A West Bank Village Destroyed

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A West Bank Village Destroyed
Israel sent tanks to Jenin on Feb. 23, the first time it has done so in the West Bank since the second intifada in 2002. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images)

Reposted from Haaretz, March 29, 2025

At 2 A.M. Saturday morning, 140 soldiers and settlers, in uniform or in their Shabbat attire, raided the small village called Jinba, in the South Hebron hills. The raiders split up into groups of seven. According to villagers’ testimonies, each group was equipped with a 5-kilogram sledgehammer and assigned to a house. The soldiers-settlers woke up the occupants of the houses they entered, herded them into one corner, and proceeded to destroy the house.

“They broke TVs, fridges, cameras; they broke the toilets and tore out faucets. They removed food from pantries and spilled olive oil, rice, and wheat on the ground. They took all the labane and butter and poured it out. After one group finished, they switched places, and another group of soldiers arrived, and destroyed what was left,” Nidal Younis, the head of the village council, told Haaretz.

The villagers, who had finished fasting on the last day of Ramadan, did not have time to have their festive pre-dawn suhoor meal. No food remained in the village, and in any case the soldiers only left at half past six. The IDF confirmed that “a search operation for weapons” had taken place in the village, but it was not specified whether any had been found, why settlers had taken part in the assault, or why it was necessary to destroy the homes of 260 villagers.

The destruction of Jinba by the army, in cooperation with settlers, was the culmination of a week of vicious violence by terrorists from settler outposts, with the backing of the army, against this small village.

On Friday morning, settlers claimed Palestinians had attacked a Jewish shepherd. Haaretz has evidence showing the alleged victim had come on an all-terrain vehicle in order to harass a flock of sheep and the shepherds tending them. In any case, in response to this alleged assault, 13 young masked Jewish men invaded the village and brutally attacked six villagers. A 15-year-old was hospitalized in serious condition, and a 64-year-old man was hospitalized with a fractured skull.

Israeli occupation army bulldozers destroyed infrastructure and sewage networks in the town of Qabatiya, south of the city of Jenin in the West Bank on 23 February 2025
Israeli occupation army bulldozers destroyed infrastructure and sewage networks in the town of Qabatiya, south of the city of Jenin in the West Bank on 23 February 2025 (Nasser Ishtayeh/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Later that day, dozens of soldiers raided the village and detained all the men there. The police claimed the men had been “actively involved” in assaulting the Jewish shepherd. Twenty-two of the men were handcuffed and blindfolded. Seventeen of them were released at midnight, but the villagers’ relief was short-lived. Just after 2 A.M., the soldiers-settlers came back.

There are no words in Hebrew to describe the horror and cruelty of Israel’s policy toward the residents of the Masafer Yatta area, which includes this village. The criminals are the settlers who perpetrate these crimes, the officers, soldiers, and policemen who allow them to do as they please and then lie to the public, and the cabinet members who encourage all this.

However, the ultimate responsibility for these crimes lies with the entire Israeli public: the media that ignores these actions, the politicians who stay silent, the judges who roll their eyes, and the entire public. Other than a handful of activists, organizations, and a few leftist politicians who stand by the residents of Masafer Yatta, no Israeli can claim that his or her hands are clean.

The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.

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