Israel shocked by brutal attack on Bedouin women by settlers in occupied West Bank

Photo: Menahem Kahana Archives Agence France-Presse A view of a house in the Jewish settlement of Givat Ronen, south of the Palestinian city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on December 21, 2006. Deemed illegal under international law by the UN, Israeli colonization in the West Bank has continued under all governments, left and right, since Israel conquered this Palestinian territory in 1967.

Marc Jourdier – Agence France-Presse

Posted at 8:17

• Middle East

Lamiss Al-Jaar thought her last hour had come and still can’t sleep. The young Israeli Bedouin woman remains haunted by the violence of Jewish settlers that she and her family were victims of, and that has sparked indignation and solidarity in Israel.

On Friday, August 9, she left Rahat, a city in the Negev, the desert in southern Israel, by car with her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, two of her sisters and a niece for Nablus, a large Palestinian city in the north of the occupied West Bank.

“We got lost,” her sister Raghda Al-Jaar, 29, told AFP. According to her testimony, a man they asked for directions put them on the wrong track before blocking their path with his car when they wanted to turn around.

They then suffered, according to the Israeli police, a “serious attack” – “stones thrown”, “threats with weapons” and “setting fire” to their car – after having “accidentally entered” “Givat Ronen”.

Lamiss Al-Jaar says that a man directly threatened her little daughter Elaf with his weapon.

Givat Ronen, an outpost of the Jewish settlement of Har Bracha, south of Nablus, is run by members of the “hilltop youth”, as they call themselves, a radical movement of religious Zionism dreaming of making the West Bank a Jewish homeland in invoking the times of biblical Israel.

“A dozen armed settlers broke all the windows of the car” and “sprayed us with tear gas,” Raghda Al-Jaar continues in her father's house in Rahat.

“I said […] that we were Israeli citizens” and when one of the attackers “understood that I was talking to the police” on the phone, he threw a big rock at my foot,” she relates. “You will not get out of here alive!” ” he threatens them.

Five arrests

Her left leg in a cast under her black abaya, Ms. Al-Jaar, who also says she was injured in the head, gets around with the help of a walker.

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Her sister Lamiss, a 22-year-old childminder, shows her fractured fingers and talks about her “broken” back.

Along with their niece Hind Al-Jaar, a 22-year-old nurse, they said they ran away before being finally rescued by Israeli police and soldiers.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog called their father, Adnan Al-Jaar, to tell him he was “shocked” by the violence and to assure him that “all citizens of Israel are entitled to equal and decent treatment,” according to his office.

Descendants of Muslim shepherds who once roamed freely across the desert far beyond the current borders of the Jewish state, Israel’s Bedouin, like other Arab minorities in the country, complain of discrimination, even though many of them serve in the army or the police.

Saying he was comforted by Mr. Herzog’s call, Mr. Al-Jaar, who, like his daughters, alternates between Hebrew and Arabic, said that busloads of Jewish and Arab Israelis have come to show their support. “It does us good.”

Met in the family home, opposition MP Matan Kahana (centre) said he was “reassured that the majority of the Israeli people condemn this act.”

The police announced the arrest of five suspects, four of whom are still being held and the fifth under house arrest.

“Living together”

Mr. Al-Jaar, a 59-year-old truck driver, nevertheless fears that the case will end up being closed without further action, like so many others.

Deemed illegal under international law by the UN, Israeli colonization in the West Bank has continued under all governments, left and right, after Israel conquered this Palestinian territory in 1967.

It has intensified significantly, as has the violence in this region, since the formation in December 2022 of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right), which includes several far-right ministers who support the outright annexation of the entire West Bank, and even more so with the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip since October 7.

Rabbi Benny Lau, a figure of Orthodox Judaism concerned with openness, reported on Facebook on a meeting with Mr. Al-Jaar, emphasizing the aspirations of “millions” of Israelis wishing to “live together.”

A television star known for his right-wing positions, journalist Amit Segal, accused a far-right parliamentarian who had sought to shift the blame onto the victims.

In Rahat, Noa Epstein Tennenhaus, a 41-year-old entrepreneur from Kfar Saba, further north, came to show her empathy by bringing a gift for Elaf with her husband and four young children.

“I cried” when she heard about the tragedy, she told AFP. “I imagined myself in Lamiss's place […] being attacked by these monsters.” “Blind hatred will end up killing us all if we don't stand up to it.”