Oren Ziv
+972 Magazine / August 19, 2024
Palestinians describe the latest in a surge of settler rampages in the West Bank, and demand justice for Rashid Sidda as his murderers roam free.
As night fell, settlers descended upon the village. “There were more than a hundred of them — masked and armed with guns and clubs. They smashed the windows of my two cars and threw gasoline inside, setting them alight along with the entrance to my home. We rushed out with water to try to douse the flames. We had nothing to protect ourselves with except stones.”
This was the scene on Aug. 15, as described by Ibrahim Sidda, in the Palestinian town of Jit — the latest in the occupied West Bank to suffer a pogrom at the hands of Israeli settlers. Sidda was at home, enjoying a meal with his family, when the invaders arrived. “We are peace-loving people,” he told +972 after the attack, still in disbelief at what had befallen him and his community.
In all, the settlers burned three cars and four houses, but their violence didn’t stop at property damage: they attacked any Palestinian who dared to come out and try to defend themselves and their families, shooting dead 23-year-old IT technician Rashid Sidda and wounding five more. According to Ibrahim Sidda, it took Israeli soldiers around an hour to arrive and put a stop to the pogrom; another testimony published in Haaretz alleged that soldiers were present in the town during the attack and did nothing to stop it.
The following morning, residents walked among the charred frames of their cars and blackened entrances to their homes, in a scene that has become eerily familiar across the West Bank in recent months. Such attacks have surged amid the war in Gaza, with settlers killing six Palestinians in the first week following October 7. In April, settlers rampaged through more than a dozen Palestinian towns and villages in one weekend, killing at least three people and burning hundreds of homes, cars, and businesses.
There had already been a marked increase in settler pogroms going back to the election of the far-right Israeli government in late 2022 — from Huwara to Al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya to Turmus Ayya. Across the West Bank, Palestinians face daily harassment from Israeli settlers, often with the army’s backing, and at least 18 communities have been forcibly displaced since the war began.
What was different this time, however, was the immediate condemnations of the attack by Israeli politicians. Evidently spooked by the recent wave of U.S. and international sanctions targeting violent settlers and their organizations — and the looming threat that these could soon be leveled at senior government figures and state-funded bodies — Israeli leaders were quick to denounce the latest pogrom.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and MK Zvi Sukkot — himself a former member of the recently-sanctioned “hilltop youth” — were among the first to voice their condemnations. Yossi Dagan, the head of the Shomron Regional Council, declared: “We are already standing here against terrorism, facing political difficulties at home and abroad, and we do not need your acts of violence.”
Notwithstanding this flood of official condemnations, the authorities do not appear to be in any hurry to bring the perpetrators to justice; only one person was arrested in the aftermath of the attack, and subsequently released. Settler impunity has long been the norm: according to data from the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, 97 percent of police files opened into cases of settler violence since 2005 have been closed without convictions.
In his statement, Dagan also claimed that the attack was carried out by “young people who come from outside [the West Bank] and create violence.” But the testimonies from Palestinian residents of Jit were clear: the attackers came from the adjacent illegal outpost of Havat Gilad.
“This is the first time there has been an attack of this magnitude,” said Muhannad Sidda, who recounted seeing 20 to 30 cars arriving via the main road into the town. “We are surrounded by settlers.”
‘They came to burn, and there was no one to help’
“They had a plan, they worked like [they were] in the army,” Samer Arman, a resident of Jit, recalled of the attackers. “They came on foot and acted quickly so that we wouldn’t be able to defend ourselves,” adding that “some of them had long weapons.” Rashid Sidda, he went on, “was shot by a single bullet, but they shot at the youths with automatic fire.”
Arman confirmed that the pogrom was not preceded by any other incident, which Israeli officials also acknowledged. “There are no problems here, there was nothing,” he said. “[The settlers] came in the past, but the young people [in the town] came out [to confront them] and they left.” This time, however, “they came to burn, and there was no one to help.
“How do we stand up to armed settlers? What can we do? Even if the whole village came out and stood in front of them, it wouldn’t help. They want to scare the people so that we leave the village, that’s their strategy.”
Muawiya Sidda lives in a house on the edge of the town closest to Havat Gilad. His children were playing in the yard when the pogrom started. “When we saw them coming masked and with weapons, I took the children, put them in the car and we drove away quickly,” he said while standing in the charred remains of his living room. “If I hadn’t taken them, they would have killed them all.”
“There were dozens — some with weapons, some with [tear] gas and flammable materials,” he continued. As he testified to +972, the settlers first burned down his neighbor’s house as well as a car parked outside it, and then came for his home — smashing the windows, pouring gasoline inside, and setting it on fire.
“They do what they want,” he said. “The army stood at the entrance to the village the whole time, preventing the arrival of firefighters and an ambulance. [The emergency services] arrived only after we had extinguished the fire ourselves. The army fired in the air, and the settlers left.”
Muhannad Sidda, the uncle of the victim Rashid, also described a well-organized attack. “We were at home when settlers came from the direction of Havat Gilad. Residents were calling out for help, so we went outside. There were about a hundred [settlers], ready with gasoline and weapons, others also with clubs. They had everything. When the youth [from Jit] approached, [the settlers] fired at them at point-blank range, killing one and wounding another. They weren’t afraid.”
The residents of Jit were unmoved by the condemnations among Israel’s right-wing leaders, and are skeptical that the prosecutors will be brought to justice. “Netanyahu is all talk, he won’t do anything,” Leila Rashid said as she sat with the victim’s mother. “Look what they’re doing to the Palestinians in Gaza, and no one in the world is doing anything. [The Israeli authorities] want to get us out of here. They won’t arrest anyone.”
“We need actions, not words,” said Ibrahim Sidda, 55, whose home was also attacked during the pogrom. “The army says they’re against this violence — so do something. Here in Area C we are under Israel’s jurisdiction and security responsibility. Let them come and protect us. Stop the settlers. We didn’t come to them; they came here.”
For Iman Sidda, the mother of Rashid, “everyone is a liar, they won’t do anything,” she said in response to Israeli politicians’ condemnations. “Whoever shot him ran away. The settlers are protected by the army all the time. He was not only my son, but also a friend — and now he is gone.”
Oren Ziv is a photojournalist, reporter for Local Call, and a founding member of the Activestills photography collective
