[News] Settlers burn Palestinian village, deliver Israel's arsonist agenda

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/settlers-burn-palestinian-village-deliver-israels-arsonist-agenda>
Settlers burn Palestinian village, deliver Israel's arsonist agenda

Maureen Clare Murphy
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy> - 27 May 2023
------------------------------

A broken window at a home in Burqa village, near the northern West Bank
city of Nablus, after it was attacked by settlers, 25 May.
APA images

A spike <https://twitter.com/ochaopt/status/1660583074764054528> in
fatalities, increased
<https://twitter.com/ochaopt/status/1661035924900261890> settler attacks
against Palestinian communities, moves to further restrict
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/bill-to-bar-flying-of-enemy-flags-passes-initial-reading-in-knesset/>
the political rights of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line, a
revival
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-stares-failure-face-again/37756>
of the assassination of Palestinian faction leaders: five months into its
existence, Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, however fragile and
fractious, is delivering on its hard-line agenda
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/taking-apartheid-new-extremes/36986>
.

None of these policies are new, of course. But with Israel’s most openly
extremist government yet, and third states providing for an environment of
near total impunity, the situation on the ground for Palestinians has
become ever more dangerous.

This week, the Israeli government passed a budget that, in the words of Al
Jazeera
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/24/good-for-all-israel-passes-controversial-pro-settler-budget>,
“solidifies the ruling coalition’s religious, pro-settlement agenda” for
the next two years.

After weeks of negotiations, the budget was passed after a promise of $68
million was made to Itamar Ben-Gvir’s extreme-right Jewish Power party for
settlements in the Naqab and Galilee regions – areas in Israel populated by
Palestinians.

As the Associated Press reports
<https://apnews.com/78f777b5bedd532d80ad1ad40f476e29>, the budget also
allocates “nearly $4 billion in discretionary funds, much of it for
ultra-Orthodox and pro-settler parties.”

This will allow “hard-line pro-settler parties to promote pet projects
through the ministries they control.”

It emboldens figures like Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, who
has ordered
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-18/ty-article/.premium/far-right-israeli-minister-lays-groundwork-for-doubling-west-bank-settler-population/00000188-2de6-d6e4-ab9d-ede74a3e0000>
the government to prepare for the doubling of the number of settlers in the
West Bank, presenting his plans as a “core mission” for the present
government.
Settlers set fire to village

On Thursday, settlers in the northern West Bank began leveling land
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-25/ty-article/.premium/defense-minister-smotrich-approve-settlers-groundwork-in-contested-west-bank-outpost/00000188-5316-df79-a19d-f31e574a0000>
ahead of construction in Homesh, an outpost near the northern West Bank
city of Nablus built on privately owned land belonging to Palestinians in
Burqa village.
The land leveling commenced one day after settlers accompanied by soldiers
invaded Burqa, burning several homes. The Israeli anti-settlement group
Peace Now said
<https://twitter.com/peacenowisrael/status/1661769016086605824> on Thursday
that the groundwork “is the direct result of the pogrom that took place
yesterday … yet again, a clear example of a criminal government serving the
settlers.” Earlier on Wednesday, diplomats visited Burqa to “learn about
the injustice and danger the villagers face at the hands of violent
settlers from Homesh,” according to
<https://twitter.com/Yesh_Din/status/1661429331736907776> Yesh Din, an
Israeli human rights group. The attack on Burqa following the diplomats’
visit was seen as a reprisal by Homesh settlers who have enacted violence
against nearby Palestinian communities for years. Such visits, led by the
European Union, have become a ritual in which diplomats stage photo-ops
feigning solidarity with Palestinians while their governments continue to
offer Israel unconditional support and political cover for its crimes.

As the latest visit to Burqa underscores, these visits do absolutely
nothing to protect Palestinians.
Violent friction

Homesh, first built as a military base on land belonging to Palestinians in
Burqa in 1978, was evacuated in 2005 as part of then-Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.

As Oren Ziv writes <https://www.972mag.com/homesh-outpost-burqa-settlers/>
for *+972 Magazine*, “the Israeli logic behind originally dismantling
Homesh … was that it was an isolated community surrounded by Palestinian
villages and cities which required more resources than it was strategically
worth.”

Despite the withdrawal nearly 20 years ago, settlers maintained a presence
at the outpost, causing violent friction between Palestinians and Israeli
settlers.

Ziv adds that between 2017 and 2021, the Israeli human rights group Yesh
Din, which petitioned Israel’s high court on behalf of Palestinian
residents, “documented
<https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/files.yesh-din.org/burqa_homesh_2020/Olam+Hafuch_HEB.pdf>
27 settler attacks in the Homesh area, including both physical bodily
violence and property damage.”

In August 2021, settlers from Homesh abducted and tortured a 15-year-old
Palestinian boy, hitting him with their car and tying him to the vehicle
before beating him and roping him to a tree in an isolated area, where they
“sprayed him with pepper spray, electrocuted him, and then burned him with
the car’s cigarette lighter,” according to
<https://www.972mag.com/settler-attack-teen-palestinian/> *+972 Magazine*.

