Katz shifts West Bank policing as the Qusra siege reaches one week
Israel Katz ordered West Bank civilian policing moved from the army to the police; Palestinian leaders call it a sovereignty breach. In Qusra, settlers' week-long siege of three homes left families short of supplies until UN aid arrived Sunday.
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Civilian policing moves from the army to the police
Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered a plan to move civilian law enforcement in the occupied West Bank from the army to the police. Palestinian officials gave their first full response after the instruction. Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the PLO Executive Committee, called the step a blatant violation of international agreements and said the order amounts to an attempt to impose Israeli law and sovereignty over the occupied West Bank. Katz had described the army's job as combating Palestinian terrorism and said soldiers should not be chasing settler youths. The Defence Ministry said the police would set up a dedicated unit for civilian matters. Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, called settlers the spearhead in the process of annexation and Judaisation. The institutional shift therefore recasts who polices civilian incidents while Palestinian leaders treat the transfer itself as a sovereignty claim rather than a routine administrative rearrangement. What changes on paper is the agency responsible for civilian enforcement; what Palestinian leaders contest is the legal meaning of that hand-off under occupation.[1]
In Qusra, a week-long siege and Sunday's limited UN aid
On the ground in the West Bank village of Qusra, a settler siege of three Palestinian homes reached one week. The siege began on 9 August. About 15 Palestinians from the Abu Rida and Hassan families live in the homes, among them 2 children under 7 and one person who also holds US citizenship. Water and electricity were cut and food and other supplies ran low. The families relied on a temporary solar power set-up and well water left over from winter. On Sunday morning the UN delivered some aid to the houses after coordinating with the Israeli military. US Ambassador Mike Huckabee had on Thursday described the settlers as Israeli terrorists. Al Jazeera correspondent Nour Odeh reported that the sequence in Qusra follows a pattern repeated across the West Bank. The week-long blockade turned a local housing confrontation into a test of who can reach trapped families and who can keep them closed in, with the first organised relief arriving only after 7 days.[2]
An institutional hand-off after a siege the army was criticised for handling
The policing order and the Qusra siege belong to one institutional story. Reporting places Katz's decision after criticism of how the army handled settlers besieging a Palestinian home in Qusra. Katz's own framing — that soldiers should fight terrorism rather than chase settler youths — matches the transfer of civilian incidents to a dedicated police unit. Palestinian leaders answer that transfer as an attempt to impose Israeli sovereignty, while Barghouti links settlers to a longer annexation process. In Qusra, the army remained the channel through which the UN coordinated Sunday's limited aid delivery, even as families spent a week short of water, power and food. Huckabee's Thursday language and Odeh's pattern claim keep the siege inside a wider West Bank dispute over settler violence and state response. The concrete mechanism on display is therefore dual: a formal hand-off of civilian policing and a week-long siege that tested who actually controls access on the ground. Until the new police unit is operating, the army's role at the scene and the families' exposure still define the lived enforcement picture.[1], [2]
