Mussa Qawasma/Reuters
HEBRON, West Bank—The first thing Bassam Abu Aisha saw when he left his house on Oct. 7 was a gun in his face. It was an Israeli settler, wearing an army uniform and pointing an M16 in his face. The settler was part of a mixed group that included IDF soldiers, who were patrolling in a group, despite the IDF’s supposed role as a neutral arbiter of disputes between the two communities.
In a video of the incident taken by a neighbor and shared with The Daily Beast, the man’s finger can be seen resting by the trigger. Later that day, Abu Aisha says that a group of armed settlers tried to break down his door, smashing it with their gun buts. They weren’t able to get in, he said, because of the thick bars and locks on his door.
The 60-year-old Palestinian taxi driver, who lives in the Tel Rumeida district of Hebron, told The Daily Beast that after learning of the Hamas massacres was fear, “the first thing we felt was fear. We knew that we were going to be the ones punished for what Hamas had done.”