{"id":998179,"date":"2026-08-13T13:20:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T13:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/998179\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T13:20:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T13:20:20","slug":"idf-orders-then-reverses-evacuation-of-palestinian-homes-in-west-banks-kusra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/998179\/","title":{"rendered":"IDF orders, then reverses evacuation of Palestinian homes in West Bank&#8217;s Kusra"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The IDF on Thursday reversed an order for Palestinian residents of the West Bank town of Kusra to evacuate amid <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/article-905267\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">escalating violence by Jewish settler extremists<\/a> targeting local residents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Earlier on Thursday, the Mayor of Kusra had told Qatari media outlet Al Jazeera that the IDF has closed the village off, imposed a curfew, and deployed numerous soldiers to try to dismantle the settler outpost, while asking local residents to evacuate ahead of a planned operation in the town.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">In a clarification issued later that day, the Israeli military stressed that its forces &#8220;will not operate in the home of the Palestinian family located near the point where the shed was erected, evacuated, and dismantled.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ongoing violence in Kusra leaves residents feeling &#8216;helpless&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The ongoing violence in the Palestinian village of Kusra has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/article-905408\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">left residents feeling helpless<\/a>, with resident Marmar Odeh stating it was &#8220;the first time in [he felt] there was no law in the State of Israel,&#8221; in an interview with KAN Reshet Bet on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">&#8220;After the army left, masked men came to my house, searched me, and checked my ID. There were also journalists at my house, including Israelis, who saw everything and took pictures.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Tensions between Jewish extremist settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank escalated after a group of extremists imposed a makeshift siege on Kusra on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Odeh recounted an incident in which a little girl in his family accidentally broke her arm and was not able to receive timely medical care due to the chaos.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">\u201cThey tried to evacuate her in an ambulance, but the army turned it back, and the settlers wouldn&#8217;t let it leave either,\u201d Odeh told KAN. \u201cThe next day they obtained permission from the army again, and managed to get the ambulance in to take the girl and her mother to the hospital.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Footage showing extremist settlers running in the West Bank village of Kusra, August 12, 2026.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"822\" height=\"829\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/images.jpost.com\/image\/upload\/f_auto,fl_lossy\/c_fill,g_faces:center,h_537,w_822\/733786\"\/>Footage showing extremist settlers running in the West Bank village of Kusra, August 12, 2026. (credit: screenshot\/section 27a copyright act)<strong>Extremists set up tents, severed cables for electricity, water<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/article-905373\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">settler extremists<\/a> also set up in a tent in the village and severed electric cables and water tubes, creating difficult conditions for Odeh and Kusra\u2019s residents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">\u201cThey can&#8217;t even open the window of the house. They have no electricity, and they haven&#8217;t had water for more than two weeks. They had some water in the cistern; every house has a cistern, but it&#8217;s not the best water to drink from,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Settlers involved in Kusra violence &#8216;really need to be stopped,&#8217; Ben-Gvir says<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>National Security Minister <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/article-904361\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Itamar Ben-Gvir<\/a> told Reshet Bet that while he admires the settlers building outposts, \u201cthere are some among them who really need to be stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Yisrael Gantz, the head of the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council and chairman of the Yesha Council, described the Kusra incident as \u201cimproper and unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">\u201cThere is no place for making a private decision to establish a hilltop outpost in the yard of a house, even when it is an illegal house or an attempt to take control of the area,\u201d Gantz continued. \u201cThere is no justification whatsoever for violence against uninvolved people or against security forces.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Yashar Party leader Gadi Eisenkot denounced the settler actions in Kusra, and the government&#8217;s &#8220;negligence&#8221; in the matter in a Twitter\/X post on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">&#8220;In the face of anarchy and violent lawbreaking by an extremist minority, the government abandons IDF commanders to fight the battle alone,&#8221; Eisenkot said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The IDF on Thursday reversed an order for Palestinian residents of the West Bank town of Kusra to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":998180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[102899,99,16657,399915,50,31235,20605,39494,17262,47142],"class_list":["post-998179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-extremism","tag-israel","tag-itamar-ben-gvir","tag-kusra","tag-news","tag-palestinians","tag-settler-violence","tag-settlers","tag-west-bank","tag-west-bank-violence"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=998179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/998180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=998179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=998179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=998179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}