The West Bank town of Tamun northeast of Nablus is in many respects a typical West bank village. Its 10,000-plus residents are Muslim, divided among two large families — Bani Odeh and Bsharat. A large percentage were compelled to exchange employment in Israel for subsistence agriculture when Israel restricted access to Palestinians from the West Bank as a consequence of the Second Intifada that erupted in 2000. Residents are still trying to claw their way back to a standard of living that dropped by a third from 2000 to 2004.
The town's name is derived from the Arabic word tammen, which means quiet. But life in the village has been anything but quiet in recent days. On Jan. 1, a covert unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) entered the village to arrest two men linked to Islamic Jihad. One of the two, Murad Ban Odeh, was arrested in an operation that, when exposed, sparked a confrontation between stone-throwing villagers and regular troop reinforcements that raged for hours.
A small contingent of Palestinian police is stationed in the village, but in keeping with their operating protocols, they did not intervene as long as Israeli forces were present.
The IDF has been at pains to describe the confrontation as nothing out of the ordinary — neither the decision to enter the area in search of suspected bad guys nor the Palestinian response. They are right. There is noting unusual in what happened in Tammun. Israel routinely operates in areas of the West Bank under nominal Palestinian authority, rolling up those who have come to the attention of Israel's security services. They call it “mowing the grass.” And when it does, Palestinian police and others from the PA's National Security Forces and its intelligence agencies grit their teeth and sit on their hands.
AL-MONITOR All-Access gives you unlimited access to all our journalism, the full Daily Briefing, exclusive interviews, premium newsletters, and live events — for less than $2/week.
