On 9 August, dozens of Israeli settlers surrounded three Palestinian homes on the Ras al-Ain hill at the edge of Qusra, a village south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. They pitched a tent, cut the water and electricity lines and blocked the roads. About 15 people from the Abu Rida and Hassan families were inside, among them two children under seven.

Three weeks later the families are still there. What has changed is that the siege now has infrastructure.

The gates

On Wednesday 26 August, Israeli authorities installed three new roadblocks at Ras al-Ain: yellow and orange metal bars mounted on concrete blocks, the standard gates found at the entrances of most West Bank villages and multiplied since October 2023.

Abdel Hakim Wadi, a resident, described what the gates achieved. Settlers were pushed back 100 to 150 metres from the houses. In their place stand checkpoints. He called it a much more permanent siege.

One gate sits at the entrance to the house of Loui Ridi, a Palestinian-American from Toledo, Ohio, who had been building the house for his two daughters and returned to Qusra to defend it after the siege began. Israeli soldiers are stationed outside. He has not been able to leave it.

That transition — from a settler tent to a state-installed gate — is the part of this story that has almost entirely dropped out of coverage. The tent was a trespass. The gate is a checkpoint.

The three weeks in between

The intervening period is documented in detail, largely because an American citizen was involved.

By the fourth day, families were living on a temporary solar system and leftover well water from the winter, with food for two or three days. The Israeli army declared the area a closed military zone and blocked Israeli and foreign activists from reaching it. On one day the military ordered residents of two houses to leave and forced them all into the third, then reversed the instruction hours later, saying the residents would remain in their homes.

The UN human rights office described residents trapped inside their homes in a state of terror, unable to meet basic needs and without water or electricity. A UNICEF convoy was intercepted; two vehicles got food through, but a water tanker was blocked and expelled. Close to a hundred activists marched to the village with supplies and were stopped by soldiers; an Israeli member of parliament, Ofer Cassif, eventually carried some through. Qusra’s mayor, Abdel Azim Wadi, said water and electricity to the three homes could not be restored.

The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee — a longstanding supporter of settlements — called the settlers besieging the homes Israeli terrorists. Amnesty International described the siege as strategic terror.

Why Area B matters here

Qusra sits in Area B, roughly 21 per cent of the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority runs civil affairs — schools, healthcare, the local economy — while Israel retains full security control and its forces can enter at will.

That division explains why the mayor could not restore the water. Utilities in his jurisdiction were cut in a place where he has no authority over the people who cut them, and no capacity to remove them.

The Israeli position, made in comparable cases, is that the army’s role is to maintain order and prevent escalation, that it did intervene to disperse settlers and reversed the eviction order, and that a closed military zone is a security measure rather than a punishment. Residents and rights groups reply that soldiers were present throughout, that the closure kept aid and witnesses out rather than settlers, and that the roadblocks the army eventually installed converted a settler action into an official one. Al Jazeera’s correspondent described the sequence as a pattern seen elsewhere: the army deploys, and residents lose their property.

Not a single incident

Qusra has been through an escalating campaign for months. A mosque in the village was set on fire in July. Residents say settlers from nearby outposts have been trying to take these specific properties for a long time. Settlers were reported still moving freely around the houses in late August, and attacking residents of neighbouring homes.

Qusai Abu Rida, one of those trapped, put the logic of staying plainly: if he leaves the home, the settlers take it immediately.

The wider context is documented by the UN’s humanitarian office: punitive demolitions and sealings displacing record numbers, more than a hundred water and sanitation structures demolished in a year, and communities left without running water after settlers destroyed connections. Qusra is the version of that with cameras on it.

Related: Britain Calls the Settlements Illegal. It Also Buys From Companies Linked to Them.

Sources

Roadblock installation and resident accounts from Al Jazeera; siege timeline, Area B detail and Huckabee’s remarks via Al Jazeera’s timeline; UN statement and the UNICEF convoy via Al Jazeera; family accounts and the military’s reversal via CNN and NBC News; demolition and water-infrastructure figures from UN OCHA.