There will be war over Judea and Samaria (The West Bank)
26 February 2020
What message did the settlers wish to send when they arrived at the Palestinian village of Yasuf, Nablus district, on 26 Feb. 2020, in the middle of the night, and slashed 14 car tires? The answer was sprayed on a building wall: “There will be war over Judea and Samaria”.
Residents of the village often feel that this war has already begun: B’Tselem documented an attack on the home of the head of the village council, Ibrahim ‘Ebayeh, whose house was stoned and its windows smashed. His car was also vandalized. On other occasions, settlers sprayed graffiti, burned cars and set fire to a mosque. It’s war.
On the morning of the last incident, around 11:30 A.M., members of the Israeli DCO arrived with military jeeps and photographed the vehicles. A souvenir.
Nazem ‘Obeid, a village resident and father of eight, recounted the morning of 26 Feb. 2020 in a testimony he gave a few days later to B’Tselem field researcher Salma a-Deb’i:
I woke up around 6:30 A.M. to the sound of knocking on my front door. We live in the eastern part of the village. I went outside and saw that the tires of my two son’s cars had been slashed and a Star of David sprayed on the wall of the house next door. I was shocked. When I woke my sons up, I saw the neighbors checking their cars and realized their tires had been slashed, too.
Our village doesn’t have a tire repair shop, so we had to drive to Salfit to buy used tires, because the slashing didn’t allow for repair. My sons need their cars, since there is no public transportation from the village to Ramallah. On the day of the incident, the three of us didn’t go to work. Now we’re all waiting for the Israeli DCO representative but judging from past experience, I’m sure they won’t do anything and that it’s just a formal procedure.
Yasuf, 26 Feb. 2020 – tires slashed on 14 cars, hate graffiti sprayed on homes.
- Damage to property (nonagricultural)