Burin: soldiers threw tear gas grenades at the school and in the streets
On Sunday, February 16, the army entered the school in Burin at noon. The soldiers threw tear gas grenades and as a result most of the students felt suffocated. A Red Crescent vehicle took them to their homes.
Despite the heavy rain, the soldiers continued to throw gas and smoke grenades. They knocked forcefully on the door of our friend Doha’s neighbor’s house, entered the small children’s room, started screaming and conducted a brutal search. Then they moved to the second house and went up to the third floor where there is a pergola. The soldiers continued to throw tear gas grenades at the neighboring streets and houses.
Luckily it rained heavily which neutralized some of the gas and smoke grenades.
One of the officers shouted that so far, we had only thrown more than a hundred grenades.
Location Description
Burin (Yitzhar)
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Burin (Yitzhar)
This is a Palestinian village in the Nablus governorate, a little south of Nablus, on the main road passing through the West Bank. The settlements: Yitzhar and Har Bracha, settled in locations that surrounded the village, placed fences so it is cut off the main road.
There are around 4000 inhabitants. Most of them are engaged in agriculture and pasture, although many graduates of the two secondary schools continue to study at the university. Academic positions are hardly available, they find work as builderd, or leave for the Gulf countries.
The village lands were appropriated several times for the establishment of Israeli settlements and military bases, and as a result, Burin's land and water resources dwindled. lSince 1982, more than 2,000 dunams of village land have been declared "state land" and then transferred to Har Bracha settlement.
Over the past few years and more so since 2017, the villagers have been terrorized by the residents of Yitzhar and Har Bracha, the Givat Ronen outpost and others. Despite the close proximity of soldiers to an IDF base close to one of the village's schools, residents are suffering from numerous stone-throwing events, vehicle and fire arson, also reported in the press.
In 2023, the prevention of the olive harvest in the village plot was more violent than ever. Soldiers and settlers walked with drawn weapons between the houses of the village and demanded that people stop harvesting in the village itself and in the private plots outside the village. The settlers from Yitzhar and Giv'at Roned raided the olive groves and stole crops. 300 olive trees belonging to the residents of Burin, near Yitzhar, were uprooted. The loss of livelihood from the olives causes long-term economic damage to the farmers' families, bringing them to the point of starvation.
(updated for November 2023)
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