Palestinian advocate Issa Amro has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year for his decades of work advocating for peaceful resistance against Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The settlements are illegal under international law — and a record 45 were established last year under cover of the war on Gaza,
Advocacy against the settlements has seen Amro become a target.
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He is based in the occupied West Bank, in Hebron — a city of about 250,000 mostly Palestinian people. He founded Youth Against Settlements.
He paints a picture about what daily life is like.
“Our life in West Bank was very hard and difficult before October 7 [2023 – the date of the Hamas resistance movement attack on southern Israel]. And after October 7, life became much harder. . . .
‘Daily harassment, violence’
“So there are hard conditions. No jobs. No work. No movement in the West Bank. Schools are affected . . . There is daily harassment and violence — they attack the Palestinian villages, they attack the Palestinian cities, they attack the Palestinian roads.
“In my city Hebron, it has got much, much harder. People are not able to leave their homes because of the closure of the checkpoints. The [Israeli] soldiers are very mean and adversarial . . .
“The soldiers close the checkpoints whenever they want. In fact, the soldiers act like militia, not like a regular army.
“My house was attacked in the last 20 months . . . ”
- At least 55,104 people, including at least 17,400 children, have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza. At least 943 Palestinians, more than 200 of them minors, have been killed in the occupied West Bank.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
