‘We don’t want to live in a prison’: grief and anger in a West Bank refugee camp

A street in Nur Shams, known by residents as ‘Little Gaza’ because of the frequency of attacks. Photograph: Ayman Abu Ramouz/The Guardian

There is no light at night in the Nur Shams refugee camp other than that of a bright moon, although even that doesn’t fully penetrate the maze of narrow alleyways; since 7 October, residents here have stretched sheets of black tarpaulin across the camp’s streets to block the view of Israeli attack drones.

In an uncovered passageway no more than a metre wide between the camp’s shoddily constructed homes, Mohammed al-Jaber, known as Abu Shuja’a, the 25-year-old leader of the local Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) cell, greeted a dozen young men who emerged from the darkness.