PERRYSBURG – For decades, since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the West Bank has been a territory occupied by Israel. The West Bank’s Palestinian population is an estimated 3.3 million, while the number of Israeli settlers, living there illegally, stands at around 700,000, by one estimate.
Under both Israeli and international law, these settlements are illegal.
Yet, for many Palestinians living in the West Bank, they’ve become a part of life, as the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) — which has the responsibility of reigning them in — has often failed to do so.
One such example is captured in this video, which appears to show IDF troops, rather than removing settlers from outside a Palestinian home in Qusra, praying with those settlers instead. That video was captured and posted to Facebook by Qusai Ridi, who has been effectively trapped in the home, along with his son, Ahmed, as settlers have attempted a siege just outside the front wall.
The house is owned by Qusai’s brother, Loui Ridi, a prominent Palestinian-American businessman who lives in northwest Ohio. Since Sunday, Aug. 9, Loui has watched, through surveillance cameras, as Israeli settlers have attempted to cement their presence outside his home. Worried about his brother and nephew, he made it a point last week to see them in person, with their diminishing supply of food and water adding urgency to an already concerning situation.
Last Saturday, the Toledo Free Press spoke to Tim Ridi, another brother of Qusai, who, like Loui, lives in the Toledo area (Perrysburg). He told the TFP that the settlers managed to cut power lines running to the home, and to shut off its water.
Video report from Jaden Jefferson’s interview with Tim Ridi.
“The settler movement has been going on for a long time,” Tim said. “But in the past couple of years, they have [found] new ways. They’ve never done this before, to surround a house until they force that resident out. This [has been] going on only in the past three or four years. This is something new to us and very dangerous for residents there and citizens there.”
Tim expressed zero doubt about the location of Loui’s home, on a hill high above Qusra, being a factor in settlers choosing to target it.
“That’s the reason they wanted that mountain because there’s only, on that whole mountain, maybe seven or eight houses, and it’s a lot easier for them to move seven or eight families out and to control the area, instead of having, like, 200 or 300 — it would be a lot harder.”
Asked about the video recorded by his other brother, Qusai — and has now been seen around the world — he expressed disappointment in the actions, or lack thereof, taken by the Israeli soldiers.
“Imagine that somebody is around your house trying to harass you, kick you out of your house and you call the police, or the army — and instead of coming to protect you — they actually side with that gang. How would you feel?”
While the IDF told the Times of Israel that it’s investigating the incident, that doesn’t serve as much reassurance for many Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, as there’s an inherent distrust in the IDF’s ability to act on their behalf.
Tim, in the meantime, hopes that he and his brother Loui’s status, as American citizens, will help to get more forceful action taken against the settlers outside his brother’s home — even as he remains cautious in his optimism.
“I’m hoping that this would change, because of the U.S. Things should get better, because we are American citizens and we have land and a house there,” he said.
Before leaving Ohio to visit his brother and nephew in Qusra this week, Loui was already in contact with the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, as well as the office of Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Toledo). He wrote, in a Facebook post last Saturday, that an embassy representative assured him that Mike Huckabee — the U.S. ambassador to Israel — “has raised the matter and that it is being addressed at the highest level.”
Ambassador Huckabee has condemned the settlers as “Israeli terrorists,” which came as a surprise to many, given his longtime support of the broader settler movement.
Loui added, in that same social media post, that Representative Kaptur’s office “has also been responsive and helpful.”
