besieged by Israeli settlers<\/a> since August 9, attracting global attention and condemnation. Israeli forces have declared the area a closed military zone, but have effectively continued the siege, with locals trapped in their homes.<\/p>\nAnd now, instead of lifting the siege, the roadblocks erected by the Israelis have been placed in carefully-selected locations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are pushing the Israeli settlers 100 to 150 metres away from [our] houses, but now they have established checkpoints,\u201d Wadi told Al Jazeera. \u201c[It is] a much more permanent siege.\u201d<\/p>\n
Surrounding the hill<\/p>\n
One of the gates was erected at the entrance of the house of Loui Ridi, a Palestinian-American who lives in Ohio, but who returned to Qusra to defend his property after the siege began. Israeli soldiers are stationed outside his home, which he has not been able to leave since his arrival on August 17.<\/p>\n
Another roadblock is slightly further up the hill near a house under construction, and a third one is to the left side above a house that is being built.<\/p>\n
All three barriers together encircle the top of the hill \u2013 and the homes on it \u2013 disconnecting it from the area below it.<\/p>\n
Their presence also renders a road passing through the summit of the hill ineffective. The road not only connects the rest of Qusra with Ras al-Ain, but also links the village to the neighbouring villages of Talfit and Jalud.<\/p>\n
Ridi said that Israeli settlers remain in the area surrounding his house, and the Israeli forces are still preventing him and his neighbours \u2013 a family including two little girls \u2013 from leaving and entering freely.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been calling on the US embassy \u2026 or the international community to end the siege,\u201d Ridi said.<\/p>\n
Ridi has previously said that, despite the international condemnation of the actions of the Israeli settlers in Qusra \u2013 who cut off water and electricity from the besieged homes in their latest attack on a Palestinian community in the West Bank \u2013 little had been done.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one is doing enough on the ground,\u201d he told Al Jazeera when he first arrived to Qusra from the US. \u201cThey\u2019re talking, but there\u2019s no action.\u201d<\/p>\n
No access to land<\/p>\n
Wadi\u2019s land, which he has not had access to since the siege began, is located close to where one of the new Israeli gates was placed.<\/p>\n
He told Al Jazeera that his land \u2013 nearly one hectare \u2013 is planted with more than 100 olive trees, in addition to other trees, including almonds and figs. There is also a water well that Israeli settlers have taken over.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see them bathing in the water that they\u2019re taking out from the well,\u201d Wadi said.<\/p>\n
Wadi now fears that the gates will prevent him from ever setting foot to on the land, even if the Israeli authorities remove the military zone designation in the future.<\/p>\n
He expects Israel to keep the siege in place, but in a different manner.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will put on a show that they have ended the siege but in fact all of what they\u2019re doing is replacing the settlers with the army,\u201d Wadi said.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s ultimate goal, Wadi said, is to grab more land in the West Bank, piece by piece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After weeks of settler siege, three new Israeli gates around Palestinian homes in Qusra raise fears among families…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2664,85,46,44,47,43,45,48],"class_list":["post-598199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-features","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-palestine-conflict","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-occupied-west-bank","tag-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598199","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=598199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}