West Bank & Jerusalem
Settlers drove off Qusra's repair crews as soldiers detained the workers
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Qusra's municipality had coordination to send its crews up the hill. It sent two of them on Saturday — one for the water line, one for the electricity — to three houses on Ras al-Ein that have had neither since 10 August.
Neither crew finished the work. Settlers attacked the water team and drove it off the mountain, the town's mayor, Abdul Azim Wadi, told the newspaper Arab News.
We coordinated with the Palestinian Civil Liaison to send two teams to the site to restore water and electricity. Unfortunately, a group of settlers attacked the water maintenance crew, forcing them to flee.
Abdul Azim Wadi, mayor of Qusra
Israeli forces then took members of the electricity crew and blocked its vehicle. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA put the number detained at three; the mayor's account put it at four.
Fifteen people live in the three houses. Eighteen settlers were still posted around them after the crews were turned back.
The electricity was cut more than a week ago. Water and power to these houses have been cut repeatedly since December, and settlers have spent about four months trying to take the house at the summit, whose family keeps someone inside it around the clock in rotation.
On Thursday Israeli forces turned one of the three houses into a military post. The mayor said that day that the army holds sixteen houses in the town.
On Sunday soldiers blocked Israeli activists who were carrying food and water up to the families, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
What the siege has already produced#
Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa telephoned the mayor on Friday and instructed government bodies to give the town whatever they can, and to press the diplomatic file abroad.
Palestinian officials count 1,476 settler attacks across the occupied West Bank so far this year, and 87 Palestinians killed by settlers and soldiers. The United Nations has warned that time is running out before the three families are pushed out of their homes.
The week before this one produced an Israeli defence minister asking the army to hand the protection of Palestinians to the police, an American ambassador calling the attackers Israeli terrorists, and an Amnesty International finding that the state enables and funds the siege. The families on Ras al-Ein still have no water and no electricity.
