Ben Murane 🇨🇦

It’s the fifth day of the siege of Palestinian homes in Qusra, in the West Bank. Now, the IDF claims it is launching an operation in the village to “protect the residents.” We have a couple of questions: Dozens of settlers have besieged the homes for five days. Why didn’t the army stop them right away and instead chose to pray with them and stop journalists, activists, and ambulances trying to reach the family? The settler outpost from which the perpetrators came was established in January and has been involved in dozens of terror attacks. Why isn’t this outpost evacuated? The IDF has the capacity to impose a lockdown on entire Palestinian villages or even cities, demolish dozens of homes, uproot hundreds of olive trees, and forcibly displace tens of thousands of people. How come stopping a few dozen settlers from besieging a Palestinian family in a village where Israelis aren’t even allowed to be is such an impossible task for the army? There is only one answer: backing ethnic cleansing is the IDF’s policy. The army had all the tools to prevent the siege from happening in the first place or to break it from day one. Instead, it took an active part in maintaining it, both in Qusra and in Jalud, where a family was expelled after a two-week siege in July. And now, under tremendous international pressure, the IDF is still failing to even pretend that it is trying to confront violent settlers.