After four days of siege on three Palestinian houses by a dozen Jewish settlers, Israel launched this Thursday — after intervention by the United States — a military operation to “protect the residents and maintain security” in the West Bank village of Qusra, according to the army. The troops, however, have not yet expelled the Israeli radicals (who have been roaming near the homes since Sunday), but have evacuated and taken over six Palestinian houses, according to the mayor, Abed Al Athem Wadi. These are the preparations for a campaign to end a siege that has been attracting international attention as the days go by.
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The settlers have even cut off water and electricity to three families, who are terrified to go out and afraid of running out of food. “We are completely isolated (…). The family is enormously terrified,” denounced one of the besieged, Qusay Abu Ridi, in a Facebook post.
The situation has put the army in the spotlight, which is preventing journalists and activists from accessing the houses, and which does not hesitate to forcibly evacuate its own citizens in other areas of the West Bank when it comes to human rights activists, and not settlers.
A video has been particularly revealing: when the Jewish radicals erected the proto-settlement (of the type that not only international law but also Israel considers illegal), the dispatched soldiers not only did nothing to remedy it, but prayed and sat with them, taking selfies under the tent they had installed, as can be seen in videos. The Israeli Armed Forces have announced disciplinary measures against them.
On the morning of this Thursday, the army sent troops to Qusra, demolished some structures erected by the settlers, and urged residents to “stay in their homes.” It also specified that it will not operate inside the Palestinian family’s house located near where the — now dismantled — tent stood. It makes no mention of the other two. The evacuees have so far been moved to other houses within the same locality, near the city of Nablus, in the northern part of the occupied West Bank territory.
The prolongation of the situation (added to the fact that one of the houses belongs to a Palestinian-American who lives in Ohio and has a brother and a son locked up there) has ended up involving the United States ambassador to Israel. Mike Huckabee is a regular defender of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, to the point of stating that neither really exists and refers to the territory by its biblical and official name in Israel: Judea and Samaria.
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“Act of terrorism”
Early this Thursday, the ambassador revealed that the Israeli army and police had gone to Qusra “at the request” of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. “The actions of those who carried out this horrible act of terrorism, intended to intimidate and harass this family, are disgusting. There is no excuse for such bullying behavior,” he said on the social network X.
The army had already appeared in Qusra the day before, with the Chief of Staff, Avi Bluth. It made an arrest and used tear gas, but left without dismantling the settlement or breaking the siege on the Palestinian houses, due to the resistance of the radicals.
The siege began on Sunday, when settlers blocked the access road to three homes and set up a tent in their front yards. They call it an “expansion” — less than 200 meters from the Palestinian houses — of Tel Talpiot, another of the mini-settlements that have proliferated in these last months of the legislature.
The Jewish ultranationalists who populate the most radical settlements have been increasing their actions to take land and expel Palestinians, venturing further into areas of the West Bank under the administrative control of the Palestinian National Authority, after causing hundreds of families (mainly Bedouins) to abandon their lands, due to the attacks suffered and the growing difficulty in feeding their livestock or cultivating their lands.
In the first half of the year, they have committed 63% more crimes in the West Bank — such as physical assaults or burning homes, mosques, olive trees, or livestock herds — compared to the same period in 2025, according to data from the Israeli security forces released on Monday by the public broadcaster. Cases have risen from 405 to 660, in a count lower than that kept by human rights organizations. Since Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in 2022, granting unprecedented weight in his coalition to the far right, the connivance or inaction of police and army towards acts of violence or crimes by settlers has become more evident.
