and friends, siblings and cousins, whose footsteps some of the kids may wish to follow one day." Hadeel al-Shalchi, NPR News, Jenin. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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