Israel’s Escalating Tactic of Dispossession in the West BankIsraeli settlers and soldiers are besieging three families in their homes in the village of Qusra as part of a growing attack on Palestinian communities in Area B of the occupied West Bank.
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RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank—For the 12th consecutive day, three Palestinian families, comprising 10 people, including two young children, have been trapped inside their homes in the occupied West Bank, besieged and terrorized by dozens of armed Israelis—both settlers and soldiers. The family members have been stuck in separate homes, unable to shelter together or attend to their basic needs, with food supplies running dangerously low and without access to cooking gas or a fridge. While the siege on the three families has garnered international media attention and statements of condemnation, the attack is not the first of its kind, but rather a more prominent example of a growing tactic by Israeli settlers and soldiers working in tandem to dispossess Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank. The attacks are increasingly focused on Palestinian communities in Area B, a designation under the Oslo Accords where the Palestinian Authority is nominally in charge of civil administration while Israel retains security control. The latest Israeli siege targeted a small cluster of Palestinian homes that sit atop a hill on the edge of the village of Qusra, in the southern part of the Nablus governorate in the northern West Bank. On the morning of August 9, armed settlers blocked off the only road leading to the homes and erected a colonial outpost directly in front of the door of one of the houses. They began pelting the homes with rocks and trying to break inside on a regular basis. Israeli occupation forces eventually arrived on the scene and removed the outpost, but the settlers were able to erect it again, a pattern that repeated several times. And despite brief clashes with Israeli forces, the settlers were allowed to remain and continued to roam the area freely. The settlers also cut off access to water and electricity and for more than a week prevented anyone—including emergency workers or ambulances—from reaching the families trapped inside. Qusra municipality employees were eventually allowed to repair the water and electricity lines after being initially assaulted by settlers and detained by Israeli forces. Israeli troops have also exacerbated the situation by occupying two of the Palestinian homes they claim to be protecting. On August 14, soldiers forced Yousef and Ruqayya Hassan and their two daughters, four-year-old Kinda and two-year-old Hour, from their home and into their neighbor’s unfinished villa, which belongs to Loui Abu Ridi, a U.S. citizen. Still unfinished, Abu Ridi’s home lacked basic furniture, including beds. “It feels like there was a death in the family. We’re all distressed, angry and in a state of sadness,” Ruqayya told Drop Site in a phone interview. Israeli troops occupied another neighboring home that was still under construction and belonged to Abou Ridi’s brother, Raed. The soldiers also erected a tent around twelve meters away, according to the mayor of Qusra, Abdelatheem Wadi. “It’s the armed settlers on one hand and the military on the other,” Wadi told Drop Site, characterizing the trapped families in Qusra as being under a “double siege.” Meanwhile, Ruqayya’s daughters fell ill and started exhibiting flu-like symptoms, with a fluctuating fever and a heavy cough. On the afternoon of August 12, Ruqayya and both her daughters were allowed to temporarily evacuate from the area in an ambulance to a medical clinic for treatment. It was when she and her daughters returned to the besieged area two days later that they found Israeli soldiers occupying their home and were ordered to move into Abu Ridi’s. Another home belongs to Ruqayya’s brother-in-law, Rizq Hassan, who is trapped inside along with his 61-year-old mother and sister. The Israeli military has separated the families and prevented them from seeing each other. “My daughters keep asking me why their teta (grandmother) is right next door and yet they can’t be with her. They are very distressed. How on earth can I explain what’s happening to them?” Ruqayya, adding that the psychological and physical toll was already visible in her eldest daughter. “Kinda has started urinating involuntarily. Even during the day, when she’s awake, she wets herself,” she said. “Complete Siege”The fact that Abou Ridi, a U.S. citizen, was the owner of one of the homes may have helped spark statements of condemnation, including from staunchly pro-Israel U.S. officials like Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who called the settlers “Israeli terrorists” and their actions “criminal,” though Washington did nothing to intervene. Abou Ridi traveled from Ohio back to Palestine on August 17 to join his brother Qusai and his nephew who were staying in his home along with Ruqayya, her husband, and two daughters. Those staying in Abou Ridi’s home eventually received supplies of food, water, and medicine from a UNICEF team on August 17, as well as personal care supplies for Ruqayya and her daughters. Those in Rizq Hassan’s home, which is under less of a spotlight, were not as fortunate. “My brother-in-law’s home is under complete siege. They’re not allowed to leave the front door. They don’t have gas, or a fridge—they’re living on bread and a few canned items,” said Ruqayya. “No one is talking about them.” Wadi, the mayor, said they are being abused by soldiers. “The aid brought in by UNICEF to Rizq Hassan’s home was left by soldiers in the yard for 24 hours in the sun, before the family was allowed to receive it, and half of it was already ruined,” Wadi told Drop Site. “There is media attention only on Loui’s home.” The military and settler siege expanded beyond the three homes on August 13, when hundreds of Israeli occupation soldiers stormed Qusra and imposed a curfew across the entire village. Soldiers took over at least eight homes and forced their families out. According to Wadi, they severely vandalized the houses, damaging furniture and belongings. The soldiers withdrew days later from the eight homes and the rest of the village, but they declared the area of the three besieged homes a closed military zone. Wadi estimates at least 50 to 60 soldiers remain stationed in and around the area of the besieged homes. While the military claimed this order would be over by Tuesday evening, it remains in place, according to the residents.
