When J., our friend who lives in Ritsona camp, video-calls us, we do not immediately understand what she is saying, but we see she is outside the camp with many other people. We hear a big confusion in the background and we perceive from her voice that she is worried.
No doubt: something is happening at the camp and we need to be there; we do not wait longer and immediately take the car.
The police stops us few kilometers from the camp because the way was closed, we leave the car and go forward by foot: our friends are waiting for us and we want to be there with them.
Once we arrive we see many Congolese people outside the camp, especially women; some of them shout, some others cry, some pick up rubber pieces to light a fire: “a guy’s dead, he has four kids”, they say, “it’s just carelessness, this is mere racism”.
They say the evening before they called the ambulance at 5 p.m. but it only came in the morning, when it was too late.
He died in the meantime.
“There’s no food, there’s no water, no international protection, this is the result, people die in here”, women voices keep shouting and saying to Congolese people to come out.

Current situation
On December 1^st Israel revoked the residency status in East Jerusalem to the French-Palestinian Human Rights lawyer Salah Hammouri who has been accused of serious crimes against the State security. On March 7^th, 2022, Hammouri, 37 years old, was arrested and held in Israel for nine months under administrative detention. After having revoked his citizenship, the Minister of the Interior decided for his expulsion and, on December 18^th, Hammouri was forcibly sent to Paris, with his hands and feet handcuffed.
On December 2^nd the occupation forces shot at Ammar Hamdi Nayef Miflih, 23 years old, killing him, in Huwwara, near Nablus. Israel declared that the gunfire was the consequence of a stabbing attempt, but many videos prove that Miflih didn’t hold anything in his hands when he was hit and murdered. The Israeli forces prevent paramedics from ensuring medical assistance and they confiscated his body that was given back to his family only on December 29^th.
During a raid of the Israeli army occurred on December 12^th, Jana Majdi Issam Assaf, 15 years old, was killed by gunshots while she was on the roof of her house in Jenin.
Those are just two of the 12 Palestinians who were killed in December.
2022 has been the most lethal year since 2006 in Palestine (East Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza): 230 Palestinians were killed, 6.500 Palestinians were detained by Israeli occupation forces – among them 800 were minors and 2.134 were held under administrative detention. More than 900 buildings were seized or demolished thus causing the forced displacement of 1.000 Palestinians from their houses. During the year, around 1.500 attacks conducted by Israeli settlers against the Palestinians or their properties were reported.
On December 29^th, the new far-right government has been elected and the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared he will work in order to formally annex the West Bank. During the speech in which he explained the main aims of his new government, he stated: “the Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the land of Israel”.

Colombia - December 2022

Today our meeting with Andrej begins with smiles and a piece of cake. He is a volunteer from the local Caritas who decided to help his people from the beginning of the war, even though he expected to do something else in his life.
We went to meet him because we wanted to tell him that we are not only here for them, but WITH them. In a city under attack, we are volunteers who are working nonstop to help civilians in all the ways they can since many months: from distributing food aid to delivering warm clothes in view of the gelid winter that is coming.
Suddenly, during the conversation, he is pleasantly surprised when we speak some words in Ukrainian and Russian languages. So, with his permission, we ask him some personal questions like why most people in these areas of the country continue to speak Russian.
"Russian is my mother language. I was born in Odessa but my grandparents have Russian origins, like "many" people in Ukraine. Since the war’s outbreak in 2014, we have started to use more the Ukrainian language, which has been chosen as the only official language in schools".
He goes on telling us that it is impossible to have such an immediate change between the two languages because they are not at all the same, although they are similar. From the beginning of the war until today, many people - especially in the western regions - began to distance themselves from Russia and to speak Ukrainian.

Current situation
In October there has been an escalation of violence. As a matter of fact, the collaboration between the Israeli army and the Israeli settlers maintains and intensifies the apartheid system perpetrated by the State of Israel against the Palestinian population.
In particular, Israeli settlers used violence during the celebrations of three Jewish holidays in the first half of the month: the settlers, escorted by the Israeli army, invaded both the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the Ibrahim one in Al Khalil dozens of times. Not only have these repeated incursions barred Palestinians from accessing their places of worship, but they also resulted in a significant number of arbitrary arrests and detentions. In addition to this, throughout the month there were dozens of attacks by settlers on the Palestinian civilian population in the cities of Al Khalil, Nablus, Huwara and Jerusalem: shootings into crowds, attacks on schools, roads blocked and damages to private Palestinian cars and shops.
In October, the olive harvest began throughout Palestine, a symbol of Palestinian resistance. This activity brought together Palestinian, Israeli and international activists who wanted to support Palestinian families, scared that the Israeli settlers and occupation forces could attack them while they were harvesting their own land - which unfortunately occurred.