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SALFIT, Palestine/ISTANBUL

Israel continued to besiege two western towns in Salfit in the northern West Bank for a seventh consecutive day.

Palestinians told Anadolu that the army and the illegal settlers have been imposing “collective punishment” on Bruqin and Kafr al-Dik in Salfit since an attack killed an illegal Israeli settler last week.

The army has intensified home demolitions and field interrogations of Palestinians in the towns, under the pretext of searching for the assailant.

A young Palestinian was killed Saturday by army fire in Bruqin, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Witnesses said 14 vehicles belonging to Palestinians were burned Friday by the illegal Israeli settlers near Bruqin.

The assaults on Palestinians and their properties followed a demand by far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for the destruction of Bruqin and Kufr ad-Dik as revenge for the attack.

"Just as we flattened Rafah, Khan Younis, and Gaza, we must flatten the nests of terror in Judea and Samaria,” said Smotrich, using the biblical name of the West Bank. “Bruqin and Kafr al-Dik should look like Shejaiya (neighborhood in Gaza City) and Tel al-Sultan (neighborhood in Rafah).”

Continuous operations

“The Israeli army continues to carry out military operations in the towns, including home raids and searches,” Bruqin Mayor Fayed Sabra told Anadolu.

While causing widespread damage to possessions and turning homes into military barracks, the army also bulldozed dozens of dunums (acres) of farmland, opening roads only 10 meters (32 feet) from houses.

“It is clear that the occupation forces intended to build a wall between the two towns to establish a new settlement,” said Sabra. “We are living in a tragedy that every day we lose our land, and we are going towards an unknown fate.”

Closed military zone

An Anadolu crew arrived in the towns after traversing muddy roads between farms to document the army and illegal settlers’ assaults.

The Turkish news agency captured Israeli army vehicles bulldozing roads and destroying two homes in Bruqin, under the pretext of a lack of construction permits.

One home, converted from a military base to command operations, and the movements of infantry brigades and military vehicles, were monitored by Anadolu in Kufr ad-Dik.

An Anadolu correspondent said his team was detained by the Israeli army while performing work. Their car’s key was taken and their identities were questioned, he said.

After an hour under custody, the news crew was asked by army forces to leave Kufr ad-Dik and told the town is a “closed military zone.”

Deepening struggle

“We are living the unknown, we don’t know what’s happening,” Ali Sabra to Anadolu.

“It's the seventh day of siege and a semi-curfew, in addition to searches, raids, destruction and stealing of our land,” said the 60-year-old Palestinian.

As with many, Sabra’s home was searched by the army, and he is now trying to supply some of his needs in the market while fearing a possible Israeli attack.

Fatima Umm Amaad faced a predawn Israeli attack on her old house, where she lives alone.

Israeli forces searched Umm Amaad’s house and her identification, while training rifles at the elderly woman.

“They are besieging us as they do in Gaza,” she said, citing “different crimes” that the army commits in Bruqin, including killing an unarmed young man.

“We are living an intensified siege,” Tayseer Shuaibi, an 80-year-old market owner in Bruqin told Anadolu.

Shuaibi said the army has been preventing residents from opening stores, in a move that deprives Palestinians of essential needs.

“People have needs, and the continuity of the siege means the lack of essential items, especially bread,” he said, explaining why he was working secretly.

Vajeeh Samara, a farmer, expressed fear of losing his chickens on his farm in Bruqin because of the Israeli curfew.

“The Israeli army banned the movement of the residents, even to go to the farms to feed our chickens,” said Samara.

When he risked his life by going to the farm with his 14-year-old son to get chickens to sell, the army stopped them, holding his son for hours and forcing him to return the chickens to the farm.

It did not end there, he said. The army also confiscated his car and left him on the street. The army subsequently repeatedly searched his house and converted it into a military barracks.

At least 969 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The International Court of Justice declared Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land illegal last July and demanded the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.