Nablus Governorate: The entrances to Jurish and Qusra are locked with a gate

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Observers: 
Daphne Banai and Tamar Berger
Oct-10-2024
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Morning

On our way to Fasa’il we saw that the entry from Road 505 to Jurish is gated closed. In the past we reported that the entrance to Qusra was locked and the villagers are forced to make their rocky way to Jurish and exit from there to the main road on their way to Nablus or elsewhere in the West Bank. And now – the entrance to Jurish too is locked by Israel’s Oppression Forces. We drove to Qusra hoping that perhaps it was opened, but were wrong. Now they are both locked and one cannot reach the main road from either one.

As we are still standing stunned by the locked gate S., who kindly introduced himself as the head of the Qusra council and complained, of course, about the complete closureinfo-icon. So how do you leave the village? We asked – it turns out they are driving south on a dirt road to the Jaloud area and from there west to Highway 60. A detour of dozens of kilometers to get to work, to go shopping, to the doctor or to visit family. And what is the goal? Apart from severely harassing the civilian population? We couldn’t think of anything.

As we stood there, a taxi arrived at the gate and unloaded a medical team – a doctor, a nurse and a welfare worker who came to the village to vaccinate people, and this is the reason the head of the local council arrived at the gate with his own car, to drive them into the distant village. He also showed us the vast olive tree groves outside the gate that belong to the villagers, but now with the expansion of Migdalim settlement, they are in Migdalim’s ‘security area’ and clearly the owners can no longer approach them.

At Fasa’il we collected G., the water man, and drove to see whether the settlers had blocked the village’s water. Except for several stones that did not really block the water, everything was in order. Thus too the pipe that the Nature and Parks Authority repaired. It was a good idea to make them responsible for the pipe and not repair it ourselves as we did last time. Let us see how long this present repair will hold. We shall check it again from time to time.

We drove on to Ein a-Sakut where Ahmad and his brother from Al-Farisiya graze in the summer. It was all quiet there, no settlers, but Ahmad and his brother are now grazing in a much smaller area after the violence of Rotem and Shadmot Mekhola settlers.

We saw that someone had removed the road sign ‘Ein a-Sakut’ and put up a takeover map instead.