Palestinians ordered from homes in Qusra as troops use houses as barracks

Israeli soldiers have been ordering Palestinian families out of their homes in the West Bank village of Qusra, with troops occupying residential buildings as makeshift military barracks following a settler rampage that left the community besieged for days.

Families forced out at gunpoint

The mayor of Qusra, a village of roughly 4,000 people southeast of Nablus, says soldiers began moving through residential streets earlier this week, knocking on doors and instructing families to gather their belongings and leave. Some residents were given as little as 30 minutes. Others didn’t get that long.

At least 15 homes have been taken over by military personnel, according to local accounts. Families are sleeping in relatives’ houses, in cars, or in the open. It’s a level of displacement that village officials say they haven’t seen before.

“They came to our doors with rifles and told us to go,” one resident told local Palestinian media. “We don’t know when we can return or what condition our homes will be in.”

Settlers attacked the village first

The military presence followed a violent settler incursion last weekend in which armed settlers, some masked, stormed Qusra and set fire to vehicles and property. Eyewitnesses reported that settlers fired live rounds. Three Palestinians were wounded, and significant damage was done to homes and farmland.

But rather than moving against the settlers, Israeli forces arrived afterward and imposed sweeping restrictions on village movement. Roads into Qusra were blocked. And then came the orders to vacate.

That sequence — settlers attack, soldiers arrive, Palestinians pay the price — is one that human rights groups have documented repeatedly across the northern West Bank in recent months.

A pattern critics call collective punishment

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded more than 1,200 settler-related incidents in the West Bank in 2023. The pace hasn’t slowed. Since the start of 2024, dozens of Palestinian communities have faced either settler violence, military-enforced movement restrictions, or both.

Critics say what’s happening in Qusra is textbook collective punishment — a practice prohibited under international humanitarian law.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military said operations in the area were ongoing for security reasons and declined to comment on specific actions taken inside the village.

What comes next for Qusra

Residents who managed to stay in the village say soldiers are still positioned throughout the area. No timeline has been given for when families might return to their homes.

The mayor has appealed to Palestinian Authority officials and international representatives for urgent intervention. So far, he says, the response has been calls and statements — nothing on the ground.

For the families of Qusra, that’s cold comfort. Winter temperatures in the northern West Bank drop sharply at night, and hundreds of people remain displaced with no clear path back to their own front doors.