In the early afternoon of Sunday, 26 February 2023, a Palestinian gunman shot and killed brothers Hallel and Yagel Yaniv from the settlement of Har Bracha, as they waited in traffic on the road inside the town of Huwarah. Later in the afternoon, hundreds of settlers, escorted by the military, descended on several neighborhoods in the town of Huwarah and the villages of Za’tara, Burin and ‘Asirah al-Qibliyah, and carried out a pogrom.
That evening, at around 6:00 P.M., Israeli settlers arrived near a building owned by the Dmeidi family in Huwara. Nawal Dmeidi (68) lives on the second floor of the building with her daughters, Hanan (38), Fadiyah (35) and Yasmin (30). Their brother Firas (37), who was abroad at the time, runs the Abu al-’Ayal supermarket on the ground floor of the building. The settlers set fire to a dumpster near the building, dragged wooden pallets and crates they found near the dumpster, piled them at the entrance to the building and set them on fire. The settlers also threw stones at the building, breaking the balcony railing. When Nawal Demeidi tried to move the gas tank to the back of the building so it would not explode from the heat, soldiers fired about four tear gas canisters at her. The fire ultimately caused an explosion in a water pipe, and the water that burst out of it extinguished the fire about 20 minutes after it was started.
While Nawal’s house was under attack, settlers also attacked her 43-year-old daughter Mirvat’s home, located nearby, smashing eight windows and damaging roof shingles, lighting fixtures, furniture and flowerpots in the yard. The settlers also torched Mirvat’s car.
B’Tselem field researcher Salma a-Deb’i collected testimonies from several family members:
Nawal Dmeidi, 68, a mother of seven from Huwarah, described what happened that day:
I live with my family in Huwarah, near the main road. The Abu al-’Ayal supermarket, on the ground floor of our building, is owned by my son Firas (37), who was in Dubai at the time. I live on the second floor with my three daughters.
On Sunday, 26 February 2023, at around 6:00 P.M., I heard voices on the street and near the house. I went out to the balcony to see what was going on but had to go back inside because a lot of stones were being thrown at the house. The glass railing of the balcony was shattered. I told my daughters Hanan, Fadiya and Yasmin to find shelter. I was so scared I couldn’t stand on my feet, so I sat down in the living room. While I was sitting there, my grandson, Qusai Demeidi (13), my daughter Mirvat’s son, called and said settlers were attacking their house, too and setting fire to their new car. I didn’t know what to tell him. I just said, “be careful.” Mirvat also called me to calm me down. Yasmin said, “they’ve set fire to Mirvat’s house.” She was so scared for her sister’s and nephews’ lives that she started crying. I told her, “Don’t be afraid. God is with them. With God’s help, nothing will happen to them. Let the settlers burn everything; the main thing is that none of them get hurt.”
Meanwhile, the settlers set fire to wooden pallets and plastic crates next to the door of our building. The smoke seeped into the house through the balcony and the stairwell window. It was hard to breathe, and I was afraid the fire would reach the house too. I took the gas tank and moved it to the backyard, which is accessible from inside the house, because I was afraid it would explode. I had trouble breathing because of the smoke, and then soldiers also fired about four tear gas canisters in my direction. My face felt like it was burning from the tear gas and the smoke and flames.
My daughters and I went out of the house to the backyard, screaming and asking for help, hoping someone would hear. Our neighbor said he would call an ambulance and the fire department, but no one came. I thought the house would burn and we would die there. My daughters were crying and screaming hysterically. We had no choice but to try to put out the fire ourselves. We filled kitchenware with water and poured it on the fire, but we couldn’t see if it was helping because of the smoke that was rising up. Yasmin cried and asked me to be careful because of the fire and the settlers. All I wanted was to put out the fire and save my daughters’ lives. We didn’t manage to put out the fire, but then a water pipe burst, and the water that came out of it put out the fire in about twenty minutes.
Two hours went by before the settlers left, and then my daughters and I went into the backyard to take in fresher air. We almost suffocated. It was terrifying. I cried. A little while later, paramedics who’d climbed on the rooftops of the houses nearby reached us. They checked our blood pressure and pulse and then left. I asked them to turn off the tap so we wouldn’t waste water.
It was a terrible night. We had not eaten dinner before the fire started, and after, we couldn’t eat anymore. We couldn’t sleep at all that night. We had no power in the house because of the fire. We stayed without power the night of the attack and the first day after it. Part of the front door melted in the fire, and we couldn’t open the lock. We were stuck there, and two days after the attack, we ran out of bread and water. My son-in-law ‘Abd a-Naser Dmeidi came with my grandson Jamal (7), and they brought us water and bread that we took up to the apartment with a rope I’d rolled down to the street.
