Siege worshiped ... an easy story and her daughter, Iman, as a model for undermining the occupation of the Palestinians

Mervat Sadiq-Ramallah

Yesterday morning, Saturday, Palestinian Suhaila Abu Bakr was on her way back to her father’s house in the town of Ya`d, southwest of Jenin in the West Bank. She was exhausted from the repeated Israeli arrest, to embrace her young Noureddine, whose breastfeeding was late. Her older daughter, Iman, says, "He didn't let her end breastfeeding my brother until they returned to arrest her again."

The name of Sohaila, 42, and her daughter Iman Asfour, 19, have become frequent every day in the ongoing Israeli attack on the town of Ya`bad since Tuesday, May 12, when the occupation army announced the killing of a soldier after he was thrown with stones while his forces stormed the town at dawn.

The occupation claimed that its forces were stoned from a residential building belonging to the Asfour family in Al-Salamah neighborhood in the western part of the town, and that this caused the death of a soldier from the "Golani" unit, the most important Israeli elite unit, after he was hit with a stone in the head.

As a result, large Israeli forces began a massive arrest campaign in the targeted neighborhood, and as of Saturday evening, approximately forty citizens, including Nazmi Asfour, 47, his wife, Suhaila, and his daughter Iman, and all of his brothers and children, remained, and 32 people were still under arrest and investigation.

Closure and siege
In the first hours after the killing of a soldier in the Golani unit, the occupation forces closed the entrances of Ya’b to the concrete cubes, and prohibited movement to and from them, as well as obstructing the passage of ambulances and relief vehicles to them.

Al-Jazeera Net met Suhaila and her daughter Iman, who were arrested for the second time Friday night, then Suhaila was re-arrested a third time to put pressure on her husband and detained relatives.

The Palestinian woman is staying with her husband and eight children in a three-storey building in which his brothers and mother also live, and all male members of the Sahila family have been arrested since Tuesday, after the occupation accused one of her residents, who has not been identified yet, of killing the soldier by throwing him a stone from inside Building.

Iman spoke at a time, while she was busy caring for her siblings who missed their parents in the recent arrests, and were transferred to live in their grandfather's house to protect them from the daily horror left by the repeated incursions.
Iman says that she was arrested for the second time on Saturday night with her mother from her grandfather's house, and was subjected to a separate investigation to hear his findings in the whole neighborhood because of the screaming and intimidation of the occupation soldiers.

Screaming and
verbal abuse The girl describes what happened by saying, "Three investigators gathered around me with screams and verbal abuse ... They want us to confess to something we did not do." After hours, she was taken with her mother to an investigation center in the Dotan colony near the town, where they were repeatedly assaulted.

"I could hear their insults and screams at my mother all night," she added. At the end of the investigation, "I was thrown to the ground because of the pressure in repeated screaming rounds."

At six in the morning on Saturday morning, Suhaila and her daughter were released and were forced to walk long distances, fasting and exhausted as a result of a severe investigation. "We did not arrive soon," my daughter said. "My mother was breastfeeding my younger brother, Noureddine, when they returned to arrest her."

Eman was able to see her father remotely during her recent arrest, and stated that the bruises were visible on his face and it appeared that he was severely beaten.

Iman was very concerned about her mother who was arrested for the third time in the morning, and she suffers from a severe weakness and fatigue that causes her to faint all the time.

After that, the occupation released Suhaila on Saturday evening for the third time, to narrate what happened to her abuse, and says that the forces of the occupation police and intelligence services subjected her to an investigation at Barta'a checkpoint west of Jenin, and there the occupation officers tried to mislead her and claimed that her husband made confessions and conveyed words in her tongue, Then they heard her voice close to her, but they were trying to force him to say something she did not understand, she said.

Suhaila was swearing throughout the night, and at dawn, she was allowed to perform ablution and pray for only five minutes. She said, "I called from my Lord Al-Faraj," and was released soon after, to find her children in a difficult psychological state.

While the occupation accuses the Asfour family of throwing stones at its forces and causing the killing of the soldier a few days ago, the mother and daughter say that the family woke up on the night of the accident late at the time of sahur, then heard the sound of the Israeli occupation forces’s shooting towards the windows of the house, then it was soon subjected to violent storming and assault, without knowing that he was killed The soldier.

Violations of the occupation
The Palestinian Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh announced at a press conference on Saturday the request of the United Nations to send a crew to monitor Israeli violations in the town of Ya`bad.

The mayor of Ya`b Saed al-Kilani said that the town's siege and the daily incursions have left a catastrophic situation in it, as the occupation prevented the transport of bread and foodstuffs from outside it. The incursions, and terrorizing the people with sound bombs around the clock.

The municipality recorded dozens of cases of severe suffocation, and ten injuries of metal bullets, as well as beatings of the freed prisoner Adnan Hamarsheh and his family, which caused them fractures and serious wounds.

Ya`bad has a population of more than twenty thousand, and more than two hundred of its children are held in the prisons of the occupation, among whom are sentenced to life imprisonment.

The town is known for its remarkable struggle in Palestinian history, as it has provided more than a hundred martyrs since the revolution of the thirties of the last century led by Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam against the British occupation, and he was martyred with four of his men in the bushes in 1935.