Huwara is not a story of ‘two sides fighting each other.’ It’s the story of a regional superpower that tramples over millions of disenfranchised people.

Nawal Domedi looks at the entrance to her house after it had been burned in a settler pogrom in the Palestinian town of Huwara, West Bank, February 28, 2023. (Oren Ziv)

Haggai Matar, +972 Magazine, March 2, 2023

This article originally appeared in “The Landline,” +972’s weekly newsletter. Subscribe here.

On Sunday morning, a Palestinian man shot dead two Israeli settlers — the young brothers Hillel and Yagel Yaniv — as they drove through the Palestinian town of Huwara in the occupied West Bank. Later that day, hundreds of settlers went on an hours-long rampage through Huwara and several neighboring villages, burning dozens of cars and houses (some with people inside), throwing stones at ambulances, wounding Palestinians, and killing livestock. One Palestinian man, Sameh Aqtash, was shot dead, either by settlers or by soldiers who protected them.

The attack on Huwara, which many are calling a pogrom, has generated a public outcry in Israel against the settlers who committed it. Thousands took to the streets in several cities on Monday night to protest against the occupation and in solidarity with the people of Huwara. Israelis donated over a million shekels within 24 hours to support the victims. News commentators and members of Knesset from the opposition sharply criticized the settlers, the army that did not act to stop them, and senior government ministers who encouraged wiping out the town (one of those ministers, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, doubled down on those messages of ethnic cleansing after the event as well). Political leaders from around the world promptly followed suit. On Wednesday, during the massive “Day of Disruption” protests across the country, demonstrators chanted “Where were you in Huwara?” at police officers.

In response, many on the Israeli right and their lackeys in the hasbara world have argued that it is biased to “only care” about attacks by Jews on Palestinians, and ignore the killing by a Palestinian of the two Israeli brothers. There’s a lot to say in response to that claim, and the following is an attempt to do so, briefly:

1. It is tragic that people are killed. All people. Being human means caring and hurting when lives are lost. That is always true, and certainly in the case of young brothers. My heart goes out to the parents who lost two children in one fell swoop. If that is not clear to anyone, it ought to be, and to claim that people “don’t care” about these deaths is to dehumanize them. The claim is even more outrageous when it comes — as it so often does — from the same politicians who justify Israeli onslaughts against Palestinians and show little or no regret for the deaths of the latter.

2. There is an entire system in place designed to prevent and respond to the killings of Israeli Jews. An army, a police force, a Border Police force, a Shin Bet, even a Mossad if needed, and a whole state built exclusively to protect Jews. Palestinians, on the other hand, have no one to protect them. The army is often either silent in the face of settler terror or joins in and backs it up, as we have shown in the past in the case of joint settler-soldier militias attacking and killing Palestinians.

In rare and extreme cases, as with Huwara this week, soldiers may intervene and rescue Palestinians from their burning homes so they don’t die. Still, those same soldiers would never think to shoot the rioters, as they would have undoubtedly done had they been Palestinian, or even carry out mass arrests; only seven settlers out of the hundreds who participated in the attack were arrested — not for attacking Palestinians, incidentally, but for attacking soldiers — and all of them were quickly released (for the sake of comparison, more than twice that number were arrested in last Saturday’s nonviolent protest against the government in Tel Aviv, and more than four times that number was arrested during the demonstrations on Wednesday).

Even now, three days later, the army continues talking about the “hunt for the terrorist,” i.e. the Palestinian man who shot the Israeli brothers, but no one is talking about the hunt for whoever killed Sameh Aqtash, or for those who set fire to family homes in Huwara. That is why we need to scream out especially loudly against Jewish terrorists.

An Israeli settler tries to attack Palestinians in Huwara a day after the pogrom, February 27, 2023. (Oren Ziv)

3. There is a difference between actions by individuals from an oppressed group who kill people from the powerful group, and violence from the strong side that is carried out by the state or backed up by it. Pogroms like we saw in Huwara, just like the Israeli Air Force’s bombings in Gaza that wipe out entire families, are not a bug but a feature of the regime that we have created here.

4. Accordingly, our responsibility as Israelis for the actions of other Israelis, from the side that holds all the power, is not the same as our responsibility for the actions of Palestinians.

