Mounting home demolitions and settler attacks plunge a Palestinian village into crisis

Associated Press

UMM AL-KHAIR, West Bank (AP) — First came the Israeli military bulldozers. They tore down a quarter of the homes in the West Bank Bedouin village of Umm al-Khair. Then came the settler attacks. In the aftermath, dozens of people were left homeless and without consistent access to water and electricity. Several were injured from pepper spray and sticks. And they said it all happened as Israeli soldiers looked on. Bedouin communities in the West Bank face rampant, unpunished Israeli settler violence and a frenzy of state-backed demolitions. Together, rights groups say, the two are pushing a growing number of Bedouin from their land and making any eventual independent Palestinian state a more distant reality.