Israeli forces closed down Qabatiya village in the northern occupied West Bank overnight Wednesday, following an attack carried out by three youths from the village who shot and killed a 19-year-old Israeli police officer, and seriously injured another. All three youths were shot dead at the scene, but Israeli forces retaliated by closing down the attackers’ hometown.
Around 25,000 people in the large northern village are on lockdown. All seven entrances to the village are closed, and only a muddy path through a farm field remains open. Residents told Mondoweiss that if Israeli forces found that they had been using the path, it too would be closed.
To reach the village one has to navigate the muddy farm road marred with deeps trenches made by ambulances tearing out of the village to get the injured to safety.
While an Israeli army spokesperson told Mondoweiss that humanitarian cases would still be allowed entry and exit, the village’s emergency service center told a different story.
As an ambulance passed by the center, the driver slowed for a moment to tell Ahmad Sabaana, the head of the office, that soldiers had entered the village, and they were unable to make it to the dirt road. The elderly man having heart palpitations in the back of the emergency vehicle would have to taken to the village’s two-room clinic.
“This has happened a few times during the past two days,” Sabaana explained. “Gunshot wounds we can handle, but that is about it, our clinic is made for treating colds, not heart attacks.”
Ibrahim Zakarna, who works at the emergency center told Mondoweiss that he and his team have been working day and night.
“We don’t have a minute to sit down,” Zakarna said. “We are putting out fires, bringing medicine to people, bringing food to people scared to leave their homes, treating gunshot wounds from the clashes until ambulances can arrive. It doesn’t stop.”
Zakarna explained that one house, home to eight residents, sits just on the other side of one of the dirt mounds that have blocked the entrances to the village. The home was turned into a military barracks for Israeli forces and the rest of the village has no access to the eight people.
“They called us asking for help, we’ve begged Israeli soldiers to allow us to bring them food and supplies or allow us to move the family into a home inside the village but they refused.”
Clashes have been ongoing in the village day and night. During one of the clashes on Friday around 80 young men had gathered at one of the main entrances of the village that had been shuttered.
Protesters threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at forces, but the divide between the two sides at the front line of clashes was so wide, the teen’s efforts landed in the middle of the street, far from endangering Israeli soldiers on the other side of a large dirt mound.
Israeli forces responded with live bullets. In the photo here, the same young man pictured above lays on the ground, shot in the leg by Israeli forces.
Young men were scattered across the village’s streets, confronting Israeli forces at several entrances.
One young man said the clashes would continue until Israeli forces opened the village. An Israeli army spokesperson said the village will remain closed for at least a month. After a month of closure, authorities would then reevaluation the “situation assessment.”
“Because they closed the road, no one can go to work, so this is out work now,” Yassir, who did not want his last name or face published said. “If they want to do this it is fine for us, it will only make us stronger.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article referenced the three youths who carried out the attack as all being teens. Mondoweiss correspondents Abed Al Qaisi and Sheren Khalel have since confirmed with the youths’ families that two were 19 and one was 22.
Does anyone have the intestinal fortitude to compare israel to any other place than apartheid South Africa?
I suppose the residents of Qabatiya should be grateful for the benevolence of the IOF; at least they’ve left their homes standing. It’s just a well-favored, well-used IOF tactic in collective punishment – lock down 24,997 people for the alleged actions of 3 of its residents, who weren’t arrested but summarily executed as is de rigueur of the ‘only democracy in the middle east’.
These three terrorists were NOT teens according to Ma’an News Agency who reported “Three Qabatiya residents in their early 20s, Ahmad Rajeh Ismail Zakarneh, Muhammad Ahmad Hilmi Kamil, and Najeh Ibrahim Abu al-Rub, were shot dead during Wednesday’s attack and laid to rest Friday night.”
Moreover Israel has lifted the blockade of Qabatiya after three days. Apparently the town has seen around 10 residents killed in the wave of violence that began in October. With this heavy involvement of elements from the one town in terrorist attacks it was totally justified that the Israeli authorities put the town under temporary lockdown.
Israel needs to get out of the West Bank decades ago.
” the Universal Declaration of Human Right’s preamble (adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly Resolution 217 A (III) of December 10, 1948), reads: “Whereas it is essential if man is not compelled as a last resort to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”
” Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention of 1949, (Act 1 C4), passed in 1977, declared that armed struggle can be used, as a last resort, as a method of exercising the right of self-determination. One can hardly argue that Israel’s decades long occupation of Palestinian land, the full-fledged apartheid regime it instituted in the Occupied Territories, the loud violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the seizer of the land, the destruction of property, and most importantly, the refusal to honor nearly 70 United Nations Resolutions amid daily killings and assassinations of Palestinians, acts recognized by the Convention and by leading human rights groups as war crimes, qualify Palestinians, as it always did to fight back using armed struggle.”
Given the Palestinians depressing circumstances and the Israeli governments concerted effort to steal more land, Palestinians homes, integrity, live not difficult to understand why they turn to violence
Study: Israel Leads in Ignoring Security Council Resolutions
NEW YORK – Israel holds the record for ignoring United Nations Security Council resolutions, according to a study by San Francisco University political science professor Steven Zunes.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/study-israel-leads-in-ignoring-security-council-resolutions-1.31971
Don’t say that they “closed down” the village. That’s couching it in their narrative. Call it what it is. They put the village “under siege” as collective punishment.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military