Duma - we went to visit Dawabshe family
Ever since the last pogrom in Duma village, Nablus district, we have wanted to visit the Dawabshe family whom we met at Tel HaShomer Hospital, Israel, about ten years ago. The attack, by Jewish terrorists, murdered the couple Sa’ad and Riham and their year-and-a half old son Ali. 4-year-old Ahmad was badly hurt and cared for in Tel HaShmer. When we met him, he was still totally bandaged and suffering pain all over. His grandfather never budged from his side. Amhad underwent endless surgery procedures and will still have to undergo more in the years ahead.
On our way to Duma we passed checkpoints recently installed, some of them only last week.
Road signs at the junctions – throughout the region signs invite one to buy houses. No problem of land, and owners are not even checked. Jews own it all.
At Duma we are welcomed by Hussein (the grandfather) and his wife. Ahmad is already 15-years-old, and is now at school. A year ago, a young man named Ahmad murdered a Jew and was caught and sent to prison. Since then, All the villagers are guilty. A year ago, settlers from Esh Qodesh entered the village at daylight, and burnt houses and vehicles. Hussein says this was done under the patronage of the army. Soldiers do not catch settlers but rather enable them to do as they please.
The settlers left slogans on the houses, to clarify who were here.
Hussein and his wife had 4 sons and 2 daughters. One daughter was burnt to death in the pogrom, and a son was electrocuted.
They hardly make a living these days. They do have several sheep and a bit of olive oil for family use. He tried to open a grocery but made no money and was forced to close it. They do have a nice house with another 3 beside it for his sons. They make do.
A road separates the village into Area B and Area C. Construction in Area C is prohibited and this is what an Israeli army bulldozer did to a house on the wrong side of the road.
We take leave of the Dawabshes and proceed to Turmus Aya town in the Ramallah district.
A new yellow gate, open, greets us at the entrance, built 2 weeks ago.
The head of the local council and the chief town engineer welcome us at the city council building. Already at the entrance we notice the town’s beautiful buildings, real castles. The head of city council tells us that 90% of the inhabitants are American citizens.
250 of Turmus Aya inhabitants live in Panama. 13,000 in the United States. They all come to the town several times a year and all have ostentatious houses. He is proud of their US representation: 300 are physicians, 200 policemen, 100 serve in the US army, 5 pilots, 2 members of congress, 100 university professors. 2,500 persons remain in the West Bank, and proud of their American fellow-inhabitants. No one misses anyone for they all come to the town several times a year. Our host has 5 sons and 2 daughters, all living in the US.
Now the hard part begins. He shows us a video from June 23, 2023, in which dozens of colonists run wild in the streets, break and burn everything they get their hands on. The army came and threw smoke canisters and the pogromists scattered. There was no attempt made to arrest them. The army closed off all entrances to the town so that ambulances and fire engines could not enter. Army vehicles are seen standing aside. An official eye guards the outlaws. But who defends helpless Palestinians who have no one to turn to. Why? The head of the local council asks – why? And again – why?
Location Description
Duma
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Duma
A village in the Nablus governorate, with 3,000 residents. They owned some 18,000 dunams, 500 dunams of which the village itself was built. However, after the settlement of Migdaleim annexed a large part of their land, their area was reduced to only 2,000 dunams.On July 31, 2015, two houses in the town were torched with petrol bombs. Sa'ad and Riham Dawabsha, and their infant, Ali Sa'ad Dawabsha, were burned to death. Another son was seriously injured. "Revenge" and "King Messiah" were spray painted on the walls of the house. The trial of the arsonist, the settler Amiram Ben Uliel, is still underway (2019), and a plea bargain was signed in May 2018 with the minor who participated in the planning of the arson.
The closure imposed by the army, the poor roads that they are forced use due to the lack of paving permits from the Civil Administration, along with the lack of public transportation, all these difficulties cut off the village from nearby Nablus and Ramallah.
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Turmus Aya
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Turmus Aya is a beautiful and well-kept Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bira governorate, located in the Shiloh Valley, about 22 km north of Ramallah. Near Highway 60 at an altitude of about 732 m. In 2016, 4,781 residents lived in the town. After the 2nd intifada in 2001, hundreds immigrated to the US, but they come in the summer to visit their families and live in the nice houses they built.
Israel expropriated 752 dunams of the town's land for the establishment of the Shiloh settlement, in 1978, and another 372 dunams for the establishment of the Shebot Rachel settlement in 1992. According to the Oslo Agreement, the built-up area of TAos Aya was classified as area B. This area constitutes 64.7% of the town's land, and the rest, 35.3%, is area C.
Starting in 2015, the town's residents often suffer from harassment from the settlers of the Adi Ad outpost, which include the uprooting and cutting of olive trees, the burning of wheat fields and the spraying of anti-Netzka inscriptions.
On June 21, 2023, dozens of young people from outposts and surrounding settlements carried out a pogrom in broad daylight after the funeral of the victims of the attack that occurred two days earlier at the gas station in the settlement of Eli. The attack took place after the Israel Defense Forces' invasion of Jenin and the killing of innocents in the process - an invasion that took place after a previous event... and so on, deep into the non-stop blood equation that is always presented in Israel as terror attacks without context. They set fire to about 60 cars and about 30 houses with their occupants and threw stones, fire grenades and even shot from guns.The IDF soldiers watched the attack but didn't intervene. A villager was killed by soldier fire. Only 3 settlers were arrested after a few days, but charges have not yet been filed against them.
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