Palestinian family survives deliberate arson attempt by settlers east of Ramallah

The family of citizen Muhammad Yousef Kaabneh was subjected to an attempted mass murder at dawn today, Saturday, after a group of settlers set fire to their residential structure in the village of Taybeh, east of Ramallah city. Local sources reported that the attackers infiltrated the vicinity of the house and cut the protective fence before throwing highly flammable materials at the dwelling where the family lives with their four children.

The sources stated that the family managed to escape from the tin and wood structure at the last minute, as the swift response of the residents and night watch committees prevented a certain massacre. Residents succeeded in controlling and extinguishing the fire before it consumed the entire contents of the house, amidst a state of panic that prevailed among the children who miraculously escaped the flames.

This crime comes in the context of a series of systematic attacks carried out by settlers against Palestinian communities east of Ramallah, with the aim of terrorizing residents and forcing them into forced displacement from their lands. These attacks are similar to the displacement policies implemented by settlers in various areas of the occupied West Bank under the direct protection of the occupation army forces.

In the southern West Bank, settlers attacked the homes of citizens in the Khillet al-Homs area of Yatta town, resulting in injuries to a number of Palestinians, including bruises and suffocation cases due to pepper spray being sprayed on their faces. Instead of pursuing the attackers, occupation soldiers arrested one of the injured Palestinians to secure the safe withdrawal of the settlers from the targeted area.

The attacks were not limited to Ramallah and Hebron but extended to include organized attacks on the Yarza area in the northern Jordan Valley and Idhna town west of Hebron, where a number of citizens sustained various injuries. These simultaneous attacks reflect the widening scope of settler violence, which has been targeting Palestinian villages and towns daily with clear field coordination.

For its part, the National Office for the Defense of Land and Resistance to Settlement revealed in its weekly report a dangerous escalation in official settlement policies. The report clarified that the occupation army uses military orders as a primary tool to expand existing settlements and legitimize new pastoral outposts at the expense of the private lands of Palestinian citizens.

The report indicated that more than 113 military orders have been issued since October 7, 2023, a record number equivalent to the volume of orders issued over the past twenty years combined. These decisions aim to impose a new geographical reality that facilitates the annexation of vast areas of the West Bank and undermines any possibility of Palestinian geographical contiguity.

The family miraculously survived as the children were evacuated immediately upon noticing the fire in the residential structure, with the night watch preventing a humanitarian catastrophe.