Consider This from NPR - Palestinians Appear to Have Been Killed in Reprisal Attacks in the West Bank

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

More than 60 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in the days after Hamas' attack on southern Israel. Some of those deaths appear to be reprisal killings. NPR's Leila Fadel visited the village of Qusra in the West Bank where some of these killings have taken place.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. It's not clear yet how the explosion at a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday will change the course of the war between Israel and Hamas. Hundreds of people were killed in the blast, which happened the night before President Biden arrived in Israel on Wednesday. Palestinian authorities blame Israel. The Israeli military blames Islamic Jihad, another militant group based in Gaza, claiming the hospital explosion was a failed rocket launch.

What exactly happened remains disputed. It's clear, though, they're spreading anger. Protests broke out across the Middle East in response to the blast, including in Jordan, where Biden was meant to meet with King Abdullah on Wednesday. Biden canceled the stop after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas pulled out of the meeting. Biden did meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv in order to show his continued support following the October 7th Hamas attacks that killed more than 1,400 Israelis. The two leaders exchanged words while sitting in front of reporters. Here's Netanyahu. Mr. President, for the people of Israel, there's only one thing better than having a true friend like you standing with

Israel, and that is having you standing in Israel. Your visit here is the first visit of an American president in Israel at a time of war. The fact is that Israel, as they respond to these attacks, it seems to me that they have to continue to ensure that you have what you need to defend yourselves. And we're going to make sure that occurs, as you know. Biden addressed the hospital attack. And based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you. But there's a lot of people out there who are not sure.

So we've got to overcome a lot of things. Afterwards, the National Security Council put out a brief statement on X, formerly Twitter, saying in part, quote, Our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts, and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion. Neither Biden nor the NSC have provided any details on where that information is coming from. While he was in Israel, Biden offered some advice. You can't look at what has happened here to your mothers, your fathers, your grandparents, sons, daughters, children, even babies, and not scream out for justice.

Justice must be done. But I caution this while you feel that rage, don't be consumed by it. After 9-11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes. In fact, Biden was still dealing with some of those choices 20 years later. While most of the attention has been focused on Gaza, violence in this conflict isn't confined there. Consider this.

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in what seems like retaliation for the Hamas attacks. Coming up, NPR's Leila Fadal travels to a West Bank village that has been attacked repeatedly in recent days. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Wednesday, October 18th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University drives discovery, innovation, and creative endeavors to solve some of society's greatest challenges. Groundbreaking investments in neuroscience, climate change, Alzheimer's research, and cybersecurity mean IU sets new standards to move the world forward, unlocking cures and solutions that lead to a better future for all. More at iu.edu forward. This message comes from Wondery. Kill List is a true story of

how one journalist ended up in a race against time to warn those on the list whose lives were in danger. Follow Kill List wherever you get your podcasts. It's Consider This from NPR. In the days following the Hamas assault in southern Israel, more than 60 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Many of these attacks appear to be reprisal killings. My colleague Leila Fadl traveled from Jerusalem to the village of Kusra in the northern West Bank. What happened there, just days after the Hamas attack, tells the story of just how combustible tensions are right now between Israelis and Palestinians beyond Gaza.

Leila takes it from here. So we've just arrived in Qusra. This is an area where a few people have been killed in violence in the West Bank. And as we were driving up, you can kind of see the way this land is divided. Settlements coming in, Palestinians being moved out, and Qusra is surrounded by settlements. So we're here right now, we're about to meet the mayor. We head inside to meet Hani Aouda Abu Ala in his office. Can I ask, just in the last few days, what's been happening in Qusra? وهو قتل واستشهاد ثلاث شباب في المرحلة الأولى في المرحلة الثانية بعد هذا المسجد استشهدوا الثلاث شباب In the second stage of what happened here this week,

the soldiers came into our village and killed another person from Qusra, making the number of martyrs in Yusra four martyrs in one day. A few days later, when they carried the dead in a funeral procession coordinated with Israeli authorities, the mayor says they lost two more people when settlers shot a father and son. We are not against Jews. Let us establish this. We are against settlers and the ones who call themselves soldiers whom to us are not soldiers who defend us as citizens.

He says this is the worst settler violence they've seen. And he says the attackers came from a settlement nearby called Esh Kodesh, Holy Fire in Hebrew. But these attacks, he says, are not isolated incidents. The walls of his office are covered in pictures of settler violence he says Kusra has endured. The attacks on Qusra are ongoing and are on a daily basis. As you can see in all these pictures, we have an attack on a mosque. We have an attack on agricultural sites.

Wherever you look here, it's attacks by Israeli soldiers and settlers, the worst of which was the one we had a couple of days ago. The images show destroyed olive groves, a damaged mosque, a man killed, and protests. We leave his office and head to a gathering hall for the village. Inside, women have come together to mourn their dead. They cry, they hold each other, and they pray. And when pictures of the dead are passed around the hall, the wails grow louder. Hassan Mohannad Abu Sarur was 21 when he was killed last Tuesday. His mother sits between her aunt and her cousin. Their arms are draped around her shoulders protectively. It's too hard to talk about it. He is her oldest son. Abusarur's mother silent, and Hanan Aouda, her cousin, speaks on her behalf.

