- Give it to Eriqat
- BBC News Arabe
This Palestinian grandmother’s dreams of a peaceful existence are fading.
Amal Awad looks through the broken window of her house.
The house is a rough concrete structure surrounded by brush. It looks like it was built in a hurry, but it’s been there for decades, just like Amal.
This Palestinian grandmother says she is used to constant harassment, but the attacks are becoming more frequent.
On February 13, she says a group of Israeli settlers surrounded her land in the middle of the night. They smashed all the windows they could see, including those of cars and solar panels, before attacking the house.
They were caught on CCTV, ghostly figures carrying baseball bats.
“I fear for my family. I have small children and grandchildren at home,” she said. “They’re scared too.”
Amal Awad claims that the Israeli army demolished one of the rooms in her house a few years ago as well.
Amal lives in the occupied West Bank and says this is a long-running campaign of violence aimed at forcing Palestinians off their land.
“Recently, they started coming every other day. But usually we see them and call the neighbors to warn them that an attack might take place,” Amal explains. “But this time they came after midnight, after everyone had gone to bed.”
Palestinian officials say there have been 600 such attacks since the start of the year, a sharp increase from last year, when only 55 attacks were recorded during the months of January and February.
These incidents, commonly referred to as “price attacks”, are perpetrated by Israeli settlers who oppose the demolition of illegal Jewish settlements. The settlers want to penalize the Palestinian community.
The West Bank was divided into three areas as part of the 1993 Oslo peace accord. Amal lives in the largest area, called “Area C”, controlled by Israel. There is no Palestinian rule here.
“We called the police and the army, but no one came,” adds Amal, torn between despair and resignation. “So far, no one has come to check the damage.”
Violent tactics
Amal says she has seen the settlers grow bolder over the years. The first such attack on his home dates back to October 2021.
“The first time they threw stones at our house. We couldn’t stop them and we didn’t want the situation to get worse, so we didn’t respond,” she said.
“But after 20 days they came back. They used pepper spray and broke the windows and the fence.”
Jewish settlers attacked Amal Awad’s house in the middle of the night on February 13.
Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
Israel has built around 140 settlements housing some 600,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war.
As they expanded, tensions between the two communities grew.
Israel has also stepped up its search and arrest raids in the West Bank over the past year, saying it is trying to stem the tide of deadly Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis.
In a nearby village, Fuad Hassan, a volunteer guard, sits outside, looking across the field. He joined the Palestinian Public Committee, a group of residents that organizes night watch.
“We started in 2012 to protect civilians and their properties from settler attacks,” says Fuad.
“When residents see movement in the village, if they notice any activity, they report it to us. We monitor the area day and night.”
Fuad watches over his village but says he feels helpless against settler attacks.
With the exception of the Palestinian police in the areas it administers, Palestinian civilians living in the West Bank are not allowed to carry weapons. Instead, they say, they must defend themselves with torches and cell phones. When an attack occurs, they are also often outnumbered.
“God is our only weapon,” says Fuad. “All we want is for these attacks to stop.”
Last year, Fuad was injured trying to protect his neighbor during an attack on his village.
“There were only four of us and they were a big group. I must have had five stitches in my head.”
But Fuad was lucky. In 2014, one of the residents was killed in a settler attack. Fuad claims that the Israeli soldier present did nothing to protect the village.
“The Israeli army protects the settlers and not the Palestinians,” he adds.
An Israeli military spokesman told the BBC that residents like Amal can report acts of violence and that Israeli forces are required to act.
But according to the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, since 2005 only 3% of Israeli investigations into so-called “ideologically motivated crimes” in the West Bank have resulted in a conviction.
