For Hosni Abdo, 62, from the town of Beit Imrin, west of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, visiting his friend in the village of Burqa, northwest of Nablus, last Tuesday had almost cost him his life.
“After visiting my friend in Burqa and I was heading back home, a group of five settlers attacked me and started to beat me before I could even utter a word,” Abdo told WAFA.
“The settlers sprayed pepper gas on my face and when I started screaming hysterically, they fled but not before slashing the four wheels of my vehicle and injuring my leg as a result of hitting me with sticks.”
The attack on Abdo is not an isolated incident. It is one of many daily attacks by settlers from the evacuated settlement of Homesh targeting Palestinians living in that area and their properties.
Palestinian taxi drivers who travel the road Abdo used, the Nablus-Jenin road, regularly talk to each other to check on the situation on the road in fear of a sudden attack by the Homesh settlers.
Yasser Rawajbeh, one of the drivers who was also attacked by settlers, told WAFA that drivers of public transportation and many citizens who use the same road daily are in constant contact with each other, and in the event of any settler attack on that road, they change their route and take a much longer detour.
“Yesterday, the settlers attacked vehicles on the same road, so I had to go back and take another road because a number of vehicles had been damaged by the stones thrown at them,” said Rawajbeh.
“They are most likely armed, and therefore we can expect them to shoot at us at any moment. So we must always be careful, especially since we take this road all the time driving people back and forth between the villages, towns and cities,” he said.
Yesterday, dozens of settlers attacked two schools and a number of houses in Burqa, and then they headed to the Nablus-Jenin road and attacked vehicles there. Even though the Israeli army, deployed in large numbers in the West Bank, knows what they do, the army would intervene only to protect the settlers and attack the Palestinians who try to defend themselves and confront the settlers.
Ziyad Abu Omar, head of Burqa village council, said settlers regularly attack village residents and their property, the latest of which was yesterday when dozens of settlers attacked two schools in the village and a number of homes, describing it as the most violent attack in a while.
The official in charge of the settlement file in the northern West Bank, Ghassan Daghlas, told WAFA that dozens of settlers attacked two schools and houses in the village, and threw stones at them, smashing the windows of more than 15 houses and that the army did nothing to stop them or arrest any of them.
Just today, settlers attacked the Burqa school and when students and residents confronted them, the soldiers attacked the residents firing tear gas and rubber bullets at them to protect the settlers.
Daghlas said that the residents of the villages of Burqa, Silat al-Dahr, Bazariya, and the neighboring villages are subjected almost daily to attacks by Homesh settlers, in addition to attacks on the Nablus-Jenin road.
There are now, according to Daghlas, about 40 to 50 settlers staying in the settlement in a large metal structure and tents. They are the ones most likely carrying out these attacks that turn the lives of thousands upside down, disrupt their security, and threaten their safety.
Although there are four Israeli Supreme Court decisions stating that the lands belong to the people of Burqa, Douglas fears the re-establishment of the settlement over a large area of Burqa lands and the nearby Silat al-Harithiya village.
The settlers established Homesh settlement in 1982 on the lands of Burqa village, and in 2005, the Israeli occupation authorities dismantled it as part of the unilateral withdrawal plan, which included four settlements in the northern West Bank.
It is noteworthy that the law prohibits Israelis from entering the land on which Homesh was built after the Israeli Supreme Court recognized that the land belongs to Palestinians from Burqa. But the settlers returned to that land repeatedly, erected tents on it, and held events and parties.
Despite the passage of about 18 years since its evacuation, the owners of the lands were unable to return to them or benefit from them. Rather, Homesh turned into a hotbed of terror for settlers who returned to it and used it as a launching point for their attacks against farmers and residents of Burqa, in addition to attacking vehicles on the Nablus–Jenin road.
The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, recently approved, in an initial reading, a bill to cancel the withdrawal from the northern West Bank, which would allow settlers to return to the four settlements evacuated by the Israeli government in 2005 and include the former settlements of Ghanim, Kadim, Homesh, and Sanur.
Source: Palestine News and Information and Agency