JORDAN VALLEY, (Palestine Foundation Information Center), Israeli forces and settlers laid siege to a Palestinian Bedouin community in the village of Atuf, northwest of Tubas, while other settlers set fire to homes in the hamlet of Khirbet Yarza in the northern Jordan Valley.
Local official Moataz Bisharat reported on Wednesday that a horde of extremist Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers sealed off all the entrances and roads leading to the Bedouin community east of Atuf, effectively besieging 30 Palestinian families comprising more than 180 individuals.
Bisharat explained that the families are now “completely besieged,” with over 12,000 head of livestock denied water and thousands of dunums of farmland left unirrigated.
He called for urgent action to stop this Israeli crime against the community, describing the situation in the West Bank as “a new Nakba (catastrophe) for the Palestinian people.”
In another incident, Bisharat said that settlers set fire on Tuesday evening to several homes and structures in Khirbet Yarza, in the Tubas Governorate, after their residents had earlier been forced to leave the area amid repeated settler attacks.
He explained that the Khirbet Yarza families were compelled to depart, leaving behind 22 structures, including houses, tents, livestock shelters, and mobile sanitary units.
Al‑Baidar Human Rights Organization reported that 11 Palestinian families started evacuating their homes in Khirbet Yarza last Sunday amid escalating settler assaults, and finished taking their belongings on Tuesday.
The rights group said that extremist settler groups succeeded in driving the families out of their community, affirming that what happened to them was part of an “ethnic cleansing policy” being pursued by Israel in Tubas and the Jordan Valley.
The rights group also said that a horde of settlers assaulted foreign activists and a Palestinian citizen on Tuesday evening in the Hammamat al‑Malih area of the northern Jordan Valley, as part of repeated assaults targeting Palestinian communities in the region.
For its part, the Palestinian news agency WAFA said yesterday that settlers attacked Palestinian citizens with pepper spray near the rotary of Mikhmas, north of Ramallah, injuring a number of them before local residents intervened and fended off the assailants.
