Mariam Barghouti
Mondoweiss / October 20, 2022
Jewish settlers, escorted by the Israeli army, invaded a neighborhood in Ramallah last week, further dispelling the illusion of PA sovereignty.
At approximately 9:00 a.m. on October 13, settlers stormed the Al-Tireh neighborhood in Ramallah, to conduct Talmudic prayers and ceremonies. This practice, among other strategies, has been commonly employed by religious settlers as a means of providing the Israeli Supreme Court with legal grounds to take over Palestinian land, suggesting that those lands hold a Biblical significance for the Jewish people.
Israeli military protocol dictates that settlers must always be accompanied by an army and police escort, even though most civilian settlers carry arms and weapons themselves. This is one of the ways in which settler violence in Israel is fortified by the state.
The invasion of Ramallah neighborhoods by these settlers indicates that the settler movement has become emboldened in its goal of accelerating the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, especially after the Unity Uprising of last summer.
The Ramallah invasions are just one instance among many, as Israeli forces have also regularly invaded Joseph’s Tomb near the Old City in Nablus, and the village of Nabi Saleh. The striking surprise, however, is not in the attitude of the settlers, but in the tangible rupture of the facade of Palestinian Authority (PA) sovereignty.
No safety in the PA’s supposed capital
The PA Prime Minister lives in the Al-Tireh neighborhood, only a few kilometers away from the Muqata’a (the PA’s headquarters in Ramallah), highlighting how easily the Israeli army can creep into the main area of PA sovereignty without repercussions.
Just as settlers carried on with their ceremonial ritual, the Israeli army and the Border Police stationed themselves near Al-Narjes street, where they forcibly blew up the entrance of a residential building in order to send snipers to the roof.
Meanwhile, residents of the building itself were denied entry into their homes. Consistent pleas from observers and those in the area finally impelled soldiers to allow some residents into their homes.
In the meantime, Abu Ahmad, 41, held his three-month-old infant in one arm while taking breaks to stroke the sweat off his forehead with the other. He, his wife, and his 3-year-old were waiting for their three children to return from school.
“[The soldiers] want me to go through Betunia,” he told Mondoweiss, sweat trickling down his face as he was forced to wait in the hot sun. “That’s too long of a turn, and the girls will be home any moment now.”
The baby girl’s thin black hair was soaking in sweat. The settlers continued their ritual, as soldiers continued to obstruct Palestinians from moving freely in their own neighborhood, all to provide “protection” for the settlers.
“They said they need another four hours,” Abu Ahmad said, as he grew more anxious. Two young boys arrived at the building in Al-Tireh, to find that their homes had become temporary military bases.
Settler comfort at the expense of Palestinians
Earlier in the morning, soldiers had stopped a young man who was attempting to reach his home just down the hill, across from the location where the settlers were performing their rituals.
On one end of the car there were soldiers while on the other youth hurled some stones at the soldiers. The youth immediately halted stone-throwing the moment they saw the Palestinian car, humorously yelling “don’t hit the BMW, man!” The soldiers tried to send the man in the car away, but his purple orchids were in his lap, and he was eager to get to the house to celebrate his parents’ anniversary.
After holding the car up, and at the insistence of the young man to get to his family’s ceremony, in addition to the shouting of the youth, the army reluctantly let him through — but not without a military escort to make sure he does not drive near the settlers, one jeep in front and one jeep behind.
It was almost as if the soldiers wanted to make the settlers feel that the Palestinians around them didn’t exist. Over the past five years, residents of the neighborhood have reported an increase in these kinds of settler visits, and in increasingly larger numbers.
In the afternoon, in a similar incident to the young man with the orchids, two young boys were denied entry into their homes.
Cautious not to provoke the soldiers, who already seemed frustrated and eager to pull the trigger, one of the boys plainly told the soldier that “we live there,” his head motioning towards the building now occupied by snipers. The boys weren’t allowed entry, forced to leave the premises until the settlers finished.
Caps, sweatpants, a white t-shirt, tight-fitting jeans, and a motorcycle — the soldiers were no doubt familiar with this image, as it has become the adopted aesthetic of the generation of young boys facing off against Israeli soldiers invading their neighborhoods. The cap and the Adidas (or Under Armor) attire, set against their slender frames, have become the informal uniform of the rebellious youth who grew up on the streets of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jenin, Ramallah, and Nablus. It’s also the uniform that soldiers have grown used to profiling and targeting in their management of Palestinian movement.
The settlers’ ceremonial prayers in Al-Tireh ended by late afternoon. By then, several families had arrived trying to enter their homes, while some who tried to leave were effectively under temporary house arrest. The entire community continued to wait in trepidation, wondering whether the soldiers would decide to disperse the families and turn violent.
Eventually, the settlers finished, and were escorted away by the police, while the military lingered behind to secure their retreat, before it too withdrew. The entire neighborhood seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. But what remained was a sense of unease, knowing it was only a matter of time before the settlers returned with army vehicles and soldiers in tow, and this time in perhaps even greater numbers.
Mariam Barghouti is the Senior Palestine Correspondent for Mondoweiss
