Khalid Jamal, a middle-aged Palestinian father, is describing the moment Israeli soldiers took over his home in al-Rehiyya, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
“We were asleep. It was 2.42am. The door was forced open. I woke up to find the house surrounded,” he says.
There were 20 Israeli soldiers, he tells MEE, 10 of them at one door and 10 of them at another. “The house was surrounded in an abnormal way. And the force was the Israeli army,” he says. “They entered the house like a flock of sheep.”
The soldiers told Jamal to take the children and go outside. He told one of them: “There’s no way we can stay outside the house, we are 17 people.”
Jamal is standing in the small entrance to his building. An old door sits propped up against the wall. He turns and goes into the only room on the ground floor. It's here, he says, that the soldiers moved him and his other family members.
