Huwara, a town in the occupied West Bank, is home to Palestinians who claim that an increase in settler attacks has caused them to feel unsafe when they walk to work, go to school, or go grocery shopping.
Worldwide condemnation followed a settler rampage through the town last month, which coincided with escalating tensions in the West Bank. Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin stated on a visit to Israel on Thursday that the United States was “particularly disturbed” by settler violence.
The West Bank city of Huwara, which is close to a checkpoint on a road connecting four nearby Israeli settlements and the cities of Ramallah and Nablus, has developed a reputation for violence over time.
Residents of the town and its surrounding villages told reporters that they felt helpless in the face of the uptick in attacks because neither the Israeli army nor the security forces of the Palestinian Authority were providing any protection.
Ghazi Shehadeh, a 58-year-old glazier, was installing a glass window into the frame of one of the dozens of recently vandalized houses. “I’ve lived in Huwara my entire life,” he said. These assaults are not new; however, they have become more extraordinary,” he said.
“I want to walk fearlessly. I want to take advantage of a getaway. I can’t any longer. We will be shot at or rocked by the settlers. Because the settlers are in the streets, we can no longer leave.
The Unified Countries Office for the Coordination of Philanthropic Undertakings (OCHA) recorded 849 pioneer goes after last year that brought about setbacks or property harm across the West Bank – the most elevated since it started observing cases in 2005.
Huwara Tension
Since a Hamas gunman shot and killed two Israeli brothers from the nearby settlement of Har Bracha while they were sitting in their car on February 26, hundreds of settlers in Huwara went on the rampage.
A Palestinian man was killed in the riot, and dozens of Palestinian homes and vehicles were set on fire. According to a police source, 15 settlers were taken into custody; the majority of them were released due to a lack of evidence; however, two were placed in administrative detention and investigations were still ongoing.
The violence was criticized by some parties in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who urged people not to ignore the law. It was referred to as a “pogrom” by a senior army commander, a term typically associated with massacres of Jews in Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
However, days after the frenzy, extreme right Money Priest Bezalel Smotrich, who has liability regarding parts of Israel’s West Bank organization, said Huwara ought to be “deleted”, before he to some degree withdrew the comment.
The settlers, on the other hand, consider Huwara to be a “terror village.” According to Nati Rom, a lawyer for suspects who were arrested following the attack, settlers were constantly attacked by Palestinians who threw stones at their cars and called for violence on social media and at the mosque.
On Facebook, a few Palestinians expressed support for the brothers’ shooting hours after it occurred, and in one post, they mockingly offered to sell the brothers’ car.
Rom stated, “The other side never needs to worry because they don’t have that.” “Our children have to ride in bulletproof buses, and our cars are rock proof.”
