Sarta, Salfit District: Settlers enter village and hurl stones and stun grenade at homes and parked cars
4 January 2021 · Views: 2,073
On 4 January 2021, at around 3:00 A.M., eight settlers invaded the southern neighborhood of the village of Sarta, northwest of the town of Salfit. They stoned homes and parked cars, smashed three windows in two homes and hurled a stun grenade at one of the homes, damaging an outer wall. They also smashed two windshields and a side window of two vehicles parked in the area and damaged their tires. Their actions were recorded by a nearby security camera.
In testimonies they gave B'Tselem field researcher Abdulkarim Sadi the day after incident, the victims described the attack:. Mustafa Khatib (62), a married father of five, recalled being woken by a stone that hit the window by his bed:
A few months ago I had a heart attack. I haven't fully recovered and haven't gone back to work yet. Since my heart attack I've been sleeping in the living room.
On Monday morning, I woke up and stayed in my bed, which is by the window overlooking the main road. I heard noises and an explosion outside, and then a stone hit the window. It didn't penetrate it but got stuck between the glass and the bars. I got such a fright that I fell out of bed. I crawled away from the window. Meanwhile, my wife came into the living room and I asked her not to go near the window.
At the same time, my son Ayman, who lives in a room on the roof, came downstairs quickly because he thought our cooking gas tank had exploded. I told him to be careful and not go outside because there were people throwing stones and explosives. Ayman and I went up to his room to see what was happening. We saw two masked settlers running towards the olive grove on the southern side of the village.
Mustafa's wife, Sharifah Khatib (55), also told B'Tselem what she recalled of that night:
After Mustafa and Ayman went up to the roof to check what was happening outside, my daughter Hala (17) woke up in fright because of the explosions outside and the stones being thrown at our home. I tried to calm her down, but she was too terrified. After a few moments, Mustafa and Ayman came down and said they’d seen the settlers running away and that the neighbors had gone outside. So we also got up the courage to go outside and see what had happened. We found the tiles on the house’s outer wall charred and a stun grenade lying on the ground in front of the house. We also saw glass shards from the windows they’d smashed. The settlers smashed the windshield of my husband's car and damaged its tires.
In his testimony, Mukhtar Sarsur (35), a father of four, recalled:
On Monday, 4 January 2021, at around 3:00 A.M., I was in bed but hadn't fallen asleep yet. Suddenly, I heard two explosions in our neighborhood. I got up and went to the window overlooking the entrance to the house and the street, and saw four people with masks. Two of them were standing in front of my cousin's house, throwing stones at a car parked out front. The other two were throwing stones at my car, which was parked in front of our home. I immediately went to the children's room to check on them and saw that they were asleep. The neighbors went outside and so did I. I found my car's rear window and side window smashed, and three of its tires damaged.
- Damage to property (nonagricultural)
- Verbal confrontations and threats