Rampaging settlers terrorized
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/settlers-vow-revenge-attack-palestinians-after-shooting>
Qaryut, a nearby Palestinian village, after a settler was shot and killed
in late 2021 while driving away from a religious school that continued to
operate in Homesh.

Palestinians in communities near Homesh have also been killed and injured
by the Israeli military. In March 2022, Ahmad Hikmat Seif, 23, succumbed to
injuries
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-03-09/ty-article/palestinian-protester-shot-by-israeli-army-last-week-dies-of-wounds/0000017f-e228-d804-ad7f-f3fa174d0000>
sustained during a protest in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in
Burqa.

Dozens of Palestinians were injured by rubber-coated bullets and tear gas
fired by the military in April last year, when thousands of Jews, including
several Israeli lawmakers, among them
<https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-army-escorts-far-right-march-west-bank-outpost>
Smotrich, marched to Homesh
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/19/palestinians-injured-after-israeli-settlers-march-outpost>
.

The Tel Aviv daily *Haaretz* notes
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-24/ty-article/.premium/eighty-israeli-soldiers-for-30-settlers-inside-homeshs-revival/00000188-4d63-dde3-abf9-fd6b18020000>
that following the killing of the settler in late 2021, Homesh “effectively
[became] a fortified army base,” with some 80 soldiers guarding 30 settlers.

In March this year, Israel’s parliament paved the way to formally recognize
Homesh, along with several other outposts, despite opposition
<https://il.usembassy.gov/settlements-in-the-west-bank/> by the Biden
administration in Washington, which says that a settlement at the site
between Nablus and Jenin would prevent a contiguous Palestinian state.

Israel insists that it is moving Homesh from private land to what it says
is state land – in other words, land that is de facto annexed in violation
of international law. Israeli officials admitted to their US counterparts
that the move “was in response to domestic political constraints and to
prevent Netanyahu’s radical right-wing coalition partners from
destabilizing the government,” the online publication *Axios* reported
<https://www.axios.com/2023/05/23/israel-homesh-settlement-palestinians-west-bank>
.

*Haaretz* observes that the supposedly “state-owned plots are not
contiguous and surrounded by Palestinian-owned land.”

Thus, even if the Homesh religious school “is moved to state-owned land,
the Palestinians are not expected to be able to get access to their land”
and the relocation “would risk greater friction between the two sides than
has been the case so far.”
Farmers attacked near Ramallah

Following their ineffectual visit, European diplomats condemned the settler
attack on Burqa this week, as well as a similar assault on Palestinian
farmers near Ramallah on Friday.

During Friday’s attack, a Palestinian man was shot in the head and
seriously injured, according to WAFA
<https://www.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/71972>, the official Palestinian news
agency.

Under the protection of Israeli troops, settlers burned several vehicles
belonging to farmers as well as 270 bales of hay.
The United Nations meanwhile protested
<https://ochaopt.org/content/palestinian-community-compelled-relocate-amid-israeli-settlement-practices>
the forced evacuation of the Palestinian herding community of Ein Samiya
near Ramallah.

“These families are not leaving by choice; the Israeli authorities have
repeatedly demolished homes and other structures they own and have
threatened to destroy their only school,” Yvonne Helle, the UN’s acting
humanitarian coordinator for the West Bank and Gaza, said on Thursday.

“At the same time, land available for the grazing of livestock has
decreased due to settlement expansion and both children and adults have
been subjected to settler violence,” Helle added.

“We are witnessing the tragic consequences of long standing Israeli
practices and settler violence.”

Nearly 30 Palestinian families left the rural village, their home for more
than 40 years, “after months of escalating Israeli violence,” Basel Adra
reported <https://www.972mag.com/ein-samia-settler-violence/> for *+972
Magazine.*

“Residents say they were compelled to leave after a fierce spate of
violence over the previous five days, during which settlers attacked them
at night, blocked the roads to the village, and threw stones at the old
homes,” according to Adra.

“The mental toll of the attacks, especially on the children, was the
decisive factor in the residents’ choice to destroy the village and move
away.”

While worsened in recent days, settler harassment and physical violence
against Palestinians in Ein Samiya predates the current Israeli government.

“Before this, settlers would come at night, parking their cars at the
entrance to the village. They blocked us from getting in or out, and they
beat anyone who walked on the road,” Hazem Ka’abneh, a resident of Ein
Samiya, told *+972 Magazine.*

Israel denied residents building permits and destroyed homes when villagers
would construct them anyways. Palestinians in Ein Samiya were not connected
to basic services like water and electricity, unlike Jews living in nearby
settlement outposts unauthorized by the Israeli government.

As Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip, stated
<https://twitter.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1661875009319575552> on Thursday,
the West Bank “continues to be vandalized, torched, robbed inch by inch,
its people brutalized day after day.”

And the arsonists heading the Israeli government are fueling the fire,
working in tandem with the settlers to push Palestinians off of their land.
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