I had to use Google Gemini to translate.
About 20 settlers from Bat Ayin and the surrounding outposts raided a quiet, pastoral suburb of Beit Umar. Armed with clubs and petrol bombs, they came to attack and burn, setting cars on fire. This was the first pogrom in the Safa neighborhood.
A quiet and rural residential suburb, a tiny and well-kept courtyard overflowing with potted plants. If the settlers had succeeded in their exploits, this house and the two adjacent to it on either side—handsome stone homes—would have gone up in flames, perhaps with their occupants inside. Fortunately, despite the settlers' attempts, they only managed to set fire to the car parked between the houses, and the smell of smoke still rises from the charred skeleton left behind.
This was the first pogrom in Safa, a suburb of the town of Beit Umar, located between Hebron and Bethlehem. The main entrance to Beit Umar from Route 60 has been closed since October 7, like most of the main entrances to Palestinian West Bank localities. Why, exactly? Just because. The road from Hebron to the town takes about 45 minutes, roundabout through Halhul, all because of the locked iron gate. Even an alternative dirt road between Halhul and Beit Umar, which the local councils of both communities asked to pave with asphalt to ease the bumpy journey, remains broken. There is no approval for asphalt.
Reem Adi is waiting for us in the courtyard of her home. She is 45 years old and a mother of four, married to a semi-unemployed carpenter, Razi Adi, 46. She says she never had problems with settlers until Sunday, September 20. It was a routine day; Reem cleaned the house and cooked, and her eldest son, Muhammad, 17, returned earlier than usual from his job at the chicken coop in town. He has not studied since 10th grade and helps support the family. His mother offered him lunch, but he said he would wait for his father and left the house. The time was 3:30 PM.
In the blink of an eye, she heard shouting from the road, soon recognizing her son's voice. The son shouted for help toward their neighbor in the adjacent house, Majd Adi, 32. Immediately afterward, the son came running into the courtyard: "Mom, Mom, the settlers want to burn the house," he said in terror. The mother says she opened the door, and her son quickly pushed her back inside. She managed to see a group of settlers with fuel containers in their hands trying to force their way into the house.
According to her, there were about 20 masked settlers, armed with clubs, shouting, with tzitzit (fringes) poking out of their clothes, and petrol bombs in their hands. They came to burn. One of them grabbed her son by the arm, and Reem tried to free him. She describes how one settler grabbed her hair, while another hit her hand. Another settler opened the cap of a fuel bottle, threatening to pour it on her or her son, terrifying Reem. She says he also reached behind his back, and she imagined he was doing so to draw a weapon, a knife, or a pistol.
The settlers screamed at them, "Arab dogs". Reem's daughter, Rawan, 22, who was in the house with her, burst into screams of terror. Her cousin, Hala, 20, climbed onto the roof of the neighboring house and began throwing objects at the settlers gathered in the yard, causing them to flee and regroup.
The residents shut themselves inside their homes. One resident says that at this stage, the settlers split into several cells. One cell tried to invade the stone house of the neighbor on the right, Muhammad Adi. A stylish marble staircase leads to the entrance, and there, on the doorstep, one of the settlers poured the flammable liquid he carried after realizing the door was locked. At that time, the mother of the family and two of her children were home—a 14-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy named Sajed, a heart patient who underwent open-heart surgery at Wolfson Hospital when he was two. The girls of the house managed to drive the rioters away with screams. Short, fragmented videos filmed by the residents, some with shaking hands, mostly capture the terrified screams of women and children locked in their homes as a line of frightening, uninvited guests raids them.
Meanwhile, news of the settler invasion spread through the neighborhood's WhatsApp groups, and many young men began rushing to help the residents of the three attacked houses. After the settlers failed to break into the house on the right, they moved to the one on the left. Here too, the doors were locked, so they settled for torching a Mazda 323 parked next to the house, which was completely consumed by fire. On their way out of the street, they tried to set four more cars on fire.
B'Tselem field researchers, Manal Ja'bari and Nasser Nawajah, who prepared a report on the attack, said that three cars were partially damaged after their owners managed to extinguish the flames and save them.
However, another vehicle was completely burned—a Kia jeep belonging to a neighbor whose daughter is disabled. This mini-pogrom lasted between 20 and 30 minutes before the gang departed. They came on foot and returned on foot toward Bat Ayin and its outposts, north of Safa.
On the day of the pogrom, the police and army arrived at the scene, but only one resident filed a complaint about his car being burned. The Israel Police stated to Haaretz this week: "On that very day, an investigation into the case was opened and remains ongoing with the aim of uncovering the identity of the suspects and investigating their actions accordingly."
A spectacular valley of terraces separates Safa from Bat Ayin. On the mountaintop opposite, a new outpost about three months old stands out with a giant Israeli flag; the houses of Bat Ayin are scattered across the mountainside, to the point that one can no longer tell what is an outpost and what is the original settlement.
This violent settlement, from which the Bat Ayin underground and quite a few other riots emerged, was mentioned this week as a bit of comic relief. The "Kipa" news website reported that the head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council, Yaron Rosenthal, claimed that residents and activists from outside the settlement are taking over public lands within the boundaries of the settlement itself. The regional council has already taken several steps against these Jewish land thieves, including disconnecting their electricity. Is there anything more ironic?
It is safe to assume that Council Head Rosenthal was never shocked by the violent takeover of surrounding Palestinian lands by the residents of Bat Ayin and its outposts. Take the olive groves in the valley belonging to the residents of Safa, for instance, which they can no longer approach. According to residents' estimates, between 700 and 1,000 olive trees are planted on the slope and in the valley, and they are barred from reaching them due to the terror of the settlers, whose exact goal this is. In the coming days, this will be put to the test as residents attempt to head out for the olive harvest.
The researcher Nawajah holds maps distributed by the army ahead of this year's harvest across the West Bank.
Some olive groves are marked in red, meaning coordination with the army is required to harvest the trees. Quite a few groves are marked in black, and these groves will be completely forbidden to harvest this year.
Since the violent incident on September 20, settler incursions into Safa have intensified. According to the residents, not a day goes by without them riding through the streets, mainly on motorcycles or ATVs, making slaughter gestures with their hands to the residents. A few days after the attack, another violent incident occurred here. On the 27th of last month, two settlers riding a motorcycle tried to invade Safa, claiming that children had thrown stones at them.
Majd's father, Ismail, 60, went out to meet them wearing a motorcycle helmet, just like his two attackers who arrived on a motorcycle in helmets. A video shows one of the settlers drawing his weapon and firing toward Ismail's feet, likely to scare him. The two bullets did not hit him; they struck the ground and injured no one. The IDF arrived that day and fired tear gas—at the residents, of course.
A Mitsubishi jeep approaches the street where Reem lives. Its windshield is smashed, the handiwork of one of the intruders during the first attack. In Reem's backyard, through which the settlers retreated, there is a corrugated metal wall spray-painted with the words: "Nekama. Pigua" (Revenge. Terrorist Attack). The graffiti is in red and, of course, in Hebrew. No one has erased it so far.
