US Press
The New York Times finds settlers back at Qusra after eviction
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
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The New York Times returned to Qusra on Thursday to report that the settlers removed from the village had come back, and that the two Palestinian families trapped in their homes were trapped again.
The paper's judgement, in its own words, was that the military's failure to keep extremists away from those families made clear the chaos gripping the occupied West Bank. It is a striking sentence to run in the newspaper Washington reads on the morning after its own ambassador called the men involved Israeli terrorists.
What the American coverage established over two days is a sequence. Settlers surrounded the houses on Sunday and cut the water and the electricity. Soldiers arrived on Thursday after the ambassador's intervention. The settlers left, and then they returned.
Between those two moments the army issued an order the Israeli press caught before it took effect. Fifteen Palestinian homes in Qusra were to be evacuated, the Times of Israel reported, as part of the operation to clear the settler outposts. Once the order became public it was rescinded, and the military said its forces had been instructed to let the village's residents stay in their houses.
Qusay Abu Ridi told that paper soldiers had given residents thirty minutes to leave and no reason. Residents said the soldiers took the memory cards from their security cameras, including the recorder that had been filming the siege.
One of the besieged houses belongs to the family of Loui Ridi, an American citizen from Ohio, whose brother and eighteen-year-old nephew were inside.
The families have now spent five nights on well water. Al Jazeera counted three households cut off from supplies as the settlers pitched tents at their doors.
Two American administrations have promised over two decades to press Israel on settler violence in the occupied West Bank. This week the pressure produced an ambassador's statement, one clearing operation, an order to move the Palestinians instead, and settlers back at the door by evening.
