Meanwhile in the West Bank, over 1400 arrested and the world yet again turns a blind eye to the settler terrorism:
The man in Israeli military uniform sliced off Mohamed’s clothes with a knife, urinated on him, and then, after relentlessly beating him, they tried to rape him with a stick. He details the assault in the village of Wadi al-Siq, about 20 miles
northeast of Jerusalem in the occupied
West Bank.
Mohamed Mattar, 46, a
Palestinianactivist and humanitarian had come to this Bedouin community, to assist 30 Palestinians families that lived there. They appealed for help, as attacks by Israeli settlers
across the occupied West Bank had surged and become dangerously violent, in the aftermath of Hamas’s brutal attack in southern
Israelon 7 October.
There were reports that armed settlers were planning a “cleansing day” in retaliation for the Hamas that killed 1,400 people. And so on that day - 12 October - panicked families in Wadi As-Siq who had already been subjected to multiple terrifying armed raids, decided to evacuate. With Mohamed’s help they began loading the cars up, but before they could successfully leave, two pick up trucks packed with armed settlers and men in military uniforms, arrived.
Mohamed says the men, he identifies them as a mix of Israeli police, soldiers and settlers in military uniforms, forced those gathered to empty the bags gunpoint, and found kitchen knives among the belongings. Mohamed says they accused him of planning to stab one of them.
“They took me and two other men deep into the village so that no one could hear our voices. And then they took turns to hit us one by one for 2 hours,” Mohamed tells The Independent, while showing photos of his injuries immediately after the attack, and the scars which still crisscross his body. He was blindfolded and his hands were bound by metal wire which have left permanent gouge marks on his wrists.
He says one of his assailants – who he believes to be an Israeli settler in military uniform – then cut off his clothes with a knife, sprayed him with water, urinated on him and started beating him savagely with sticks, and a rifle.
My attacker lost his mind, he started jumping on my back to break my spine like he wanted to disable me. He kept shouting “All Arabs should die, all who don’t die, should go to Jordan,” Mohamed says.
Then the man tried to insert a stick into Mohamed’s anus, he says. “I fought him hard to get him off my back to stop him from assaulting me like this. He broke the stick into three pieces by beating me.”
In the end, after multiple calls were made to Israeli military, a commander intervened. Mohamed was released and remains wounded weeks later.
But the 30 families, comprising 180 people including 25 children, were forced to flee their homes despite living in Wadi As-Siq for more than three decades.
“They told us at gunpoint we had to leave,” says Ali Arrara, 35, a father of five, speaking from a tent in an olive grove in a nearby town where he is now camping with the other displaced families.
“I wanted to take the medicine for my immunocompromised three-year-old daughter from the fridge but they wouldn’t even allow me to do that.
“They destroyed the fridge and the medicines in front of me,” he adds.
The children, who now live in fear, and cannot stop crying. Behind him one of his sons, a six-year-old boy, is in floods of tears.
“My older daughter, who is four years old, was so scared. Now whenever she sees a car or pick up truck she screams ‘they are coming’,” Ali says.
The story of Wadi as-Siq story is not an isolated one. The occupied West Bank is fast “boiling” over, according to the UN, whose top officials have repeatedly raised the alarm. They fear a spillover risk from Gaza which could open another front in this already devastating war.
More here:
Bel Trew visits villages in the occupied West Bank and hears harrowing tales of settler violence in which Palestinian families describe being forced from their homes – in what human rights groups say is the single biggest land grab since Israel captured the region in 1967
www.independent.co.uk
