For more than a week, Israeli settlers have besieged three Palestinian families in their homes in Qusra, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, cutting them off from basic supplies and emergency services. Settlers used the same tactic just last month to force the al-Tubassi family from their home in Jalud. This time, however, with one of the besieged Qusra homes belonging to a Palestinian-American, the siege has become front-page news.
The United Nations, France, Spain and the United Kingdom have issued condemnations, and the White House was reported to be pressing Netanyahu to publicly denounce settler violence. US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, a staunch settlement supporter, broke publicly with the Israeli government to call the besieging settlers “Israeli terrorists”. On August 13, Israeli forces ordered the families to evacuate, saying the homes would be seized “to protect” them, and converted 16 homes in the town into military barracks.
Soldiers entered Qusra that day. Israeli forces briefly detained one Israeli suspect during a later overnight operation dismantling nearby outpost structures, but no other arrests of settlers have been reported. Amnesty International’s Erika Guevara Rosas said the siege reflected “an accelerating and well-documented pattern of coordinated and strategic settler terror, enabled, backed and funded by the State of Israel”.
For a second week, 15 Palestinians, including two children, remain trapped in their homes. Soldiers spent two days dismantling the settlers’ tent, only to put up their own in the same spot, effectively continuing the closure. Municipal crews eventually restored electricity and water, but the families say they have been told they can’t leave their homes.
Speaking to Al Jazeera the same day, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese called Qusra the “climax” of Israel’s “decades-long rule of impunity”, saying Israeli officials “appear to be collaborating with settlers rather than restraining them”. Nonetheless, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the Israeli military to prepare a plan for transferring responsibility for civilian law enforcement to the Israeli police – a move critics questioned as impractical and warned could further advance Israel’s de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank. Rather than being encumbered by the global outcry, settlers have carried out similar sieges – with soldiers again standing by or actively assisting.
On August 16, in Beit Imrin, north of Nablus – a village nominally under full Palestinian civil and security control – settlers besieged a home for more than three hours, blocking residents and ambulances from reaching those inside. Israeli forces then raided the house themselves, arrested all nine people inside, and withdrew. Soldiers separately blocked Palestine Red Crescent crews from the area and confiscated their ambulance keys.
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