5. There is something deceptive in framing the story exclusively around the killing of the Israeli brothers in Huwara that morning, as if the settlers’ actions were a mere “response,” a tit-for-tat initiated by Palestinians. Just a few days prior, the Israeli army killed 11 people in Nablus, some armed and several not, in a brutal daylight raid; there’s no reason to “start the clock” only with the Yaniv brothers’ killing. Besides, Palestinians have been denied basic rights under the Israeli regime for decades — but this rarely, if ever, factors into the way these events are framed.

6. Which leads me to my final point: this is not a story of “two sides fighting each other.” There is no equality under apartheid. There is one regional superpower that has one of the strongest and most sophisticated armies in the world, and which enjoys tremendous international support while trampling millions of disenfranchised people under a racist military regime. The ultimate responsibility for everything that happens in this country, including the killing of the brothers, lies with the state that perpetuates this injustice and oppression, and on all of us as its citizens.

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Palestinians inspect the destroyed cars at a scrapyard in the town of Huwara near Nablus in the West Bank on February 27, 2023 after they were torched overnight. Photo by Shadi Jarar’ah/ APA Images

Key Developments (February 20 – 27)

• 14 Palestinians killed by Israeli violence in the span of the week.
  13 of the casualties were in the Nablus district, with 11 of them taking
  place in one day.
• 11 Palestinians were killed in a massive Israeli army invasion on Nablus city on February 22. 10 were killed by Israeli army gunfire, while one person, an elderly man, died of tear gas inhalation. Among the dead were seven Palestinian resistance fighters, while four were civilian non-combatants, including three elderly men and a child.
• One Palestinian, Mohammad Abu Sabbah, 30, from the Jenin refugee camp succumbed to wounds he sustained in an Israeli army raid two weeks prior.
• On February 24 Israeli settlers attacked the village of Qusra in Nablus, injuring at least two Palestinians with live ammunition. (source: MOH)
• Two Israeli settlers were killed by an unknown Palestinian gunman in the town of Huwwara, south of Nablus in the northern West Bank on February 26.
• Israeli settlers launched a ‘pogrom’ on the night of February 26, attacking Palestinian homes and property in Huwwara, Burin, and across the Nablus area, burning homes, cars, vandalizing property, and assaulting Palestinians.
• One Palestinian was killed during the settler violence in Nablus on the night of February 26. He was identified as Sameh Aqtash, 37, from the Nablus area village of Zaatara. Palestinian media reported that Aqtash was killed during a settler raid on his town, though it was unconfirmed if he was killed by Israeli army or settler gunfire.

In-Depth

The West Bank was under a two-pronged attack last week.

The first was carried out by the Israeli state’s army in a massive military invasion of Nablus that killed 11 Palestinians and injured over 100. The second was carried out by its nominally civilian wing — gangs of colonial settlers that went on a rampage last night in response to a resistance attack that killed two Israeli settlers in Huwwara, just south of Nablus.

The raid on Nablus was one of the bloodiest in recent months, aiming to assassinate wanted resistance fighters from the Lions’ Den, Muhammad Juneidi and Hussam Isleem. Israeli special forces killed them and their comrade, Walid Dakhil, a cousin of one of the co-founders of the group. Four other fighters from armed resistance groups around Nablus were also killed in the fighting, in addition to four bystanders in the city (three elderly men and a teenage boy).

Nablus was in mourning, and the Lions’ Den put out a call asking the people to show their support at midnight, February 23:

“Do no despair and fall into sorrow, we need you all, as you have accustomed us…to take to the streets if you can, to come out in every major square, in every city in the West Bank, Jerusalem, the beloved [Gaza] Strip, and in every refugee camp in the homeland, to hear those who would pledge loyalty to the blood that has been spilled.”

Everyone responded to the call of the Lions’ Den. From Ramallah to Hebron, to Nablus and Jenin, to Bethlehem and its camps and Tulkarm and Jericho, people were out in the thousands at midnight, in a show of mass support unknown to any Palestinian political faction.

Neither Fatah nor any other faction has been able to muster this kind of spontaneous mass support since the First Intifada. Political legitimacy, it has become clear, is not to be found in summit halls and security deals, but rather sprouts from the barrel of a rifle when pointed at the colonizer.

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