My son Firas came back from Dubai that day. He came home from Allenby Bridge and then went and got a blacksmith who opened the door, and only then could he enter. Our reunion was very emotional. Most of my children weren’t in Huwarah when the incident happened. Firas was in Dubai, Fadi (42) and Issa (50) live in Ramallah and were unable to reach us, and my daughter Nisreen (47) lives in Abu Dhabi. Fadi called me while it was happening and told me, “don’t worry, mom, I’m on my way to you.” He was crying when he talked to me. But the soldiers at the Za’tara checkpoint wouldn’t let him through. After that, our cell phones ran out of battery, and he couldn’t call us anymore. I felt like we were alone with no one to help. The batteries in my hearing aid, which I change every few days, ran out the day after the attack too, and I couldn’t hear anything. It added to my misery.
I still can’t go to sleep because I’m constantly scared the settlers will come back and set the house on fire again. I sit in the living room and occasionally get up and go out to the balcony to check what’s going on outside. I drink instant coffee to stay up. Every time my daughters hear a sound, they wake up, startled and scared. My daughters want us to leave our house and move to Ramallah, but I don’t want to leave my home. I’ve lived in it since I got married, and I can’t suddenly just get up and leave. Because we had no power after the fire, all the food in the fridge and freezer went bad, and I had to throw it out. I’ve had no appetite at all since that night, and I haven’t cooked anything either. I’m not doing well emotionally.
Mirvat Dmeidi, 43, Nawal’s daughter and a mother of four, said in her testimony:
On Sunday, 26 February 2023, around 2:30 P.M., I heard about the settlers being killed in town and that the checkpoints around Nablus and Huwarah had been closed. I spoke on the phone with my daughter, Ranim (19) who studies at the university in Nablus. She told me the checkpoints were closed and the situation on the roads was bad, and you could only drive on the backroads. She came home at around 5:00 P.M., after three hours of driving through nearby villages. She said that she was riding standing up in a minibus that was very crowded with passengers because many people were stressed by the situation and wanted to go home. She said she’d passed out on the way because it was so crowded. Her friends had her sit in a seat vacated by one of the passengers, and she was already sitting there when she came to. As she was telling me all this, my son ‘Obadah (15) came and told us there were settlers in our streets. It was around 6:00 P.M. I went up to the second floor of the house, because you can see the main street from there, which is about 300 meters from the house. I wanted to see what the situation was like around my mother’s house, who is 68 years old already.
I saw hundreds of settlers and military jeeps too. I called my mother and asked her to go out to the balcony, because the settlers were close to her house. She was scared because of the explosions she was hearing. I told her not to be scared, that it was only stun grenades, not bullets. I heard noise outside, while I was talking to her. I looked down and saw my car on fire. I went down with my husband, ‘Abd a-Naser (52), and my children, Ranim, ‘Obadah, Qusai (13) and Jamal (7), to put out the fire with the water hose. While we were putting out the fire, I saw many settlers close to us, among the trees. I pushed my children and my husband into the house, went in after them and locked the door. I told them it was better to let the car burn than any of us getting hurt. As soon as we closed the door, the settlers started throwing stones at the house from all directions. We went up to the second floor, which felt safer. My son ‘Obadah went up to the roof and locked the door behind him because he wanted to fend off the settlers and protect us. I was afraid for his life and worried something would happen to him, so I begged him to open the door. After a few minutes, he did. We didn’t know what to do. We had no way to defend ourselves. We found two concrete blocks on the roof, broke them up and threw the pieces at the settlers. I saw two military jeeps about 50 meters from the house. I shouted at them, “To hell with you; you see what is happening and do nothing to them.” The soldier gestured for me to get inside with his hand. Ranim pulled me inside. I saw that my car was on fire again. The settlers also threw a bag with flammable material into the kitchen but thank God the kitchen did not catch fire.
The attack lasted an hour or more. We called for help from people in the area and also asked for help from all the residents and friends who called us, but it was no use. By the time a fire truck came, my car, which I had bought a few months ago, was already completely burnt. The car cost NIS 75,000 (NIS 1 = USD 0.28). I’d paid NIS 40,000 in cash, and I have to pay the rest in installments. I do have comprehensive insurance, but insurance companies don’t cover damage caused by the army and the settlers. I bought the car after many years of suffering without one. I used it to drive to my work as a school administrative assistant in ‘Einabus and to do shopping and run errands. I also drove my husband to work and my kids to school. Now I have to find someone to drive to work with, because there’s no public transportation from Huwarah to ‘Einnabus. If I don’t, I’ll have to get up very early in the morning and go through Nablus. Now we all have to get around on foot, no matter what the weather is like. I also had work binders from the past year and students’ textbooks in the car, which were completely burned. It’s a big problem. The car that was so important to me turned into a useless piece of junk in a flash. The settlers also broke eight windows in the house and damaged the shingles, lights, and furniture and flowerpots in the yard.
