Between the signs of the stores in the Arabic language, the pottery for sale on the side of the road, the animals put in the slaughterhouses and the children in the uniform used among the Palestinians, a long trail of cars stretches. Some carry a yellow plate and others white, and they all face the same oppressive traffic jam and potholes on the asphalt road. These sentences may sound like a description of coexistence and common life, but the reality in the Palestinian village of Hawara in Samaria is far from that.
For the hundreds of Jewish residents on the back of the mountain, Route 60 passing through Hvara is the only access route to work or school, and in general to any exit from their settlement. This week this road was soaked in the blood of Halal Menachem Weigal-Yaakov Yaniv, 20 and 22 years old, residents of Har Baraka, who were killed in a shooting attack while traveling on the same road. The people of Israel were struck with shock and grief, but those who know the way in question were not really surprised. Its Jewish passengers constantly suffer various kinds of harm; Usually it involves stone throwing, and sometimes Molotov cocktails and even shooting attacks. This muted terror has become a kind of routine and is hardly covered.
Following the serious attack, as after other incidents in the past, hundreds of settlers went to protest rallies at intersections in Judea and Samaria. In Hawara, the protest march got out of control, when some of the young people who participated in it set fire to houses and vehicles of locals. In the day after the riots, there was silence in the Palestinian village. By order of the IDF, shops located on the main road were not opened, and the scene of the attack was silent. Apart from a group of yeshiva students who held a singing circle in memory of the murdered, most of the time no people were seen there.
Haftziva Shani, Yitzhar: “Each settlement has a group of reports of stone throwing, and every few hours there is an incident. Most of the cases do not even reach these groups, and the media do not hear about it at all.”
But even this silence was particularly fragile. On Tuesday of this week, the stones were thrown at Israelis on Havara road again. Two passengers, hitchhikers, were hit in the face; The driver of the car was the uncle of the late Yaniv brothers. Last Thursday it was Heftziva Shani, who was driving with her three children and was hit by a barrage of stones. The children – aged two, five and six – were injured.
“In the meantime, our car is disabled, it is impossible to drive in a car with glass on the floor and the seats, and there is also a hole in the window,” Haftziva says. “But it’s not something that will stop us from traveling and disable our routine. This is not the first time I’ve been kidnapped in Hawara. As a girl, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at me, eggs were thrown at my husband.
“The road in Hvara serves residents from four settlements – Alon-Mora, Har-Barache, Yitzhar and Itamar, for whom it is the only route through which it is possible to reach the Tfumat junction area,” Haftziva explains. “To drive in it is literally to enter an Arab village, with all that implies – cars driving against the direction of traffic, people crossing the road without warning and without looking to the right or left, burnt cars standing on top of each other in piles in the lots. There are slaughterhouses in the village, and you can actually see the slaughtered cows It’s not a short passage through the village, but a 10-12 minute drive in the heart of Hvara, and that’s when there are no traffic jams. During rush hour, you can be in Hvara for half an hour or more.”
In the past year, the frequency of throwing stones has increased, but Heftziva testifies that this is not a new phenomenon: “I have lived in Samaria for 26 years, my parents and my husband are also from the area, so this is a way I have known all my life and do it on a daily basis. I am not afraid, I have learned to know the road, but you can’t ignore what’s happening here. There are four settlements here that this is the only axis to reach, and we are constantly being kidnapped. Each settlement has some group of reports of stone throwing, and every few hours there is an incident. Most of the cases do not even reach these groups , and in the media you don’t hear about it at all. If there is damage, then you go to the police to get permission for property tax, but not beyond that.”
And the children are not afraid?
“The children are heroes, their coping is impressive. It is clear to them and also to us who continue to travel there. We had a great miracle that it ended with minor injuries, but it is a reality that must be changed.” In addition to the actual attacks, the Jews passing through Hvara also absorb eggs, spitting, curses and obscene gestures.
hotbed of hatred
Hawara, with its approximately 8,000 inhabitants, is a hard nut to crack not only due to the constant interface with the Jewish neighbors, but because of the local leadership that educates and incites terrorism and empowers terrorists. An event that teaches about the atmosphere and spirit in the village took place last November. In the elementary school in Hawara, the anniversary of the death of the great murderer Yasser Arafat was marked. As part of a very impressive ceremony in honor of the “martyrs”, the children stood in the Mossad plaza reciting sentences of support for the terrorists. In addition to the hundreds of students and staff, senior officials from the Palestinian Ministry of Education participated in the event, including the CEO of the Nablus Governorate in the office next to the mayor of Hawara. The students waved pictures of well-known terrorists, headed by Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who encouraged a series of suicide attacks and was killed by Israel. In the pictures appeared Also the “heroes” of the latest terrorist wave, including the terrorist from the murderous attack in Bnei Barak and the terrorist from the attack on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv.
This education is rooted in the younger generation of Hvara already in kindergarten. The documentation uploaded this week by journalist Yishai Friedman shows activity in a kindergarten in the village, where the children learn about the prisoners and the terrorists. Some of them are supposedly imprisoned in a makeshift prison with handcuffs, while their friends, simulating the Zionists, are given toy guns. According to Friedman, this is an educational program on behalf of the Hvara Council. Additional documentation shows how teachers at the school encourage students to wear masks and fight grades. In the photos taken at the school, the children are seen carrying signs with the names of the places they aspire to return to, including Jaffa, Acre, Safed and Netanya. After the murder of the Yaniv brothers, a picture of the car they were driving was published on the Facebook page of the village municipality, with the mocking caption: “Broken car for sale”.
