Israeli settlers seen on camera assaulting a Palestinian village. Police
arrest only Palestinians
[March 29, 2025]
By JULIA FRANKEL
JERUSALEM (AP) — Over a dozen Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian
village in the southern Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday, beating
residents with sticks and rocks, in an incident captured with rare
clarity by security cameras. The video obtained by AP and testimonies
from Palestinian witnesses appeared to conflict with the account of the
attack provided by Israeli police and military, who arrested over 20
Palestinians afterwards.
The violence in the village of Jinba follows a settler attack earlier
this week in a nearby village in which Hamdan Ballal, a Palestinian
co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land," was left
bloodied and bruised before being detained by Israeli soldiers for about
20 hours.
The videos provide uncommonly stark images of the type of settler
assault Palestinians in the West Bank say now occurs frequently. They
say radical Jewish settlers rarely, if ever, face repercussions for
attacking Palestinian communities, while Palestinians are often rounded
up in droves and detained by Israeli forces.
Settlers descend on Jinba
AP obtained footage from two security cameras belonging to the Al-Amur
family, whose home came under attack. Footage from one camera shows a
jeep, an ATV and a white pick-up truck speed up to the edge of the
village.
A number of settlers pile out of them and run out of the frame, and the
screams of Palestinian women can be heard. The settlers then return into
view, and at least 15 of them ascend a slope, getting closer to the
camera.
Many are masked, at least three are carrying bats or sticks, and one is
armed with an assault rifle. One can be seen throwing a rock, then
bending to collect more.
The matriarch of the Al-Amur family, Oula Awad, said she saw the
settlers approaching her house between 8:00 AM and 9:00 AM, as she was
doing laundry outside with her daughter. Her son, Qusai, 17, and
husband, Aziz, 63, were washing up to prepare for Ramadan prayers when
the settlers pulled up in vehicles and emerged.
“The settler runs toward me and told me, ‘Don’t wave. Do not move
forward. We will hit you,’” she said.
In security footage taken from a different camera at the house, she and
her daughter, 16-year-old Handa, are seen screaming and waving clothes
in the air, calling for help. At one point, Awad makes a motion waving
her arms. It is not clear if she throws something at a settler rushing
toward her.
The settlers are then seen converging on Qusai. One settler begins
hitting him with a stick as he tries to run away. Another settler
smashes his head with a rock, sending him to the ground. Four settlers
then kick and beat him before running away.
Awad said the settlers locked her and her daughter in a side room as
they beat her younger son, Ahmad, and her husband Aziz.
“They entered the room and hit the windows,” said Awad. They tried to
burn the furniture. “My husband was standing on the stairs, and they
started beating him.”
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This grab taken from video shows a masked man with a stick, left,
beating Palestinian Qusay Al-Amur in his house in the West Bank
village of Jinba, Friday, March 28, 2025. (UGC via AP)
A video taken by Qusai and shared with the AP showed Ahmad on the
ground with a head laceration. Aziz lies nearby, his face bloodied.
Five Palestinians remain in hospitals. Aziz had a chest injury and
underwent surgery for skull fractures; Ahmed, 16, is in intensive
care. Qusai suffered a broken arm, bruises and cuts. Another
villager, Maher Mohammed, had cuts and bruises, as did his son
Osama, who was also undergoing kidney examinations.
Nidal Younis, the head of the Masafer Yatta village council,
witnessed part of the attack and was detained by police for two
hours afterward. He said soldiers who arrived on scene following the
attack prevented Palestinians from nearby villages from helping and
threw stun grenades at homes, a claim to which the military did not
respond.
Police and military provide a conflicting account
Following the incident, Israeli police said they detained 22
Palestinians from the village on suspicion of stone throwing and
brought them in for further investigation.
They said Palestinians had attacked two settler shepherds nearby,
minorly injuring them.
“The security forces view the series of attacks in the area
seriously, and will take strong action to bring those involved to
justice,” the police said. They did not respond when asked by the AP
why no Israeli civilians were arrested.
The military gave a somewhat different account, saying an Israeli
civilian had been attacked and injured by militants near an Israeli
settlement.
Then, it said “a violent confrontation developed between a number of
Israeli civilians and Palestinians,” injuring another Israeli
civilian.
Masafer Yatta was designated by the Israeli military as a live-fire
training zone in the 1980s, and the military has ordered the
expulsion of the residents, mostly Arab Bedouin. Around 1,000
residents have largely remained in place, but soldiers regularly
come in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards.
Palestinians and rights groups say Israeli forces usually turn a
blind eye or intervene on behalf of the settlers.
The war in Gaza has sparked a surge of violence in the West Bank,
with the Israeli military carrying out widescale military operations
that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of
thousands. There has been a rise in settler violence as well as
Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
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