Plight of the Unpeople: Settlers attack Palestinian home in Burin

2009-09-15

Settlers attack Palestinian home in Burin

In the early hours of Thursday 10 September at approximately 3am, 20 masked settlers came down from the illegal settlement of Bracha near Nablus to a home under construction in the Palestinian village of Burin. The home which is currently under construction had just been furnished with a wooden roof ready for concrete to be poured.

Two local Palestinian boys had been sleeping at the home as it is close to the illegal settlement of Bracha and has been subject to attacks in the past. The boys were awoken by 20 masked settler youths who threw stones at them and threatened them. The Palestinian boys retreated to telephone the owner of the home and alert local international groups.

Upon arriving at the scene the home owner, Bruce Lee, discovered the settlers had sprayed the wooden roof planks with gasoline and ignited it. The Palestinians called the local Burin fire brigade who came and extinguished the fire. The settlers had also smashed the overhead lights around the home.

The local villagers and international activists are now keeping a 24 hour presence at the home until the roof is poured with concrete and therefore less libel for settler damage. One year ago construction on the house had to stop due to constant settler attacks which resulted in some of the foundation beams being damaged and in need of replacement.

The village of Burin and its surrounding neighbours have been subject to numerous violent attacks from the two illegal settlements of Bracha and Yitzhar that sandwich the local Palestinian villages. Only on Wednesday 9 September, the neighbouring villages of Asira al Qibliya and Urif were attacked by armed, masked settler youth. Burin village has also lost thousands of dunams of land planted with olive trees due to settlers burning the land and in 2006 settlers from the illegal settlement of Bracha fired homemade rockets on the village burning a house down.

Settlements are illegal under international law and both settlements have numerous outposts that continue to annex further Palestinian land in violation of both Israeli and international law.

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Vietnamese

"If you really want to get a sense of “what happened” in Vietnam ... just imagine that you’re actually crouched in your basement, that your home above is ablaze, that lethal helicopters are hovering overhead, and that heavily-armed teenagers — foreigners who don’t speak your language — are out there in your yard, screaming commands you don’t understand, rolling grenades into your neighbor’s cellar, and if you run out through the flames, into the chaos, one of them might just shoot you." - Nick Turse

America

“Everywhere I go, every town I visit, you don’t see any industries. You don’t see any factories. You don’t see anything. We don’t make anything. We are really the poorest country on earth, but people refuse to see that. We are only surviving. We are only looking good because of our military might, because we are an empire. But this force cannot go on forever. It should be so obvious that we’re only chugging along, bullying people into lending us money and sending us stuff that we don’t deserve, that we haven’t earned. How can we survive? Hundreds of thousands of Americans have been reduced to living like savages in this self-proclaimed greatest country on earth.” - Linh Dinh

Chagossians

"First, they tried to shoot the dogs. Next, they tried to poison them with strychnine. When both failed as efficient killing methods, British government agents and U.S. Navy personnel used raw meat to lure the pets into a sealed shed. Locking them inside, they gassed the howling animals with exhaust piped in from U.S. military vehicles. Then, setting coconut husks ablaze, they burned the dogs’ carcasses as their owners were left to watch and ponder their own fate." - David Vine writing about the ethnic cleansing of Diego Garcia

2009-09-15

Settlers attack Palestinian home in Burin

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