QUSRA, West Bank — When Luai Beiruti began building a home for his young family on the outskirts of the Palestinian village of Qusra in 2023, he imagined a place where they could live safely and comfortably. Three years later, the 29-year-old’s house still stands unfinished.

Construction initially stopped after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack plunged Israel and the region into war. But when Beiruti eventually tried to resume work, it wasn’t fighting on Israel’s borders that kept him from the building site. The threat was much closer to home: escalating violence by Israeli settlers.

Since October 7, settler extremists have repeatedly harassed residents of Qusra, and in recent weeks even besieged two homes with the families, including young children, trapped inside.

Late last month, they turned their attention to Beiruti’s under-construction house, assaulting him and other Palestinians working there. Though he appealed to Israeli authorities for help, the attack ended with Beiruti in cuffs rather than his assailants, who allegedly used the opportunity to ransack the unfinished home he is now barred from visiting.

What happened to Beiruti is one episode in a much broader surge in settler violence — and, according to Palestinians, experts and military officials, an increasingly systemic failure to stop it by the forces responsible for protecting the population.

On the day of the attack, August 29, Beiruti said he had brought seven workers to install and reinforce windows to keep thieves out. The house sits on the same hillside as the two homes that had been besieged, a case that drew intense international scrutiny and raised serious questions about the Israeli army’s lack of response to settler violence.

“I know settlers try to get in through [the windows] and steal things,” Beiruti told The Times of Israel last week from a nearby hilltop overlooking the construction site.

They had been working for only a few minutes when five young men, four of them masked, showed up, apparently from a nearby Israeli outpost. According to Beiruti, they began hurling stones at the Palestinians, entered the house, and started a “violent confrontation” before retreating to a nearby construction site.

Beiruti and the workers stayed inside the house, and he called the Israel Police, using his limited Hebrew to report the attack. But before help arrived, he said, the five assailants became dozens.

“Within 10 or 15 minutes, more groups arrived — 30 or 40 people,” also masked and throwing stones, he recalled. “Everywhere you looked, you saw settlers.”

Some 40 to 50 minutes after the violence began, Beiruti said, eight IDF soldiers arrived in two jeeps. He tried to explain what was happening through a window, but the troops told him to stay inside.

“The settlers were throwing stones in front of the soldiers, and at first the soldiers did nothing,” said Beiruti, adding that he and several workers were hit by the stones.

Then, he said, the soldiers fired tear gas in an attempt to disperse the crowd of settlers. As the gas filled the unfinished house, Beiruti and his workers fled to the roof to escape the fumes. Below, some settlers entered the house through its open windows.

From the roof, Beiruti said, he saw soldiers speaking with some of the settlers. The troops then ordered the Palestinians downstairs.

Footage of a settler attack on the home of Luai Beiruti in the West Bank village of Qusra, August 29, 2026. (Courtesy)

“The soldiers handcuffed us, confiscated our phones and blindfolded all of us,” he said. “I told them that I owned the house and was working in my own home. They told us to be quiet and that no one should speak.”

The reversal — the Palestinians who had called authorities for help ending up in custody — is one that Palestinians and activists say has become increasingly familiar during settler attacks across the West Bank. Israeli forces dispatched to restore order, they say, frequently end up restricting, dispersing or detaining Palestinians, even when settlers are accused of initiating the violence.

For nearly two hours, Beiruti said, the men were moved from room to room inside his own unfinished house, “all while handcuffed and unable to see anything.”

Eventually, a soldier called out: “Who is Luai?”

Beiruti identified himself.

“You’re not allowed to come to this house,” the soldier told him.

Beiruti protested that it was his own home that he himself was constructing.

“The army is responsible for this area, and you’re not allowed to come to your house,” the soldier replied, threatening that he would be arrested and his home would be demolished if he returned, according to Beiruti.

Another half-hour passed before the soldiers loaded the group of Palestinians into military vehicles and drove them roughly 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) away, dropping them near the village of Duma.

“They told us, ‘Count to 60, and then you can free yourselves,’” Beiruti said.

The men waited, freed themselves and flagged down a passing vehicle to take them home.

Beiruti does not know what effort, if any, the army made to disperse the settlers during the incident. He later heard from witnesses that settlers had entered his home while he was in IDF detention, stealing supplies and equipment.

The army did not reply to requests for comment.

In the days since, Beiruti has not been able to return to his property, both out of fear of another settler attack and because of the soldier’s warning.

Beiruti was far from the only resident of Qusra targeted that day. Dozens of settlers rampaged through the village and surrounding area, attacking residents and taking over another home while a family was still inside.

Beiruti photographed some of his attackers without face coverings, identifying a handful of them from previous confrontations, and handed the evidence over to police.

Only four suspects have been arrested in relation to the August 29 Qusra attacks, though it is unclear if........

© The Times of Israel