\n For four days, several Israeli settlers have set up a tent four metres from the Abu Rida home, besieging the house. [Getty]<\/p>\n
A rare confrontation between Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday has raised questions among Palestinians over whether the clash marked a genuine attempt to restrain settler violence<\/a> or a carefully staged show of enforcement amid mounting international pressure.<\/p>\n The confrontation unfolded on Wednesday morning in Qusra, south of Nablus, where settlers had erected a tent just metres from the home of the Abu Rida family. The family says settlers have besieged the property for four days in an attempt to seize it.<\/p>\n The scene was unusual in a territory where the Israeli military has for years been accused of protecting settlers during attacks on Palestinians, including assaults in which homes and property have been torched and Palestinians have been killed.<\/p>\n But shortly after 7am on Wednesday, Israeli soldiers arrived and attempted to dismantle the settlers’ tent.<\/p>\n “The occupation army arrived at around 7am today, attempting to dismantle the tent that several settlers had set up in front of our home to seize it,” Qusay Abdulmunim Abu Rida told The New Arab. “But what happened was strange, as the settlers attacked the soldiers, who responded by firing tear gas and stun grenades.”<\/p>\n Soldiers dismantled the tent and confiscated a car and an off-road vehicle belonging to the settlers, Abu Rida said. The settlers then confronted the soldiers, recovered the car and fled along bypass roads used by settlers.<\/p>\n The confrontation lasted about an hour and a half. But any reprieve for the Abu Rida family proved short-lived.<\/p>\n “It is true that the army left after an hour and a half of clashes, but the number of settlers continued to increase until it reached more than 100 settlers at the site of the same tent that the soldiers had confiscated,” Abu Rida said.<\/p>\n A family under siege<\/p>\n For four days, settlers have maintained a tent about four metres from the Abu Rida home, according to the family, as part of what they describe as an escalating effort to force them from the property.<\/p>\n The settlers began digging around water networks before removing electricity poles and destroying cables supplying the house. They also smashed surveillance cameras and blocked the road leading to the property, preventing residents of Qusra from bringing the family food, water and medicine.<\/p>\n For Abu Rida, the tactics bear an unsettling resemblance to what happened about two weeks earlier to the Tubasi family in nearby Jaloud, where settlers seized a Palestinian home after Israeli soldiers intervened and helped remove the family.<\/p>\n “They want to repeat what they did to the Tubasi family’s homes in Jaloud,” Abu Rida said.<\/p>\n He said the pressure began months earlier, after settlers erected additional tents at an outpost established at the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n Abu Rida, his brothers, their wives and children subsequently moved into the threatened house, which belongs to his brother Murad, who lives and works in the United States and returns to the village for annual visits.<\/p>\n The Israeli army’s sudden confrontation with the settlers therefore left the family puzzled.<\/p>\n Just two days earlier, Abu Rida said, soldiers had prevented foreign activists from reaching the family with food and water, telling them that the surrounding area had been declared a closed military zone for six months.<\/p>\n The family says the designation is particularly difficult to understand because the house is in Area B, which under the Oslo Accords is under Palestinian civil administration and joint Palestinian-Israeli security control.<\/p>\n