Israeli settlers surrounded their home. They say they’re afraid to leave | CBC News

The recent siege of Palestinian homes by militant Israeli settlers in the village of Qusra in the occupied West Bank is far from an isolated incident.  

But the U.S. citizenship of one of the Palestinian homeowners has drawn more media attention than the near-daily acts of aggression by hardline Jewish settlers aimed at pushing Palestinians from their land typically receive. 

Ohio-based businessman Loui Ridi returned to Qusra on Monday, August 17, to protect his home – and his brother and nephew, who live there — as settlers encircled it and two nearby homes. 

“I called my brother and he said, ‘I have no food. I don’t want to leave the house, but I need food,'” Ridi told CBC news in a footagecall from Qusra after his arrival.  

For them to leave, he said, would be to invite the settlers to take his home. 

WATCH | Palestinian-American pleads for U.S. to help end Israeli settler siege:

“Just two months ago [settlers] were at my neighbour’s village in Jalud,” he said. “They put a siege on the family for a couple of weeks. And unfortunately, they managed to kick them out of their own house.”  

Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal under international law. They have expanded significantly under the current administrationof Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ultranationalist coalition partners, who critics accuse of giving tacit approval to settler violence. 

One of Ridi’s first acts after returning to Qusra was to fly an American flag from the roof of his building. He’s asked the U.S. Embassy for help. 

Qusra is about 16 kilometres south of Nablus as the crow flies and is surrounded by settlement blocs, including Migdalim and Shilo, as well as a growing number of outposts occupied by radical settlers. 

Settler attacks causing casualties or property damage are averaging about six incidents a day this year, as perthe UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs — “higher than in any year on record.” 

The violence in Qusra prompted a rebuke from the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who denounced those responsible as “Israeli terrorists” on social media. 

“We’re appalled at some of the things that have happened to families who are the victims of just criminal activity that is inexcusable and repugnant,” he told The Agencyin a later televised interview.  

“I don’t call them settlers,” he said. “They’re un-settlers.”   

Huckabee is a strong supporter of Israel’s settlement policy and of Jewish claims to a biblical right to the land, referring to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria. 

More than 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. Many live in large, long-established blocs, while others live in unauthorized outposts considered illegal even under Israeli law, at least on paper.

Huckabee has dismissed violent settlers as a minorminority. 

Critics say that ignores what they describe as a de-facto institutional annexation of the West Bank that increasingly relies on violence. 

“I think Mr Huckabee is missing the main point,” statedDror Etkes, founder of Kerem Navot, an Israeli NGO that monitors Israeli settlements.  

“The issueis not the specific house in Qusra. The issueis the system which produces this type of violence,” he said.  

“The idea that Israel can rule three million Palestinians in the West Bank through its military while more and more land is being grabbed and given to Israeli settlers.”   

At Qusra, Israeli border authoritiesand units from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were deployed. The IDF statedthe forces were deployed to restore order and remove settlers blockading the Palestinian homes.

“IDF and Border Police forces acted to restore order and remove the Israeli Civilians from the area,” an IDF statement said. It also statedillegal structures erected in the area had been removed and that troops would remain.  

Ridi statedIDF soldiers declared the area around his home a closed military zone and urged him to stay inside, while allowing one settler to approach his property and intimidate him. 

“I told the IDF guy, or the soldier, even though it’s a military zone. I’m on my property…. Your job, you were sent here to move that settler and arrest him.”   

On Friday, The Agencypublished a footageapparently filmed by Ridi showing an Israeli soldier throwing items from the balcony of one of the besieged houses in Qusra and another dumping things into a well on the property.  

WATCH | Israeli soldiers appear to throw items from balcony of besieged house in West Bank’s Qusra:

Israeli soldiers appear to throw items from balcony of besieged house in West Bank’s Qusra

Video obtained by Reuters, filmed by Palestinian-American Loui Ridi, that appears to show one Israeli soldier throwing items from the balcony of one of the besieged houses in Qusra and another dumping things into a well on the property.

For Palestinians, scenes like those contribute to an increasingly blurred line between soldiers and settlers. IDF units operating in the West Bank can include ideological settlers, and the military also trains settler security units.

The IDF referred a query from CBC News about whether any Israelis had been arrested in connection with the Qusra blockade to Israeli police, who have not responded. 

The fact that the settlers have not been permanently removed has fuelled a belief among Palestinians that the IDF is there to enable Israel’s settlement enterprise.  

“Because if the Israeli army wants to move the settlers they can move [them] in just one hour,” statedRabia Odeh, 22, another Qusra resident who lives on the other side of the village from Ridi. 

“But the settlers and the Israeli army are playing together, just in front of our eyes.”  

CBC News first met Odeh in the fall of 2023 after her family’s home was attacked by militant settlers from a nearby outpost on a hill overlooking Qusra. 

They threw rocks at the house and set cars outside it on fire.  

Four Palestinians were deceasedin the confrontation that followed. Two more men from the village were deceasedduring their funeral. 

Odeh says the outpost has grown since then. 

Now married and expecting her first child, she lives in a home equipped with exterior security cameras.  

“Even when I have to go to my mother’s house I check the cameras,” she said. “So if the settlers [are] outside, I can’t go outside.” 

Both Odeh’s former and current homes are on the outskirts of Qusra, as is Ridi’s.  

“What we see happening in the past month is that this violence is targeted more and more to the outskirts of Palestinian built-up areas,” statedEtkes.  

“To reduce the area where Palestinians can live, where Palestinians move,” he said.  

Settlement watch groups say the strategy is aimed at pushing Palestinians into smaller areas and making it easier to connect settlement blocs and outposts across different parts of the West Bank.  

“Qusra, this is probably, you know, one of the best examples of what we have seen in the last month,” statedEtkes. “But this is not something which happens only in Qusra. This is happening also in dozens of other Palestinian villages in the West Bank.” 

Settlement expansion is also continuing on a much larger scale elsewhere. 

On Thursday, Canada joined France, Germany, the United Kingdom and several other countries in condemning Israel’s decision to publish construction tenders for a new settlement known as E1, just outside occupied East Jerusalem.  

“The E1 settlement will undermine the prospect of the two-state answerby driving a wedge through the West Bank and harming the territorial contiguity of the Palestinian Territories,” stateda joint statement.