Israeli armed forces Tuesday broke into the village of Deir Nidham, northwest of Ramallah and blockaded the northwestern Ramallah area after claims that an Israeli settler’s vehicle came under fire, said local sources.
Witnesses said Israeli soldiers broke into the homes of Ibrahim Araj and Yousef Tamimi and confiscated the hard drives of their private outdoor surveillance cameras.
Israeli soldiers fired tear gas bombs when confrontations broke out with Palestinian youth and also set military checkpoints at all the entrances to several towns including Birzeit, preventing Palestinians from entering or exiting the area.
Dawn raids into West Bank villages and towns are a common occurrence. Israeli army regularly raids Palestinians’ homes and arrests residents early morning or late at night, violating in the process human rights and international laws.
While Israeli soldiers impose collective punishment on Palestinians by blockading entire villages to search for possible perpetrators, nearly all settler attacks against Palestinian residents go unpunished by Israeli authorities.
Also, Israel has taken over a large section of Deir Nidham for settlement expansion purposes.
In 1995 Israel divided Deir Nidham into areas B and C; approximately 4.7% of the total village area was assigned as Area B, where the Palestinian Authority has complete control over civil matters but Israel continues to have overriding responsibility for security and 95.3% of the total village area is classified as Area C, where Israel retains full control over security and administration.
According to the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ), in 1997 the Israeli authorities confiscated another 604 dunums of Deir Nidham lands (21.9% of the village’s total area) for the construction of the illegal Israeli settlement Hallamish, which is currently inhabited by over 1000 settlers.