In such an atmosphere it is not surprising that the village of Havara has become a source of terror, a place where Jews are hit every day by throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. During last September, there was a significant increase in the scope of shooting incidents at Jewish cars, but they ended without casualties. A few months earlier, a father and his two children who were traveling in the highway were moderately to seriously injured by a shot at them. In May 2020, a Palestinian terrorist tried to open fire on a Jewish car that was standing in a traffic jam with two 14-year-old children in it. The driver got out of the car and shot the terrorist in the air. In May 2017, local rioters tried to lynch an Itamar resident who was driving on the road. He defended himself with his personal weapon and killed one of the terrorists. In December 2015, during the Knife Intifada, two terrorists stabbed an IDF soldier in Hawara and slightly wounded him. Soldiers who were there killed them, and Mahiri another soldier was moderately wounded.
The settlers, who periodically hold protests around the village, receive unsatisfactory answers from the security system. Sometimes various promises are given, and in other cases participation in the pain is expressed alongside disturbing statements such as “there will be no situation of zero terrorist incidents, maybe a slight reduction”.
Among the many comforters who arrived this week at the Yaniv family’s home in Alon-Mora was Major General Uzi Dayan, former General of the Central Command, Deputy Chief of Staff and Chief of Staff. “The visit to the family home was terrible and full of majesty,” Dayan told us. “Terrible because of the great pain, and full of majesty because of the special conduct of the family. I told them that the words said by the mother of the family, Esther, are a call to us as a people to do everything in our power to speak to all the people’s representatives. I saw this as a huge reinforcement of our letter, the heads of the MLA. This murder reinforces the need for unity and reaching agreements for the benefit of national resilience.”
In Dayan’s view, the terrorism in Hawara is not a decree of fate. “You can’t force the residents of Hvara to love Jews, but there is something to be done to build a serious deterrent,” he says. “One should not leave any case of a murderous terrorist open, but strive for a severe and effective punishment – destroy terrorists’ houses, use tools of deportation. After the killer is found in Hawara, one should come to terms not only with him personally, but take the family and copy the location her to another place in the territory under our control, such as Hebron. This is a punishment that can create a deterrent.”
Dayan points to another step that may prevent terrorism, alongside its ideological and value significance. “There should also be a strengthening of settlement. New settlement points near the area of the attack are a deterrent to the terrorists. In the end, Palestinian terrorism has a significant element of anti-Semitism – in the language, the message, the attitude. And terrorism has a historical perspective. If they see that after harming the Jews there is a response of extensive construction in the settlement, this will send them a message about what is profitable and what is not.”
A complex design challenge
On the local and practical level, the residents of Gev Harer are waiting for a solution that will end their dependence on the mercy of the Palestinians for every trip outside the settlement, and for the construction of a road that will free them from the dangerous trips. This week it was reported that following the serious attack, the Minister of Transportation Miri Regev directed the CEO of Natibi Israel to immediately advance the infrastructure works in the Hawara bypass. The teams will be reinforced and the works will be carried out day and night accompanied by security and in coordination with the IDF, in order to significantly shorten the schedule.
“Hvara is an axis that we all travel on all the time, and for twenty years we have been talking about the need for a bypass road,” the deputy head of the Shomron Regional Council, Davidi Ben-Zion, tells us. “It’s a road that will start at the Tapouh intersection, pass through a bridge that will cross Route 60 that exists today, and then circle Hvara from the eastern part. A significant and long seven-kilometer route. It’s a road that will start from scratch; it won’t be widened, it won’t be renovated, but simply a completely new route – something that the state almost They don’t do it because of the high costs. They talked about this need for years, but following the attack in which they and Naama Henkin were murdered in 2015, the Samaria Council set up a protest tent in front of the Prime Minister’s office, and then a decision was made to allocate NIS 1 billion for bypass roads, including the Kalandia subsidence axis, Bypassing Al-Arub, bypassing Nabi Elias and bypassing Havara.”
The planning of the road, Ben-Zion explains, was a long and complex phase in itself. “There are also Palestinians from the nearby small villages who pass through Hawara, and they all drain onto this road. Today, crossings are being built for them under the Hawara bypass road, so that they can continue to pass from their villages to the central axis in the village. This is a significant planning challenge. After the planning, there was the land preparation phase for about two and a half years , and in 2019 the construction phase began.
“As a resident of Alon-Mora, I must say that I have been hearing about the need for this road since childhood. Since that protest led by Yossi Dagan, this road began to turn from a dream into a reality. Netanyahu supported this decision, Miri Regev in her previous term as Minister of Transportation also pushed him, and later Smotrich. There were There were quite a few delays during the corona virus and because of violence from criminals who demanded protection and stole and burned equipment. But despite the delays, there is good progress.”
The original opening date was set for October 2023, adds the deputy head of the council, “but at some point Yossi Dagan asked Miri Regev for the road to become two-lane. The request was accepted, but it required an additional budget, re-planning and other works that caused another delay, and now the opening is expected in mid-2024. This week, on the day of the funeral, there was another tour with the Minister of Transportation, Yossi Dagan, senior officials in the Ministry of Transportation and the IDF, the CEO of Natibi Israel, a transportation officer in the Civil Administration, and others. The Minister gave an instruction to make an effort to complete the project within four months, and I hope that will indeed happen.
“The settlement on the back of the mountain is thirsty for this road,” concludes Ben-Zion. “My wife drives to work every day on the Hawara road, in a car protected by stones. Until recently, the feeling was that if the car is protected by stones, then the windows are closed and everything is fine, because there are no shootings in Hawara. Now this security has been shaken. In other parts of Samaria, the settlement is growing at a dizzying pace, but on the back of the mountain the pace is slow Very much. People are afraid to come. They say that there is no admissions committee in Alon-Mora, because the road filters itself.”
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