Nablus- Until late Monday evening, the people of Burqa village, northwest of Nablus, faced difficulty in counting the number of homes that were affected by the raids or the number of detainees who were taken to the field investigation center, as the village was subjected to a large military operation that lasted more than 20 hours, and was the longest since. The beginning of the year against a Palestinian village in the West Bank.
Until 10:00 midnight last night, the village continued to be stormed in an Israeli military operation in which about 300 soldiers participated, who came from several fronts and began closing the main and subsidiary entrances to the village, and those connecting it to neighboring villages, before they began storming dozens of homes, searching them, tampering with their contents, and completely vandalizing them.
The occupation soldiers also occupied citizens’ homes and took them as military points, while the Palestinian Red Crescent reported that at least 3 citizens, including a woman, were injured as a result of the occupation army’s severe beating of them.
The storming of homes, which was described as violent and sudden, was accompanied by the arrest of dozens of citizens, especially young men, and they were taken to homes converted into military barracks, where they were subjected to field investigations. Most of them were released, while a number of them were kept in detention.
While the specific goal of the military operation was not known, the occupation army dropped leaflets in the streets and alleys of the village warning citizens against continuing to throw homemade “explosive devices,” or what are known as “elbows,” and one of them said, “The fate of Burqa and Gaza will be similar if you continue throwing bombs.” And in another, “We will remain here until terrorism disappears.”
Violent intrusion
In the first hours of the operation, the occupation soldiers stormed the house of citizen Iyad Abu Omar, took him and his family out to the main street, and detained them for 4 continuous hours in the open and extreme cold. They began to completely search the house and tamper with its contents.
Abu Omar told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that “the soldiers took houses as military points, after they detained their owners inside them,” including his brother’s house, which was turned into a military barracks and a field investigation center throughout the storming process, which caused a state of panic and terror among the family members.
For his part, citizen Khairallah Hosni Yassin said that a large number of occupation soldiers stormed his house through a nearby garden, and not from the main entrance, and tried to smash the gate before he blocked the road and opened it for them.
Yassin pointed out that some soldiers detained him away from his home for 3 hours, while other soldiers stormed the house, searched it, and completely destroyed its furniture, amid a state of intimidation of his wife and children.
This is the same method that the occupation soldiers used with the citizen Bashar Pharaoneh, as they stormed his house and tampered with all its contents amid unprecedented “intimidation,” as he told Tel Aviv Tribune Net.
This Israeli operation comes in light of the occupation’s continued imposition of a military cordon on the main entrances to the village for several months and closing them with dirt and stone barriers, which caused the western neighborhood to be completely isolated from it.
The occupation army claims that its forces and settlers are being subjected to stones, shooting, and explosive devices being thrown at them during raids on the village or during their movements to the “Homesh” settlement, which they reoccupied since the beginning of this year.
A revenge operation paves the way for the most dangerous
This military operation is described by the activist in the village Sami Douglas, It aims to intimidate citizens to prevent them from any resistance operations to the occupation army.
In an interview with Tel Aviv Tribune Net, Douglas warned that the operation was “training and retaliatory” at the same time, to create conditions and prepare for a more difficult stage that would be more intimidating for defenseless citizens, “and to deliver warning messages that the escalation and punishment will be greater if citizens continue to resist.”
On November 12, the occupation army stormed the village of Burqa in a similar, large-scale operation that lasted a few hours, during which the occupation assassinated the liberated prisoner Muntaser Saif (34 years old) and arrested 3 other young men after the army stormed a citizen’s house in the center of the village. He was the second martyr in Burqa. In less than 3 years.
To eliminate resistance
In his reading of the scene in the village of Burqa, the writer and political researcher Suleiman Bisharat agreed with the activist Douglas in his opinion that the occupation aims to create conditions for a more heated and dangerous coming phase.
He told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “The military campaign on Cyrenaica has two primary goals. The first is its geographical location adjacent to the settlements of Homesh and Shafi Shomron, and thus an attempt to provide advance protection for these settlements in the next stage for fear that resistance operations in the West Bank will develop.”
The second goal is an extension of the first, according to Bisharat, and it stems from the Israeli occupation’s fear of the expansion of resistance operations in the West Bank after they were limited to cities and camps, and thus it may extend to villages and countrysides.
Bisharat adds, “This reminds us of the first and second Palestinian intifadas, which formed villages and towns as a complete extension of resistance operations and a reservoir of their youth involved in the resistance.”
The political analyst expected that the occupation activity and such military operations would extend to other villages and towns, especially those adjacent to Israeli settlements and military sites. He said, “The matter is related to the geographical location factor in relation to the occupation and that it is an incubator for resistance fighters.”
Bsharat ruled out that the incursion into the Palestinian areas of the West Bank and the accompanying intimidation of citizens is directly related to what is happening in Gaza, “as much as it is an exploitation of the circumstance to promote a new reality for the West Bank, and it may be a prelude to a future political phase in the way the West Bank is managed by the occupation.”
The military operation coincided with the occupation authorities notifying the citizens of the village of Burqa of the confiscation of about 34 dunums (a dunam = a thousand square metres) of their land for the benefit of a new expansion in the “Homesh” settlement.
Israel has reoccupied Homesh and intensified settlement there since the beginning of this year with the encouragement of the Israeli government for the return of settlers to 5 settlements and camps in the northern West Bank that were evacuated in 2005 along with the Gaza settlements by a unilateral Israeli decision.