Our biggest problem right now is Jamal’s mental state. During the attack, he cried a lot and was in shock. I didn’t know what to do or how to help while the incident was happening. He still trembles every time he hears a noise, bursts into tears and refuses to sleep alone. He stays up until one o’clock in the morning and only manages to fall asleep when he is completely exhausted. He is also unwilling to talk about what happened and does not want to hear anything about it. Ranim also suffers from insomnia and hasn’t really returned to school yet. She only went in for the exams. I haven’t gone back to work yet either. I can’t bring myself to. My husband, who teaches English at the ‘Urif high school, only went back to work yesterday. My older son doesn’t talk about what happened. I think he doesn’t want to make it difficult for us, because he sees how hard it is for us already. We’re all in very bad shape. We’ve lost the sense of security we had in our home. They wanted to burn and kill us. I stay up at night, and I keep looking out the windows. I picture them around the house watching us.
We got NIS 1,000 in aid from an international aid organization. We installed an iron fence to protect ourselves from the settlers. It cost us NIS 3,000. We haven’t been able to replace the windows yet.
Firas Dmeidi, 37, Nawal’s son and a father of four, who owns the Abu al-‘Ayal supermarket on the first floor of the building, said in his testimony:
On Sunday, 26 February 2023, at around 6:00 P.M., while I was in Dubai with my wife visiting a food product exhibition for work, I got a message from my neighbor with a link to a live stream showing a crowd of settlers and military presence near Yitzhar Junction. I understood something serious had happened in the area. I checked our building’s security cameras remotely and saw some masked settlers near it, escorted by military jeeps. I called my mother, who lives above my supermarket, right away and asked her to close the doors and blinds and turn off the lights at the entrance to the house and the supermarket.
I saw the settlers setting fire to the dumpster that’s close to our building. In the meantime, my sister Mirvat called me and told me settlers had set fire to her car. She lives in about the same area, but her house is far from the road. Then I saw, on the cameras, the settlers setting fire to wooden pallets and plastic crates in front of the door of our building and throwing stones at it. I went crazy. I didn’t know what to do. I was so mad I shouted and banged my head on the steering wheel of the car we were using there. My mother and my three sisters were alone in the house and were going through a terrifying attack by the settlers, who were protected by the military, while I was very far away and would take a long time to get back home.
I called the municipality and my friends in the village and asked them to help my mother. But everyone told me it was very dangerous and that they couldn’t reach her. They told me even the fire truck had been attacked. I kept in touch with my mother for two hours. I asked her to pour water on the fire. When I saw on the cameras that the settlers backed away a little, I let her know and told her so she could go pour water on the fire. In the last conversation between us that day, my mother told me some paramedics had reached her through the roofs. When she stopped answering my phone calls, I thought the worst had happened. I called my sister Mirvat, who was in really bad shape, and she told me they could not get to my mother’s house because the settlers were still in the area, and it was dangerous.
On the security cameras, I saw some sparks coming out of the electrical panel near the door. Then I saw an ambulance pull up, and the paramedics who came out of it put out the fire with water bottles from the supermarket that were on the sidewalk.
We made it to the airport in Dubai that night, or early Monday morning actually, but the first flight we could find to Jordan wasn’t until 10:00 A.M. We arrived at the Jordanian airport, and from there, we drove to the bridge to cross over to the West Bank. After we crossed the bridge and arrived in Jericho, we found out that all the roads were closed, and we had to stay in our car in Jericho until the next day. It was very hard. On Tuesday, the Za’tara checkpoint was still closed, so we drove through the village of Jamma’in and got to Huwarah at nine o’clock in the morning.
The town looked like a ghost town. The stores were closed. Signs of the attack were visible everywhere, and there were soldiers everywhere. As I approached my mother’s house, I saw my nephew, Jamal (7), Mirvat’s son, tying a bag of bread with a rope, and my mother pulled the rope up from the balcony. I tried to get inside the building, but the door was completely melted, and it was impossible to open it. I called the municipality. They said they couldn’t come because it would put their crews at risk, but I explained the situation and said we needed assistance. It took two hours for the municipality to send a team to help us, and we were able to open the door.
Only then was I able to see my mother and my sisters. When we saw each other, it felt like coming “back from the dead.” I couldn’t believe they were still alive. It was a terrifying event. Those were the worst days of my life since my father died when I was six years old. I don’t want to remember that day because it brings up very rough feelings.
