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Photo: Published by Haaretz
David Chai Chasdai appears a the Lod District court house, Monday. Credit: Ilan Assayag

Three of the women who were attacked, in their house in Rahat, last week. Credit: Eliyahu Hershkovitz

The toddler wounded in the attack.Credit: Courtesy of the family.
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The two men from a West Bank settlement are charged with committing racially-motivated offenses, and one is also charged with a terrorism offense, after attacking four women and a toddler from the Bedouin city of Rahat

by Hagar Shezaf for Haaretz
Sep 3, 2024 5:45 pm IDT

The State Prosecutor's Office filed an indictment on Tuesday against two settlers for attacking four Bedouin women and a two-year-old girl from the Bedouin city of Rahat when they accidentally entered the Givat Ronen outpost in the West Bank last month.

The two men, David Chai Chasdai and Yaakov Goelman, are charged with committing racially-motivated offenses, while Chasdai is also charged with a terrorism offense.

Alongside the indictment, the prosecution requested to extend the detention of Chassidai until the end of the proceedings against him and extend the house arrest and restrictive conditions imposed on Goelman. According to the indictment, about 20 people were involved in the attack, but charges were only filed against Chassidai and Goelman.

Chassidai is charged with aggravated assault, threats, arson, and malicious damage to property. Goelman is charged with extortion, invasion of privacy, and malicious damage to property.

The indictment states that the family members accidentally arrived at the Giavt Ronen outpost in the West Bank, where Chassidai and Goelman reside. Chassidai, 30, recognized that the car had an Israeli license plate, pursued them in his vehicle, and approached the driver in a threatening manner. At that point, the driver began to drive quickly to escape, but he chased her on foot, and others in the area started yelling, "Come, we want to kill you."

According to the indictment, the women attempted to leave through a nearby dirt path, but around 20 people, some armed and some masked, including Chassidai, began pursuing them, throwing stones and rocks at their vehicle. The family members barricaded themselves inside the car with the windows closed, while the attackers shouted, "You are terrorists," "You came to carry out an attack," "You have nowhere to run," and "No one will hear you here."

The indictment describes how they pleaded for the settler attackers to stop, explaining that they were Israelis from Be'er Sheva or Rahat who had made a mistake and showed their Israeli IDs. Despite this, the attackers shattered the car windows, injuring the women with stones and rocks, while one of them shielded the child.

Following that, Chassidai and the others demanded that the women exit the vehicle and threatened that they would not leave alive if they didn't comply. The women, now barefoot, fled on foot while the attackers continued to throw stones, yelled "We will kill you," and set their empty vehicle on fire.

At this point, according to the indictment, Goelman arrived and began chasing the fleeing women and the toddler, threatening them with shouts to stop, or he would kill them. Three of the women continued to flee, while two stopped upon hearing the threats.

While they were injured and terrified, Goelman yelled at them, "You must be from Gaza," and "You're celebrating on October 7." He then grabbed one woman's personal bag, tore it apart, and scattered its contents on the ground. Goelman further threatened them, seized a mobile phone, took pictures of them, and made a threatening call to one of their grandmothers. All this occurred while the women explained they were Israelis and in the presence of a security force that arrived on the scene and urged him to stop.

Eventually, the women and the toddler were rescued by security forces and evacuated by ambulances, agitated and suffering from various wounds, including fractures, burns, and bruises. One of them had a head wound and was in critical condition.

Chasdai, 30, lives in the West Bank settlement of Givat Ronen and is well known to the army and police. A year ago, he was arrested on suspicion of involvement in riots in the Palestinian town of Huwara, in which one Palestinian was killed, and extensive damage was caused to vehicles and property.

After his release by the court, he was detained on a three-month administrative order issued by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The U.S. also imposed sanctions on him on the grounds of initiating and leading riots in the town.

Several administrative restraining orders have been issued against Chasdai over the years, which ordered him out of the West Bank. In 2015, he was convicted of illegally planning to use hazardous and flammable materials that were found in his possession. Two years later, he was convicted of aggravated assault with tear gas of an Arab taxi driver, and in 2021, he was convicted of threatening a police officer.

In last month's incident, the settlers threw stones and torched the women's car. The four women and the toddler were taken to hospital with bruises, two of them suffering from a broken shoulder and rib cage. They have all since been released. One of them, Nufa, told Haaretz they were on their way to Nablus and made a wrong turn.

"We accidentally went somewhere, and then people started running after the car, throwing rocks from the hill. After, they broke all the windows, they sprayed tear gas. What they were throwing wasn't stones. It was blocks, big rocks," she said.

"They were all armed, and there were a lot of them," she said, saying that one of the attackers put his gun to the baby's head. "They told us to get out of the car. We told them we were Israeli citizens, we weren't doing anything, just got confused because of Waze, but they didn't even hear us."

Nufa said the women left the car and fled, and the vehicle was later torched by the settlers. According to her, they called the police, which took it's time, and the ones who saved them were IDF soldiers. "The baby started crying, and she's traumatized," Nufa said.