West Bank & Jerusalem
Israeli soldiers turned back the water tanker sent to besieged Qusra
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Fifteen people in three houses on Ras al-Ein have had no running water and no electricity since 10 August. On Sunday a tanker of water reached the hill and was sent away.
Israeli forces intercepted a UNICEF convoy heading for the besieged families, let two vehicles carrying food through, and blocked and expelled the water tanker, Al Jazeera reported.
Qusra's mayor, Abdel Azim Wadi, said the municipality had failed again. "We were unable to restore electricity and water to the three besieged homes in the town," he said, two days after settlers drove his repair crews off the hill and soldiers detained the electricity workers.
Humanely, we have often heard about human rights, about children's rights, and about women's rights, but today what our families in Jabal Ras al-Ein are experiencing is truly stripped of humanity.
Abdel Azim Wadi, mayor of Qusra
The order the army wrote and did not enforce#
The siege entered its ninth day on Monday with the army's own closed-military-zone order in force over the same ground.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Monday that the order is not being enforced against the settlers it is supposed to keep out. Matan Golan wrote that footage showed three settlers walking up to the houses while a security vehicle passed nearby without stopping. The army did not answer the paper's questions.
Two children under seven are inside with the Abu Rida and Hassan families, and one of the children belongs to a dual American citizen — the detail that first moved Washington to complain.
Wadi has now counted nine army evacuations of the same outpost on Ras al-Ein in seven months, each followed within hours by the settlers' return. One house in the town has been turned into a military post, and about seventy Palestinian, Israeli and foreign activists carrying food and water were turned back on Friday.
Qusai Abu Rida, inside the siege, told the same channel that the families will not go. "Even if they cut off our food, our nourishment and our medicine, we will not leave here except as martyrs," he said.
