Qalqiliya residents report settler attack, army harassment, theft

Ma'an
Brothers were attacked in their car by rock-throwing settlers near the Yakir settlement in the northern West Bank on Friday.

... injured when settlers threw stones at their car as they passed a junction serving the nearby settlement... one of the boys was in serious condition.

... were driving home from Ramallah at the time of the attack......

.........A Qalqiliya resident filed a suit Saturday, against Israeli border police he said stole his horse and handed it over to a kibbutz.

Sulaiman Ghannam from Suffin, east of Qalqiliya, said the incident began at midnight on Tuesday when several Israeli military jeeps entered the village. His property was among those targeted and soldiers entered the home after looking through his barns.

The soldiers asked about a horse in the barns, which Ghannam confirmed as his own.

“The soldiers left and came back minutes later saying they wanted to take the horse for checks,” Ghannam said. He was told he could go to Checkpoint 109 south of Qalqiliya the following day to ask about the animal.

The next morning, Ghannam said, “I headed to that checkpoint and soldiers asked me to wait.” He was questioned for an hour and a half, and asked to provide papers for the horse and proof that it was indeed his. According to Ghannam, he told the soldiers to get a blood sample from the horse so he could provide samples from its mother, still boarding at the family farm. “But they refused,” he said.

Ghannam said he also provided soldiers with vaccination records for the horse, but he was told they were not valid.

“At 10am, an Israeli woman came in a truck with an animal trailer attached and soldiers said it would be taken to a Kibbutz for further checks.”

Ghannam filed a suit through the Palestinian liaison department, but said he was told by his lawyer that he would not be able to get the horse back without sufficient proof of ownership. Full story