He heeded the call to help when the attack began. He was shot. They have killed our young people. They want to evacuate us from our own lands. They say these lands are ours, not yours. When we leave the hall, the mayor, Hani Aouda Abu Alaa, is waiting. He gets in the car with us and takes us to the limits of his village. He wants to show us parts of the land the residents here no longer use

because it's vulnerable to settler violence and harassment. We're going to go down because he's going to show us now the bigger picture. We stop at a hilltop. We're going to go down because he's going to show us now the bigger picture. We stop at a hilltop. This piece of land was supposed to be the site of a building. After these incidents, he's gone. His land is going to stay, but he's gone. And his project is gone with it.

He points at a higher peak across the way to show me the settlements that overlook this edge of the village. Ash Kodesh is right there on the left-hand side. In the center is a military camp. And he says the settlers, along with the soldiers, gather there and come down to attack us together. Then there's Rahel right there on the far right, and Rahel is expanding nonstop. So now for the safety of the farmers in this village, they no longer come here. We leave and end up at the house that was attacked last Tuesday, the place where many of the villagers were killed. The windows on the front of the home are shattered, the wood nearby burned, a car destroyed. Abu Alat blames Hamas and Israel's far-right government for the war and these killings in his village.

Settlers who want to attack Palestinians, he says, are more emboldened than ever. They had posted on social media that we will take revenge. These people are violent all the time against the people of Qusra and the neighboring villages. But the war empowered them as well. When you say the settlers are emboldened, what does that mean for the future of Qusra? I see the future as a bleak future. I see it as a black future. He wants it to stop.

When I try to understand what happened in the war, I tell you that these people in Gaza have been under siege for so long and have been killed in such a way. This is why the war took place. And if our situation continues here with settler attacks, the same thing will happen. People will start feeling the same way as Gaza. The more aggressiveness on the one side, the more is the aggressiveness from the other side. I don't agree with this, he says, but I address the Israeli people and say enough, enough, enough killing on both sides. The Israeli army said it was checking when NPR asked if the army killed one of these villagers, but didn't get back to us in time for this broadcast. We also asked the police if anyone involved in these killings of six Palestinians was arrested. No arrest, but they say it's under

investigation. And a lawyer who represents Israeli settlers accused of violence told NPR there have been many Palestinian shooting attacks since the war began and no arrests. It underscores what the mayor and the villagers told me, that armed settlers harass and in this case kill them with impunity. So while we were in Kusra, our colleague Ari Shapiro from All Things Considered went while we were in Kusra, our colleague, Ari Shapiro, from All Things Considered, went to the settlement where Kusra residents said the attackers came from, and he joins me now to talk about that. Hi, Ari. Hey, Leila. You know, Ari, in Kusra, we found a community that was afraid. They feel the Israeli military is there to protect the settlers and not them,

and they're particularly worried about attacks from a settlement, Esh Kodesh, when you met someone from there, right? Yeah, Nati Rom is his name. He got out of his truck carrying an M-16 and a Glock. Nati Rom said he needs his weapon to defend himself. And after we met, I followed up to ask him about some of the specific claims in your reporting. He said, quote, completely fake. All the dead people, the dead terrorists are from the bullets of the IDF after

they started the riot and after they shoot almost every day on Jews in the village. He said the men killed at the funeral were, quote, condemned terrorists that were involved in the lynching of children. Just to be clear, there's no evidence of anyone lynching children or being an accused terrorist among the dead. It's not something we heard from anyone, not the Israeli military either. And videos of the incident show what looked like unarmed villagers in Kusra getting shot at. So a very different story. Yes. And while there may never be closure on this specific incident, we can definitively say that settlement violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has increased dramatically since the massacre of October 7th. I spoke with an expert who's been studying this for decades. His name is Dror Etkes,

and here's what he told me. Not only the numbers, also the severity of these attacks, you know, there's a difference between verbal violence than to get into a community and to shoot in the air. Yeah, and that's the kind of stuff we were hearing from the mayor. He's really worried that these attacks that took six people from his village are just going to increase. And he described the future as bleak. What did you hear from people? What Nati Romabesh Kodesh said really stuck with me. When I asked him to paint a picture of the future he wants to see, he said, quote, you can't make peace with people who want to kill you. The future is, we'll be able to eliminate the snake.

That was NPR's Leila Fadal along with Consider This co-host Ari Shapiro. You can hear more of Ari's reporting from the settlements on All Things Considered. Visit npr.org slash all things considered and we'll have a link in our show notes. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. couples who were successful had a really different way of talking to one another when there was a disagreement or a conflict. How to be brave in our relationships. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR.