Shots fired, houses burned and olive trees crushed: the settlers’ revenge for the recent deadly attack on Jerusalem

Jamal Kadar didn’t hear the second shot because it went through his stomach. On January 27, he and other young people from Beita, his town in the north of the occupied West Bank, commemorated the attack that killed another Palestinian seven hours earlier outside a synagogue in Neve Yaakov, a settlement close to Jerusalem. . . “I was talking to some friends and I heard a shot. I turned around and saw a car [con matrícula] Israeli around the time I felt I was talented. It all happened very quickly,” he explains today – frowning and serious, but calm – in the hospital room in the town of Nablus, Rafidia, where he is recovering. His parents show the doctor’s report and he, 23, the bruise on his left arm caused by the exploding bullet. He had been taught by his mother, a nurse, what to do before receiving medical attention, so he pinched the entrance and exit openings and “did everything possible not to lose consciousness,” he recalled.

Kadar says no one got out of the vehicle and someone opened fire from the inside. And he hadn’t counted on it, because Jewish settlers in the area rarely crossed the border on Saturdays, which began at sunset. They do not drive that day because the vast majority are religious. “It was the only Israeli car that passed there,” he says. According to the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry, four other people were injured by gunfire in the attack. “As we Muslims say, it was my destiny. Of course it was a test from God. That doesn’t change my opinion on the situation. It could have happened to any other Palestinian.”

Yamal Kader, on Thursday, February 2, 2023, at Rafidia Hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus. Antonio Pitta

It happened next to one of the roundabouts on Highway 60, where all the tensions and paradoxes of the hottest part of this occupied territory are concentrated. When crossing the West Bank vertically, the cars of Palestinians and Israelis living in settlements in the area cross on some stretches. Some settlers (just over half a million, not counting East Jerusalem) live in the West Bank, lured by lower housing prices, subsidies to encourage settlement, or the natural environment. Others, the more radical, see it as an ultra-nationalist and religious attempt to populate Eretz Israel, a biblical concept that encompasses both Israel and Palestine.

The latter, in their most violent version, are the ones who, after the attack on Jerusalem, unleashed a wave of attacks against Palestinian civilians and their property beyond the norm. “Tag Majir,” they call it: demanding a price beyond the response of the Israeli army and police, “whom they consider idiots.” An attack on a man in Masafer Yatta, dozens of trees uprooted near Nablus, a house burnt down near Ramallah… There were 144 incidents in the Nablus area alone on Saturday, according to the Palestinian Authority official, responsible for the file, Ghassan. Daghlas, to the station, official Wafa. The Israeli NGO Btselem has documented at least 50, but points out there are likely many more. Shooting cases like Kadar’s are more isolated. Retaliation usually takes the form of physical attacks, throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails, and burning or damaging vehicles, homes, crops or livestock.

Israeli soldiers guard the intersection of Highway 60 and Beita in the northern West Bank on Thursday, February 2, 2023. Antonio Pitta

This happened in Turmusaya. The city has little to do with the visual image of Palestine: weapons and poverty. As a result of a historic migration of peoples that began in the early 1900s, most of the 11,000 residents are also U.S. citizens, with more than half coming for the summer only. As many made money, homes today compete in square footage and furnishing. The first, accessible from one of the small Jewish settlements around Shiloh, was set on fire the same night as the attack, apparently with a Molotov cocktail. “We saw what happened on Facebook Live and about 15 neighbors came out with buckets of water to take it down,” says Ahed Asad Yibara, who, despite dying from it, still calls it “my home.” “Irmãos” refers to the covid two years ago and was inherited from the woman, who lives in New York, and to whom she had to explain over the phone what happened. Surveillance camera footage shows three young men sneaking into the house and fleeing, already with the fire on their backs. Windows were smashed in two neighboring homes. “There were two jeeps [militares] Israelis within 200 or 250 meters and they literally did nothing,” protests Ybara.

The flames burned the car parked on the porch and collapsed the pagoda-shaped roof, which is now a ceiling of bricks and charred wooden slats. The interior is intact. “Thank God no one lives here. It could have ended like the Duma,” he says, referring to the nearby town where three Palestinian relatives, including a baby, died in a fire caused when a radical settler detonated a Molotov cocktail and smashed the house in 2015. .

🚨WATCH: Terrifying video footage shows settlers entering a house in Turmusayya village, setting fire to and destroying the house and nearby cars. Miraculously, there were no injuries.
Video and photo credit: Yesh Din pic.twitter.com/duovmr9n3Y

— Yesh Din English (@Yesh_Din) January 30, 2023

Yibara, a Chicago native who moved to her family’s city 12 years ago because she wanted to connect her children to her roots, says the attack was “more aggressive than others.” “Of course they wanted to show that it was revenge. They usually come a few times a month and usually throw rocks, paint Death to the Arabs graffiti or burn our corn and wheat in the summer,” he adds. His family has not and will not press charges. “[Las fuerzas de seguridad israelíes] They’ve done hundreds of investigations and nothing happens. they have your back It’s been three years since we filed a claim. Many people have wasted too much time, including in court,” he argues. When asked about the incident and whether there were any arrests, Israel Police said they have an ongoing investigation that they cannot detail, but will continue “to the end”.

Palestinians, human rights NGOs and international organizations unanimously agree on the inaction (at the mildest criticism) or the complicity (at the harshest) of the Israeli security forces in the attacks perpetrated by the inhabitants of some settlements, where the Israeli state has supposedly been for years. after they were built on hills by young religious nationalists, in violation of national law or often legalized. This group has achieved unprecedented power in Benjamin Netanyahu’s new executive.

According to Yesh Din (There is Justice, in Hebrew), an Israeli human rights organization monitoring the issue, between 2005 and June 2021, 92% of investigations into these crimes went without charges and only 3% ended in conviction. The NGO concludes that according to the police, the number of charges against Israelis of mistreating people is six times lower when the victim is Palestinian. The West Bank has a dual legal system. Settlers are judged as Israeli citizens under the country’s civil law, while Palestinians are subject to military law because they are under military occupation.

Barbed wire on a hill in Yalud to prevent the arrival of settlers Antonio Pita

The Israeli army emphasizes the “complexity” of the situation. “We are in the thick of it and trying to do our job,” says one of the top commanders, stressing that any aggression against Palestinians “will be treated as a violation of the law.” “There are settlers who think we are not doing enough. Every day they throw stones or shoot at them. You live in fear. And some of them, unrepresentative, are taking the law into their own hands,” the high command added, noting that Israeli security forces and civilians have suffered 59 shooting, stabbing or overturning attempts in the West Bank since January.

double occurrence

The number of attacks in the West Bank against Palestinians and their property has been steadily increasing since 2016. Last year there were 838, nearly double the number in 2021 (446), already considered particularly violent due to clashes between Jews and Arabs leading to an Israel offensive in Gaza. In 2020, there were 353, according to the military.

2021 is also the year when Hisham Hmud will complete construction of his new home in Yalud, another city in the northern West Bank. Since then, he says, tools have been stolen four times, windows smashed, trees uprooted and – in one case – the car set on fire inside the fence. “Four times I planted olive trees, four times they cut them down,” he complains, holding a very young and small one. “I even brought a dog to guard the house and it was stolen or I don’t know but it’s gone.”

Hisham Hmud holds one of his felled trees at his home in the West Bank town of Yalud, Thursday, February 2, 2023. Antonio Pita

The last time was last Sunday. He, his wife and two children were gone. There are pebbles in the doorway and traces of slamming doors on the reinforced door he just put in place.

Part of the border fence is broken, in a straight line from the Ahiya colony built very close, about 300 meters. Hmud, a 32-year-old construction worker, says he has seen settlers descending the hill on other occasions but never dared to leave. “What can I do without a weapon to defend myself. For records? … If I leave, they will kill me,” he says. Inside he heard cries of “dirty Arabs” and “bastards,” he recalls, when his frustrated one-year-old daughter opened the window and discovered a solid sheet of aluminum behind her.

“One of the tragedies is that I go to work afraid that something will happen to my wife and children,” he says. Before entering, he takes off his shoes, knocks on the door, and half-jokingly, half-seriously tells the family, “It’s me… it’s not a settler.”