In a carpentry shop in the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Noor Assi is at work packaging a wooden table. He tears off strips of tape, tying it to padded cardboard, before flipping the table on its side.
He says he is 15 “and a half,” a measurement in age split between the innocence of youth and a desire for manhood.
The war in Gaza has caused tensions to flare across the Middle East, especially in places like the West Bank. The Israeli-occupied territory is the most violent it has been in decades. United Nations figures say that almost 700 Palestinians in the area have been killed, either by Israeli forces or settlers, in the past year. Noor’s father was among those fatally shot.
“My childhood is gone,” Noor says. He was forced to grow up by a grim rite of passage.
On Dec. 2, Israeli settlers raided his village in the central West Bank and shot his father, Ahmed Assi, dead, according to the family, residents and local officials.
The Israeli military told NPR that they responded to a physical confrontation between Palestinians and Israeli citizens in Qarawat Bani Hassan with riot disposal means and live fire and that the circumstances of Assi’s death were still under review.
Ahmed Assi’s mother, Noor’s grandmother, shows bloodied clothes and a sweatshirt with a single bullet hole in the back. Assi’s 5-year-old daughter, Jenna, looks on, wearing a necklace with a picture of her dead dad.
“When my father was martyred, I started to work, I took over my father’s profession, I started working and spending on the house. I was smart and managed things, meaning I became responsible for the house,” Noor says.
Noor dropped out of school, working full time in the family's carpentry warehouse, sometimes for 13 hours a day, to provide for his five siblings.
“I am responsible for them now. I take care of them and whatever they want, I get them. I don’t let them want for anything.”
Noor looks young, is shy and has a boyish haircut — long on top, a fade on the sides and back. He maintains his look with regular visits to the village barbershop.
In the Middle East, the barbershop is not just a place to cut your hair. It's also a place to socialize, hang out and talk about everything from family to sports and politics. Not long after Noor gets his trim, the village’s mayor, Ibrahim Assi, enters. He is a distant relative of Noor’s. It’s a small community and family ties are strong. A poster of Noor’s deceased father is plastered outside.
The mayor explains that Qarawat Bani Hassan is surrounded by an ever-expanding network of Israeli settlements and outposts. About 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank, according to the United Nations. The settlements they live in are deemed illegal by the international community. Israeli politicians like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, have promoted their expansion, and they’re growing through a web of smaller outposts.
The mayor says that violence from the settlers is terrorizing the Palestinians who live here.
“The West Bank is currently living in a nightmare, a nightmare that has lost its security and safety due to the violence of the Ministry of Settlers, who are — on a daily basis — assaulting, killing and harassing and stealing. They are committing real crimes against citizens and farmers that are present on their own land,” the mayor says.
On Dec. 2, he says, settlers entered the village, damaging property, burning cars, wounding one man and shooting Noor’s father dead. His lifeless body was found hours later in an olive grove on the outskirts of Qarawat Bani Hassan.
Noor may maintain his teenage haircut. But he has the hardened hands of an older working man, no longer hanging out with friends, devoting himself, instead, to work, faith and family.
At home, he helps out with the household chores, learning to cook from his mother. He sometimes feels pangs of envy for other teenagers.
“I do get jealous, I sometimes feel like playing, like them, but it doesn’t work. I have a family to take care of,” Noor says.
On Friday, the holiest day of the week in Islam, Noor prays at the village mosque before his weekly ritual of visiting his father’s grave, draped in a Palestinian flag.
Prayer is important to Noor, from morning to night. Fighting back tears, he says the Islamic funeral prayer for his father on the porch outside his home.
“O God, forgive him and have mercy on him, and heal him, and pardon him, and grant him an honorable reception."
Noor says that each night, after prayer, he speaks to his father.
"I tell him what is happening, what we are doing, and who is coming over, for example," he says. "Last time, he came to me in a dream and told me, 'Take care of your family and your brothers.' "
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