Beitin is a beautiful village on the outskirts of Ramallah and a place where many friends living in St. Louis come from. I have heard so many stories about Beitin, I feel like I know it well. So many people from Beitin have connections to St. Louis that the village's grocery story is called "The Arch", and many of the kids living there wear Cardinals baseball caps.
View of the village of Beitin
"The Arch" Supermarket in Beitin, Palestine
Today we awoke to the news that the village had been attacked by Israeli settlers.
Ma'an is reporting:
Dozens of settlers raided a Ramallah village on Monday morning and set fire to five cars. Witnesses told Ma'an that Israeli military forces arrived in the village of Biteen and dispersed the settlers without arresting any of them. Beitin is situated near the village of Burqa, which was attacked by settlers last week.
Jewish settlers on Thursday torched the Burqa village mosque and sprayed racist graffiti in Hebrew on its walls, witnesses said.
That attack came a day after Jewish extremists torched a 13th century mosque in Jerusalem, spraying "Death to the Arabs" and "Muhammad is a pig" on the building.
Settler attacks in the West Bank against Palestinians have increased by more than 50 percent this year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Israeli settlers number 500,000 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, living in Jewish-only communities that are illegal under international law.
Photo of Beitin after the settlers' attack
This attack seems to be a "Price Tag" Attack defined by B'tselem as such:
In recent years, settlers have carried out violent acts under the slogan “price tag.” These are acts of random violence aimed at the Palestinian population and Israeli security forces. They generally follow actions by Israeli authorities that are perceived as harming the settlement enterprise, or follow Palestinian violence against settlers. B'Tselem has documented many such acts, which have included blocking roads, throwing stones at cars and houses, making incursions into Palestinian villages and land, torching fields, uprooting trees, and other damage to property.
My smart and cynical friend from the village had this to say:
When your Palestinian village is the attacked by illegal settlers, unprovoked, who do you go to for help? The Palestinian Authority which does not have any governing control of your village because they're not allowed to by the Israeli gov't? Or the Israeli soldiers whose job it is to protect those illegal settlers and not your village? Quite the problem!