Habla: the nurseries are closed. The owner is worn out and discouraged
We went in order to visit 'A. from the nursery and to hear from him something about the situation in the area of the Seam Zone at this time.
The nurseries are closed. At the very beginning of the war, the IDF closed all of the nurseries in the lot across from Qalqilya and forbade the owners of the nurseries to bring customers in or to receive merchandise from the suppliers.
It was also forbidden for them to have a guard spend the night. So, 'A. was himself forced to spend 25 nights sleeping in the nursery and, finally, decided to sleep in his car since there were so many mosquitoes in the building.
'A. looks totally worn out and discouraged. His positive spirit is gone, his smiling and joking are gone. In addition, he is nourished by the Arab social media outlets and what he hears from there does not at all match what we know. It was hard to listen to him, but, as much as we tried to describe to him what actually happened, how the murders and atrocities happened, we did not succeed in convincing him.
We understood that he is convinced that what he is shown on the Israeli TV networks is all "fake news", and from within his anger and pain, he is not able to see the other side. And this is a Palestinian who had been a peace seeker, friendly, and I could even say was "pro-israel". So now what will happen? We will continue to visit, because we understand that he is influenced by the pictures he sees from Gaza.
We visited the Habla checkpoint, which was closed. All the holes have been closed. Soon after we arrived and got out to take pictures, a military car arrived to check on what we were doing there. We left.
In the nursery there is not a great choice. In the vegetable market next door there are "baladi" vegetables at an absurd price. According to 'A., there choice there is also very limited.
We didn't enter Nebi Elias to eat in the usual restaurant, since we couldn't get through the checkpoint. We went home in a very bad mood.