Al-MUFAGARA, West Bank: Dozens of Jewish settlers swept down from the dusty hills, hurling rocks at a small Palestinian village in broad daylight, smashing windows, cars and water cisterns as families hid inside their homes and Israeli soldiers looked on.
Palestinians in this rural part of the occupied West Bank say last week’s attack was especially violent but not unusual. They view it as part of a much larger effort by Israel to force them off their land, including by cutting off vital water resources in a parched region.
Days after the attack — in which a 4-year-old boy was hospitalized after being struck in the head by a stone as his family hid inside their home — residents of the village of Al-Mufagara surveyed the damage. It included the smashed water cisterns on which the Bedouin community and its livestock rely.
“They attacked everything we have, our water containers, our animals, our trees, our houses,” said Mohammed Rahbi, deputy head of the rural Yatta regional council. “It was an attack on humanity itself.”
The hardscrabble region is in what’s known as Area C, the 60 percent of the West Bank that is under full Israeli military control, according to agreements reached in the 1990s. Palestinians say it’s nearly impossible to secure building permits, even for basic infrastructure like water and electricity. The military has designated an area that includes Al-Mufagara as a firing range, making it even harder for residents to remain on the land.
Israeli authorities have meanwhile tolerated the construction of two nearby settlement outposts that are illegal even under Israeli law, where those who took part in last Wednesday’s attack are believed to have come from.
After ambushing a local shepherd and killing a number of his sheep, the settlers — shirtless with scarves wrapped around their faces — rampaged through the small cluster of stone homes and animal pens.
Footage released by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem showed Israeli soldiers standing among the settlers as they hurled the stones. At one point a soldier threw a tear gas grenade and shoved the Palestinian who was filming the attack. “This is our home,” the Palestinian shouted.
Israeli police said they arrested five Israeli suspects, including a teenager. All have since been released.
The military declined a request for an interview. But its top commander overseeing the West Bank, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, last week held a rare meeting with Palestinian residents and said Israel is committed to the security of everyone in the area.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid condemned the attack as “terror” and blamed it on a “violent and dangerous fringe” that he said should be brought to justice. The US State Department also condemned the violence.
But rights groups say settlers have launched several similar attacks over the past year, with the military doing little to stop them.
“This is happening all the time,” said Hagai El-Ad, the head of B’Tselem. “Soldiers sometimes even participate directly in such assaults on Palestinians. And this is part of that bigger state project of forcible transfer of Palestinians from their communities in large parts of the West Bank.”
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 war and has granted the Palestinian Authority limited autonomy in cities and towns that make up less than 40 percent of the territory. The Palestinians want the entire West Bank to form the main part of their future state.
Around 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank amid more than 2.5 million Palestinians. Most settlers live in the more than 120 settlements authorized by the Israeli government, but more radical settlers have built dozens of outposts without state permission in rural areas.
The nationalist parties that dominate Israel’s political system view the West Bank as the biblical heartland of the Jewish people and support the settlers. Israel’s current prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is a longtime supporter of settlements who is opposed to a Palestinian state.
Israeli authorities are reluctant to evacuate outposts because doing so ignites clashes between soldiers and settlers, and successive governments have retroactively authorized 15 outposts. Israel subsidizes settlements and provides water and electricity to many outposts.
The Palestinians view all settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace, a position with wide international support.
Even as the settlements develop largely unchecked, the 1,300 Palestinians living in Al-Mufagara and the surrounding area, known as Masafer Yatta, are unable to build or maintain basic infrastructure. According to statistics published by Peace Now, an anti-settlement Israeli monitoring group, Israeli authorities approved around 1 percent of Palestinian requests for Area C construction permits submitted between 2009 and 2016.
“Israel is just trying to empty Masafer of the communities that have lived there for generations,” said Quamar Mishirqi-Assad, director of Haqel, a rights group that works with local communities.
Rahbi said he has submitted dozens of applications for new housing and irrigation projects that have been rejected. He says Israel only approves such projects in the nearby community of Al-Tuwani, which is outside its declared firing range.
A spokesman for COGAT, the Israeli defense body that grants the permits, said the refusals in the military zone were for the safety of the residents. Speaking on condition of anonymity under military guidelines, he could not explain why settler communities, including unauthorized outposts, do not face the same barriers.
This was not the first time local sources of water have been harmed.
Over the last two years, the military has destroyed nearly all the pipelines linking Masafer to Israel’s national water carrier, as well as more than 20 local wells, according to Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group. COGAT had no immediate comment.