“The New Reality”Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been coming under a steadily escalating assault for the past three years. Israeli settler attacks backed by Israeli soldiers and the state have fully or partially displaced 107 communities since January 2023, alongside unprecedented settlement expansion, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. The Israeli military expelled another 32,000 Palestinians from their homes in the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams camps in January 2025. The besieged families in Qusra have been under assault since January, when settlers first took over a nearby building that was under-construction and began launching daily attacks on the residents. Their homes lie in Area B of the occupied West Bank. While settler attacks and the forcible transfer of Palestinians in recent years have largely targeted villages and Bedouin communities in Area C—which comprises roughly 60% of the West Bank and includes almost all the agricultural land—Israeli settler violence and theft of land is now increasingly spreading into Palestinian communities located in Area B. Last month, a Palestinian family of eight living in the nearby village of Jalud, were forced from their home after a similar 10-day settler and soldier siege. The concentrated attack began three months prior, when settlers erected a colonial outpost near the Al-Tubassi family and began targeting them on a daily basis. “During the final month, the settlers occupied a house under construction on the road to the Al-Tubassi family home, and in the last 10 days they cut off the water, electricity and no one could reach them any more,” Bashar Qaryouti, a medic and activist in the area, told Drop Site. “In the last four days the family had no food, nothing left, and on the final day they were held at gunpoint by the settlers and forced to leave.” In a statement last week, the UN Human Rights Office condemned the attacks on Qusra. “These criminal actions by the settlers, supported or acquiesced to by Israel, the Occupying Power, are making life unbearable for these Palestinian families, and are clearly aimed at forcing them to leave their homes and land. Time is running out for these three families before they are forcibly displaced,” the UN Human Rights Office said. “The International Court of Justice is clear that all Israeli settlements are illegal and that Israel is obligated to cease all settlement activities, evacuate all settlers, including those terrorizing Qusra and Jalud, and bring to an end its unlawful presence in the West Bank.” Analysts also warn that the recurrence of the siege tactic in Qusra is ominous and points to a wider pattern unfolding across the occupied West Bank. “It began with Bedouin Palestinians in the remote areas, then it moved to the small villages at the edges of the governorates, and now they are in large villages, with the active participation of the military, which also supplies the weapons and trains them,” Ramallah-based political analyst Nihad Abu Ghosh told Drop Site. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forcibly transferred by settlers and the military from Area C over the past three years. In addition to the thousand of Palestinians forcibly displaced over the past three years in the West Bank, over 1,000 Palestinians have also been killed, nearly a quarter of them children. “These are fascist, Jewish-Zionist militias who are carrying out pogroms and killings in the occupied West Bank,” continued Abu Ghosh. “Both the government and the settlers are in a race against time. They consider the few remaining months or days of this government’s tenure to be an exceptional opportunity to change the reality on the ground. That is why they are intensifying their attacks until they reach a point where, in their assessment, it will be difficult to reverse what they have done.” Conditions for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank deteriorated even further last month after a large-scale settler attack on the village of Tel, southwest of Nablus city, on July 24, during which four Palestinians and two Israeli settlers were killed. Since the incident in Tel, settlers and soldiers have carried out daily, round-the-clock attacks, including mass shootings, physical assaults, arson, and land theft. Settlers have also erected at least 15 new colonial outposts on Palestinian land across the West Bank, with the vocal backing of top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who announced a series of steps that included “accelerating the legalization of farm outposts and establishment of new ones.” Back in Qusra, residents are terrified. “I keep thinking about what happened to the Al-Tubassi family and praying that we can outlast this,” said Ruqayya. Wadi, the Qusra mayor, is equally concerned. “We fear that this siege will become the new reality in the occupied West Bank, that Qusra will be another precedent for all the villages,” Wadi said. He also recounted that his older brother and nephew were murdered by armed settlers on October 12, 2023, during a funeral for four other Palestinians killed in the village also by settlers the prior day. Some warn that the unrelenting settler-colonial violence may be reaching a tipping point. “The distance between the Palestinian people in the West Bank and massacres, is a question of when—not if,” said Abu Ghosh. “When the knife reaches the throats of Palestinians, they will have no choice but to resist with whatever means are available to them.”
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