{"id":583541,"date":"2026-08-13T14:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T14:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/583541\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T14:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T14:26:10","slug":"idf-orders-then-reverses-evacuation-of-palestinian-homes-in-west-banks-kusra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/583541\/","title":{"rendered":"IDF orders, then reverses evacuation of Palestinian homes in West Bank’s Kusra"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chaos continued for a third day on Thursday in the West Bank Palestinian town of Kusra<\/a>, where the IDF has “tried,” but still failed, to permanently evict Jewish extremists, placing multiple local families under siege.<\/p>\n

There were multiple storylines of confusion in recent days and continuing Thursday, both regarding whether the IDF had cleared out the Jewish extremists and whether the military had evacuated some of the Palestinians for their “own protection.”<\/p>\n

Piecing together IDF reports that contradicted themselves and video footage, US and Palestinian reports, it appears that even on Thursday afternoon, multiple “attempts” to clear the Jewish extremists<\/a> have fallen short.<\/p>\n

The Jerusalem Post placed the words “tried” and “attempts” in quotations because it is now apparent that though the IDF plainly has sufficient power and forces to have removed the Jewish extremists in hours or less, there are some form of limits on the force they are using and some of the IDF forces are not fully cooperating in their mission.<\/p>\n

\"FootageFootage showing extremist settlers running in the West Bank village of Kusra, August 12, 2026. (credit: screenshot\/section 27a copyright act)Ongoing violence in Kusra leaves residents feeling ‘helpless’<\/p>\n

After initial IDF statements suggested the Jewish extremists would be fully cleared already Wednesday morning, IDF sources implied later Wednesday that the structures built by the extremists had been cleared, but not all of the extremists themselves.<\/p>\n

Further, after initial IDF statements suggested that military forces were properly carrying out their roles, later statements said that IDF reservist units would be court-martialed for improper sympathy toward the Jewish extremists and failure to carry out their roles.<\/p>\n

Additional later statements on Thursday said that the military was taking the extremely unusual move of sending battalion 51 of the Golani Brigade to take over the operation.<\/p>\n

This was a stunning rebuke of the IDF reservists who had been assigned to the mission, given that the Golani Brigade, with its higher level of training and lethality, is generally thought of as being used exclusively to fight Hezbollah and Hamas.<\/p>\n

In addition, there were contradictory reports on Thursday about whether the IDF was partially evacuating some of the Palestinian families under siege in order to operate from their homes or to make it easier to protect them.<\/p>\n

Later, the IDF said that it would not, or had stopped, any process of evacuating those Palestinians, but was using some of their homes as a headquarters to better understand and combat the nearby Jewish extremist threat.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the IDF again suggested it had removed Jewish extremists on Thursday, but multiple sources indicate that the extremists merely undertook a tactical withdrawal.<\/p>\n

In a bizarre sequence that no Israeli official has explained, zero civilian Jewish extremists have been arrested for physically confronting and blocking the IDF from performing its mission of removing them from trespassing on clearly identified Palestinian land.<\/p>\n

Throughout the controversy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued no statements, even as US Ambassador Mike Huckabee publicly condemned Israel for acting weakly to prevent what he called “Jewish terror” against the Palestinians and even as coverage worldwide has torn into Israel.<\/p>\n

Huckabee even said that had the US not intervened, it was unclear if the IDF’s reaction to the incident would have been even weaker.<\/p>\n

IDF sources suggested to the Post that military forces may remain in the area for an extended period, but without identifying how long.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Thursday, the mayor of Kusra had told Qatari media outlet Al Jazeera that the IDF has closed the village off, imposed a curfew, and deployed numerous soldiers to try to dismantle the settler outpost, while asking local residents to evacuate ahead of a planned operation in the town.<\/p>\n

In a clarification issued later that day, the Israeli military stressed that its forces “will not operate in the home of the Palestinian family located near the point where the shed was erected, evacuated, and dismantled.”<\/p>\n

Settlers involved in Kusra violence ‘really need to be stopped,’ Ben-Gvir says<\/p>\n

The ongoing violence in the Palestinian village of Kusra has left residents feeling helpless, with resident Marmar Odeh stating it was “the first time in [he felt] there was no law in the State of Israel,” in an interview with KAN Reshet Bet on Thursday.<\/p>\n

“After the army left, masked men came to my house, searched me, and checked my ID. There were also journalists at my house, including Israelis, who saw everything and took pictures.”<\/p>\n

Odeh recounted an incident in which a little girl in his family accidentally broke her arm and was not able to receive timely medical care due to the chaos.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey tried to evacuate her in an ambulance, but the army turned it back, and the settlers wouldn’t let it leave either,\u201d Odeh told KAN. \u201cThe next day they obtained permission from the army again, and managed to get the ambulance in to take the girl and her mother to the hospital.”<\/p>\n

The settler extremists also previously had set up in a tent in the village and severed electric cables and water tubes, creating difficult conditions for Odeh and Kusra\u2019s residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can’t even open the window of the house. They have no electricity, and they haven’t had water for more than two weeks. They had some water in the cistern; every house has a cistern, but it’s not the best water to drink from,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir<\/a> told Reshet Bet that while he admires the settlers building outposts, \u201cthere are some among them who really need to be stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yisrael Gantz, the head of the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council and chairman of the Yesha Council, described the Kusra incident as \u201cimproper and unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no place for making a private decision to establish a hilltop outpost in the yard of a house, even when it is an illegal house or an attempt to take control of the area,\u201d Gantz continued. \u201cThere is no justification whatsoever for violence against uninvolved people or against security forces.”<\/p>\n

Goldie Katz and Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chaos continued for a third day on Thursday in the West Bank Palestinian town of Kusra, where the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[70646,85,46,837,264011,43,2200,77721,37944,77,22674],"class_list":["post-583541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-extremism","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-itamar-ben-gvir","tag-kusra","tag-news","tag-palestinians","tag-settler-violence","tag-settlers","tag-west-bank","tag-west-bank-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}