In recent weeks, Western governments, including even the Donald Trump administration, have condemned the violent siege imposed by far-right Israelis on residents of Qusra in the West Bank after they established an outpost adjacent to their homes. They seem to be “surprised” by the helplessness of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel’s law-enforcement system, while calling on Israel to enforce the law against the perpetrators.Among others, Germany published a statement that it “strongly condemns the ongoing siege of Palestinian families in Qusra. We call on the Israeli authorities to protect Palestinian civilians from settler violence.” The EU called “once more on Israel to take decisive action to address the issue and ensure accountability for the perpetrators of crimes” in Qusra.US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee condemned the siege and called the attackers “Israeli terrorists.” On August 13, he wrote on social media platform X that the embassy “has been VERY involved & the IDF & Israel Police have gone at our request to remove the Israeli terrorists doing this. The actions of those doing this to this family’s home is criminal.” Yet even after ambassador Huckabee’s post, the siege continued.No one should be surprised. The siege of Qusra did not begin recently; it began with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967. Since then, the village’s residents have suffered relentless attacks, harassment and property destruction by security forces and Israeli civilians seeking to drive them out and take control of their land. Outposts and settlements have been established around them, some among the most violent in the West Bank.The case of S, a Qusra resident, poultry farmer, human rights activist and medic, is one of countless examples of why the international community cannot rely on the IDF or Israel’s law-enforcement and judicial systems to protect the residents of Qusra or other West Bank villages. In 2018, I filed a civil damages lawsuit on his behalf after IDF soldier shot him in the buttocks.The problem for the IDF and the Israeli judicial system was that, like every other human being, a Palestinian’s buttocks are located at the back of his body, not the front. They did not want to acknowledge that soldiers had shot a person from behind. The resulting legal proceedings became increasingly bizarre before S’s lawsuit was dismissed.According to S’s testimony, during Eid al-Adha in September 2016, he was inside his chicken coop in Qusra when soldiers in the olive grove in the coop’s yard fired toward the building, riddling the water tank on its roof with bullets. As a human rights activist and medic, S went outside to provide first aid if necessary. He saw children running away as soldiers threw stun grenades at them and fired rubber bullets.S wanted to return to the coop, but one soldier told him, “Don’t go inside, go straight.” As he walked toward the dirt road in front of the coop, soldiers in the yard of a neighbouring house told him, “Get out of here, you son of a bi*ch, dog.” S said, “Why are you shooting? They’re little children.” The soldiers replied, “It’s none of your business. Get out of here.” S continued walking as ordered. One of the soldiers then fired live ammunition at him from about 15 meters away, hitting him in the buttocks from behind.The bullet tore away part of S’s buttock. Residents nearby came after hearing him cry out for help and evacuated him to Rafidia Hospital. Some of the residents used their cellphones to take photographs of his evacuation; at the hospital, he underwent an X-ray and was photographed with his injury.About a year and a half later, in its defense filing to the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, the state presented an account of the incident as one of the most serious events allegedly to have occurred in the West Bank in recent years – except that no one had heard about it: not Qusra residents, human rights organizations, settlers or the Israeli media. According to the state, hundreds of Palestinians, including the head of the village council, had set fire to settlement fields, thrown stones, fired live ammunition and even launched missiles at soldiers.Also read: Israel Must Understand that the Palestinian Question Will Not DisappearYet this dramatic account, which was intended to establish that the incident was a “military action” and therefore shield the soldiers from civil liability, was contradicted by the state’s own description of what the soldiers had actually done in response. It claimed that throughout the incident, only one soldier had fired a single live round, at a rock, after fearing for his life.The state produced no evidence or soldier to testify that missiles or live ammunition had been fired at the soldiers or that Palestinians had set the fields on fire. The company commander testified that he had not seen anyone setting anything on fire, but had merely assumed Palestinians had done so. He said the fire was so small that there was no need to call the fire department and that it went out on its own.The claim that all the soldiers who entered the village had collectively fired only “one live round” also unraveled under cross-examination. The company commander acknowledged that he had not checked who was firing or how many rounds had been fired and had made no record afterward. One soldier testified that, contrary to the IDF’s rules of engagement, soldiers had been instructed to use live fire once their crowd-dispersal means ran out. When shown a photograph of S’s bullet-riddled water tank, the soldiers and the company commander acknowledged that the holes appeared to have been caused by live ammunition.The company commander and most of the soldiers testified that during the incident they had not identified S, or anyone wearing his clothes, and had not seen any Palestinian being treated or evacuated. The only person who claimed to have seen S was the company commander’s radio operator, who testified that he was attached to the commander, “I’m his radio operator like a dog’s tail.”The radio operator offered the explanation that became central to the state’s defense: S had participated in the riot but had not been shot by the soldiers. According to him, the photographs of S being evacuated and hospitalised, the medical records and X-rays, the scar on his buttock and even the holes in the water tank had all been fabricated and staged. He claimed to have seen S walking around the village after the riot ended.In her August 2020 ruling, the judge agreed with the state that the incident constituted a “military action” that granted IDF soldiers immunity from civil lawsuits. She also found the accounts given by the state, the soldiers and the company commander to be consistent and coherent.Although it was enough for the judge to find that the incident constituted a “military action” to dismiss the lawsuit, she also found the radio operator’s testimony credible: S had participated in the riot and had not been injured at all, let alone by the one bullet the soldiers claimed had been fired.In effect, this required a large-scale conspiracy involving S, the Palestinian residents who evacuated him and the doctors at the hospital – all supposedly staging his evacuation, his wound and scar, and the photographs and X-rays. The judge ordered S to pay the IDF 6,000 shekels in legal costs. We raised the money from Israeli human rights activists.It is important to remember this story from 2016, and the legal proceedings that ended in 2020, amid attempts to portray the situation in the West Bank and Qusra as the sole product of the insane far-right Netanyahu-Ben-Gvir government, rather than as part of an ethnic-cleansing and apartheid project that began in 1967 – as though, if a new government comes to power in Israel in October, the West Bank will somehow return to its “good old days.”On the same day that soldiers shot S, they also shot his friend W, an economist, elsewhere in Qusra. According to witnesses, soldiers entered the village’s children’s playground, broke the gate and vandalised the facility. W, 56, approached to calm the situation, and soldiers shot him in the middle of the forehead with a rubber bullet. His face filled with blood, and residents took him by car to Rafidia Hospital. He recovered and returned to work.Having seen the ordeal S endured in his legal case, W decided not to file a lawsuit and instead tried to move on with his life. But the occupation did not leave him alone. A few days after the outbreak of the war in October 2023, Israeli civilians shot W dead while he was attending the funeral of other Palestinians who had been killed by Israeli civilians and soldiers several days earlier.To save Qusra and the other Palestinian villages and residents of the West Bank, the international community cannot rely on the IDF, Israeli law-enforcement authorities or the Israeli judicial system – all full partners in the ethnic-cleansing and apartheid project. Instead, it should enforce the ICJ advisory opinion of July 19, 2024, and the UN General Assembly resolution of September 18, 2024, and force Israel to get out of the West Bank, with significant sanctions if it fails to meet a set deadline.Eitay Mack is an Israeli lawyer and human rights activist.