Dream Postponed: Hebron Groom Caught in Israeli Military Lockdown

Haidar Yahya Tamimi, 27, had spent four months getting ready. The home was finished, the new furniture was in, his wedding suit was chosen, and invitations had gone out to around 1,000 people. He was due to marry his fiancee, Ruba, on Friday, with a feast planned for Thursday evening. Instead he is out of his house in the al-Jalada neighbourhood of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, and the wedding is postponed with no date.

His situation traces back to October 23, when two Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint at the western entrance to the city. Israeli forces killed both gunmen. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then ordered an immediate lockdown of Hebron. Israeli bulldozers demolished buildings near the site of the attack, and soldiers went house to house in al-Jalada and Ein Deir Baha, the neighbourhoods where the attackers lived.

By Monday, Hebron's municipality said, more than 3,100 Palestinians had been forcibly displaced. Haidar is one of them. On the evening of the attack, Hebron was declared a closed military zone, and he and his family were ordered out along with other residents of the two neighbourhoods. They left in the middle of the night with only what they could carry.

Everything the couple had assembled for their life together stayed behind. Haidar, who has worked for about a year as a radiology technician at the Palestine Red Crescent Society Hospital in Hebron, later reached a spot from which he could see the house, but the military presence kept him from going closer. He showed Al Jazeera a photograph of the suit he had picked out. "I looked at the house and saw that my dream was supposed to happen here, but it has been postponed indefinitely," he said.

He saw Israeli soldiers around the building, and says relatives showed him security-camera footage of soldiers entering the home. What state it is in now is unknown. The couple have not set a new date, because they first need to know when they can go back.

The lockdown has reached into commerce too. Locals estimate that more than 100 businesses have been affected. One is Rukn al-Asala, a travel agency in al-Jalada that specialises in Muslim pilgrimage services. Its manager, Kamal al-Sharif, 35, has worked there with his father for 16 years and has not been able to reach the office since the lockdown began.

The agency was organising an Umrah pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia for 15 people, due to leave on Wednesday. Their passports are in the locked-off office, and with no sign of when the restrictions will end, the trip is likely to be postponed or cancelled.

Also inside are seven passports that, according to Kamal, arrived from the Chinese embassy on October 22, a day before the lockdown. They belong to traders who planned to fly to China on October 26. They hold their visas but not their passports, and could not travel. One of them, a man in his 30s who asked not to be named for security reasons, had meant to attend an exhibition in China to source equipment for his family business. His flight and hotel bookings are now cancelled, and he does not know when he will be able to get the products the business needs.

No return date has been announced for the displaced residents. What to watch is when the lockdown lifts, what condition the houses are in when people get back, and how long the closed offices and shops stay out of reach.