TEL AVIV — Dozens of Jewish settlers repulsed an attempt by Israeli security forces to return a Palestinian family to its home in the occupied West Bank before setting fire to its property and car. Several Israeli border police officers were injured, the Israeli military said in a statement. The Tubassi family was forced to leave its home in July following a weekslong siege by violent settlers in the West Bank town of Jalud.
But after security forces tried to enforce an order by Israel’s High Court of Justice to facilitate the family’s return Monday night, an extended and violent confrontation ensued, Mahmoud Tubassi, 60, said. Death came very close to us at the hands of the settlers.” It is the second time that Tubassi and his wife, Aida Ahmed Abdullah, 51, have suffered at the hands of Jewish settlers in just over a month. On Aug. 28, masked settlers attacked and injured them and an NBC News crew that was interviewing them.
The crew were injured and Abdullah was beaten unconscious but has since recovered. Tubassi said their latest ordeal began just before midnight Monday when Abdel Azim Wadi, the mayor of the nearby village of Qusra, which has also faced serious settler violence, told him that Israeli officials would accompany him, his wife and their son Wael Tubassi, 33, to their home in Jalud. After they were picked up by four Israeli vehicles, they were driven the short distance to their home — two structures that sit in a small walled compound atop a hill, he said.
As the family arrived, settlers started throwing stones at the armed police and military, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades, he said. Describing the violence as “severe,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that “violent rioters began arriving” after the Tubassis entered their home. The IDF did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on whether stun grenades and tear gas had been used to try to disperse the rioters.
After the settlers entered the property, Tubassi said, his family was urged by the Israeli security forces to go to the roof, where the settlers followed them. Several of the soldiers and officers formed a physical barrier between the family and the settlers, Tubassi said. Tubassi said the security officials told them to get back in an armored car and drove them to safety.
The security forces’ failure to return the Tubassis to their home comes as settler violence in the occupied West Bank has become a growing international embarrassment for Israeli leaders, who have struggled to explain how Israel’s formidable military has repeatedly found itself outmatched by hundreds of lightly armed young men. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attacks in a statement Tuesday and called on the rioters to be prosecuted. The “handful of rioters are not representative of the law-abiding settler public in Judea and Samaria,” he said, using the biblical and historical term for the West Bank.
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