Zoufi is the commander of the camp’s branch of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is listed as a terrorist group by Israel and the United States. He founded the armed militant cell just over a year ago as Israeli military raids spiked across the West Bank.The Washington Post spent time with him and some of his 15 fighters, as well as with militants in two other Palestinian refugee camps — Jenin and Askar — over three days in July. The visits, agreed to on the condition that full names and specific locations be withheld, afforded a rare window into the lives and actions of fighters on one side of the worst violence to grip the West Bank in decades.
...Making contact with Zoufi and his fighters meant navigating a clandestine network of intermediaries inside the camps. After being handed off by a string of trusted escorts — walking along narrow lanes laced with sagging electric cables and papered with posters of slain fighters — the Post reporters were led to a room deep inside Balata Camp.
Several men there were eating mana’eesh, a flatbread with za’atar. Weapons rested in their laps or against the walls.
“Welcome. Yalla, join us,” said one man, known in the camp as Goblin.
It is exactly what we have seen countless times before - humanizing terrorists and trusting what they say implicitly while including the bare minimum of Israeli "claims."
I found this paragraph interesting:
The fighters, who inspire both fear and fealty, enjoy cultlike status in the camp. There are no sports teams here. Male unemployment is nearing 90 percent. With few role models of any kind, boys collect stickers, posters and necklaces bearing images of slain militants.
The male unemployment rate in the West Bank altogether is 12.4% (2021). UNRWA says that for all camps, it is 17%. This site says the Balata camp's unemployment rate is 25%. I cannot find any source that says it has an unemployment rate anywhere close to 90%.
The Washington Post does not provide a link to this statistic. It appears that someone they interviewed made it up and they parroted it.
And what, exactly, stops Balata's residents from finding jobs? It isn't Israel. Residents can move out of the camp and go wherever they want in the West Bank. They can get jobs in Israel the way tens of thousands of other Palestinians do.
The only difference is that they have free housing, courtesy of the world paying UNRWA.
Moreover, why is the camp still only a single square kilometer? Why doesn't the Palestinian Authority expand the boundaries so the people aren't so crowded? It isn't Lebanon, and there are open spaces outside the camp.
It is true that there are no sports teams in the overcrowded camp itself. But Balata, the town, does have a sports club - the Ahly Balata club - which includes an entire sports and youth program that also teaches job skills to teens.
According to Google Maps, it is easy walking distance from the camp.
The "90% unemployment" and the "no sports teams for kids" were factoids that were too good to check for the WaPo's reporting team. And for their editors.
How many other things were they told that are simply terrorist propaganda? And why are they so willing to swallow it?
I asked that question in the comments on the article. We'll see if anything changes.
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