Rural Palestinian communities often struggle with shortages. A report released Friday by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said 660,000 Palestinians have “limited access to water” and denounced Israel’s recent destruction of vital water sources in Masafer. Israel refused to comment on the report, saying the UN is biased against it.
According to Rahbi, most communities have built small pipes that connect to Al-Tuwani, the only village in the area connected to Israel’s water supplier, Mekorot.
But Rahbi said it isn’t enough. Residents collect rainwater during the winter months in plastic cisterns and purchase expensive water tankers from nearby cities. Suppliers often charge extra because of the poor roads.
During the settler attack on Wednesday, many of the plastic cisterns and pipes were damaged and will be costly to replace.
Despite the growing hardships, the Palestinians say they are determined to stay.
“People here are rooted, in love with the land,” Rahbi said.
In brazen attack by settlers, Palestinians see larger threat
https://arab.news/mr4z7
In brazen attack by settlers, Palestinians see larger threat
- Footage released by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem showed Israeli soldiers standing among the settlers as they hurled stones
- Even as the settlements develop largely unchecked, the 1,300 Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta are unable to build or maintain basic infrastructure
As Iran conflict spills over, Iraq’s Kurds say ‘this war is not mine’
- The Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language, are rooted in the mountainous region spread across Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran
- “This isn’t my war,” said 58-year-old Satar Barsirini
SORAN, Iraq: On a deserted road not too far from the border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan, Satar Barsirini looked up at the sky, now streaked with jets and drones.
Iraq’s Kurdish region has found itself caught in the crossfire of a regional war triggered by US and Israeli attacks on the Islamic republic.
Dressed like the Kurdish fighters he once served alongside, Barsirini still wears the khaki shalwar, fitted jacket and scarf wrapped around his waist.
Though recently retired, he refuses to give up his peshmerga uniform as he tills his small plot of land.
The rumble of jets and hum of drones “come from everywhere. Especially at night,” he told AFP in the hamlet of Barsirini, dozens of kilometers from the border.
He described the “shiver in our flesh” as the drones hit the ground outside.
“I feel bad for the people, because we have paid a lot in blood to liberate Kurdistan... We just want to live.”
Irbil, the autonomous region’s capital, and the valleys leading to the border have been targeted by Tehran and the Iraqi armed groups it supports.
American bases there have come under fire, as have positions held by Iranian Kurdish parties — the same ones US President Donald Trump said it would be “wonderful” to see storm Iran.
But Iran warned on Friday it would target facilities in Iraqi Kurdistan if fighters crossed into its territory.
“This isn’t my war,” said 58-year-old Barsirini.
He recalled the brutal repression and flight into the snowy mountains after the 1991 Kurdish uprising that followed the first Gulf War.
- ‘Dangerous people’ -
The uprising was repressed, leading to an exodus of two million Kurds to Iran and Turkiye.
“When we fled the cities for our lives, we went to Iran. They helped us, they gave us shelter and food,” he said.
The Kurds would not forget that, Barsirini stressed, adding that they could not just “turn against them” now to support the US and Israel.
“I don’t trust (Americans). They are dangerous people,” he said.
The Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language, are rooted in the mountainous region spread across Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
They have long fought for their own homeland, but for decades suffered defeats on the battlefield and massacres in their hometowns.
They make up one of Iran’s most important non-Persian ethnic minority groups.
A week of war has gripped daily life in Iraqi Kurdistan, residents told AFP.
“People are afraid,” said Nasr Al-Din, a 42-year-old policeman who, as a child, lived through the 1991 exodus — “thrown on a donkey’s back with my sister.”
“This generation is different from the older ones” that have seen “seen fighting.”
Now, he said, you could be “sitting down in your home... and all of a sudden a drone hits your house.”
“We may have to go into town or somewhere safer,” said Issa Diayri, 31, a truck driver waiting in a roadside garage, his lorry idle for lack of deliveries from Iran.
- ‘Shouldn’t get involved’ -
Soran, a small town of 3,000 people about 65 kilometers (40 miles) from the border, was hit Thursday by a drone that fell in the middle of a street.
There, baker Yussef Ramazan, 42, and his three apprentices, hurriedly made bread before breaking their fast.
But, living so close to the Iranian border, he said “people are afraid to come and buy it.”
He told AFP he did not think it was a good idea “for the Kurdish region to get involved in this war.”
“We are not even an independent country yet. We would like to become one, but we are nothing for now, so we shouldn’t get involved in these situations.”
Across the street, Hajji watched from his empty dry cleaning shop as the road cleared.
Before the war, the town was crowded as evening fell, he said, declining to give his full name.
“But after the drone explosion, no one was here. In five minutes, everyone left the street and no one was out.”
