West Bank family sees no hope of justice in settler killings

A study of settler violence cases between 2005 and 2021 showed 92 percent were dismissed by the Israeli authorities.

Farakdhar

Dec. 6, 2023, 9:20 p.m.

Ikhlas, the widow of Bilal Saleh, poses with her children as they hold a picture of their late father at the village of al-Issawiya, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. [Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP]

Kathmandu-Moussa is eight years old and really likes marbles. But for the past month, this Palestinian boy, living in the occupied West Bank, has a new game: “Pretend daddy isn’t dead.”

He calls his dad, imagines what he did with his day, and acts like he is suddenly going to run into him.

But his father, Bilal Saleh, was killed on October 28.

The 40-year-old was shot in the chest while picking olives with his family near his home in the village of al-Issawiya.

Saleh is one of more than 250 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank, according to a Palestinian government tally, since Hamas’s attack on October 7 sparked a new war with Israel.

“He was a simple man, attached to his land,” says his widow, Ikhlas, showing images on her phone of Saleh in the fields, reciting the Quran with Moussa and at a wedding.

She struggles to even look at them, let alone tell the story of what happened.

The children pressed around her to fill in the details.

Videos from the scene show four men wearing the knitted yarmulkes that are popular among Israeli settlers, shouting towards the family as they are harvesting.

One is armed with an automatic rifle.

The family flees, but Saleh has forgotten his phone and runs back to fetch it.

A few minutes later, a gunshot rings out.

The family rushes back to find Saleh bleeding from the chest.

He was taken to a hospital about 10km (6 miles) away but declared dead soon after.

The family says Ikhlas’s brother and father saw on social media that a man had been arrested for the shooting but released a few hours later.

The police and COGAT, an Israeli defence ministry body overseeing civilian activities in the Palestinian territories, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A few days after her husband was killed, Ikhlas was called to a police station in Ariel, a neighbouring Israeli settlement, where police asked her to explain what she saw. [Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP]

'At the entrance, while a guard was checking my identity papers, a settler drove by. He saw that I was veiled and he rolled down his window to spit on me,' she said. 'After that, I don't see what kind of justice they could give us,' she added. [Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP]

Israeli human rights group Yesh Din convinced her to file a complaint, though it says a study of settler violence cases between 2005 and 2021 showed 92 percent were dismissed by the Israeli authorities. [Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP]

A relative of the late Bilal Saleh shows a picture of an armed Israeli settler in the village of al-Issawiya. Israel has relaxed laws on access to weapons, promising to arm Israeli civilians in at least 1,000 localities, including settlements in the occupied West Bank. [Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP]

A relative of Bilal Saleh points at an Israeli settlement near the village of al-Issawiya, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. Nearly three million Palestinians live in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Nearly half a million Israelis also live there in settlements considered illegal by the United Nations. [Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP]

The daughter of Bilal Saleh prays near the grave of her late father at a cemetery in the village of al-Issawiya. [Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP]

'For the past 10 years, it has been getting more and more serious,' said Hazem Saleh, Bilal's brother-in-law. 'We are being attacked, our land is being taken from us, settlements are being built. They have the power, they can do what they want.' [Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP]

But it has been 'even worse', he continued, since the Israeli-Hamas war erupted on October 7. [Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP]

Mouna Saleh, 56, Bilal's mother-in-law, fears for the children, especially Moussa and Mayce 'who are so small ... what can we explain to them?' she said. 'How can you kill a man in a few seconds in front of children? What is this world?'