Israeli Press
Settlers cut power to three Qusra homes from a new outpost
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
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Settlers set up an offshoot of the Tel Talpiot outpost next to Palestinian homes at Qusra, south-east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli news site Ynet reported on Monday.
Abdelazim Wadi, who heads the Qusra local council, described what followed in a call with the site. "There are houses under siege, they cut their electricity and we cannot get food through to them," he said. Three households are affected.
Footage circulated from the site showed Israeli soldiers praying alongside the settlers who had put the structure up. The army told Ynet that commanders are examining the documented incident and that disciplinary steps will follow the findings.
Security sources told the same site that the military was preparing to remove the outpost. No date was given, and the families were still cut off when the report was published.
Qusra has been one of the most frequently attacked villages in the northern West Bank for a decade. The pattern the report describes — a structure raised on a ridge, then the pressure applied downhill on the nearest houses — is the mechanism this paper traced through the settler-violence figures for the first half of this year.
Those figures record 660 attacks, a rise of 63 percent, with 140 Palestinians wounded and six killed.
What the Israeli account adds is the sequence. The outpost went up, the power went off, and the investigation opened into the prayer, not the siege.
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