Seventy-five-year-old Wajdan Tawil was awake for dawn prayers at 4am on Thursday when she heard gunfire outside her home in the occupied West Bank.
Suddenly she and her husband Najih Tawil, 89, both US citizens of Palestinian origin, heard the sound of a door-breaching device.
Before they knew it, seven Israeli troops were entering their home, pointing rifles at the couple.
“They said to us: ‘Sit here. Don’t move.’ They tied our hands together and blindfolded us,” Mrs Tawil told The National over the phone from Al Bireh, a town in the occupied West Bank. “They pushed us into the living room and made us sit down.”
For nearly seven hours, the Israeli troops kept the elderly couple trapped in their own home, blindfolded and handcuffed.
The Israeli troops did not physically harm the elderly couple or damage their home, Mrs Tawil said, but she and her husband were left terrified and shaken up.
“They didn't talk to us. They just scared us,” she said.
Video footage provided by Fawzi Hussein, 71, a cousin of Wajdan's, showed the couple in the minutes after the Israeli soldiers left.
Najih, who has had two open heart operations, is still wearing a blindfold, his hands bound together with plastic cable ties. Dressed in his pyjamas, his thin arms are shaking.
“Their privacy was completely violated,” Mr Hussein told The National. “They were scared because they aren’t used to this. They were living in peace in America, and they aren’t involved in anything.”
75 year old Palestinian American
There appeared to be no reason behind the break-in at the elderly couple’s home, which they keep for visits to Palestine from Ohio, where Mrs Tawil moved after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
The couple's house had been broken into several months ago, Mrs Tawil said, prompting them to return to Palestine.
It remains unclear why the Israeli soldiers kept the elderly couple tied up and blindfolded for so long, given the apparent lack of threat.
Mr Hussein, who corroborated details of the story and saw off the soldiers after nearly seven hours, said it seemed as if the troops wanted to wait out their shift in the Tawils' home.
He said the soldiers put the couple in another room, and then turned on the TV. “They wanted to relax and finish their shift and go. But when I came they were forced to leave.”
The Israeli soldiers sat under the AC in one room and ate biscuits and crisps they had brought with them, Mrs Tawil said. Two of them slept in the couple's bed.
The Israeli military told The National that “the incident in question is under review”.
A report by Israeli human rights organisations in 2020 found that home raids in the occupied West Bank left Palestinians suffering symptoms of post-traumatic stress and anxiety. Under military law applied by Israel in the West Bank, troops do not require permits to enter or search Palestinian homes.
Palestinians “are constantly vulnerable to arbitrary invasion of their homes by Israeli security forces and the severe, resulting harm”, the report said.
Al Bireh is flanked to its east by Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law but which have expanded rapidly in recent years. The Tawils' home lies less than 300 metres from a settlement called Psagot.
Violence in the area has flared since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, in which around 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage to Gaza. Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank have intensified, as have attacks by settlers.
At least 984 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 2023, mostly by live ammunition, according to UN data, with 35 Israelis killed in that period. In July, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, approved a non-binding motion in favour of annexing the West Bank, paving the way for further Israeli control of the area.
At the Tawils' home, Israeli troops refused to allow the couple to move, use the bathroom, or for Mrs Tawil to make the coffee with which she normally takes her diabetes medication, alongside a ma'amoul, a traditional Palestinian biscuit.
“I said: ‘I want to make a coffee for us and yourselves,’” she recalled. “I wanted to eat a ma'amoul to take the medication. They didn’t listen to me, they didn’t let me, they didn’t answer me. They said: ‘Sit down, don’t talk!’”
The couple’s ordeal ended at around 10.45am, after a neighbour phoned Mr Hussein to say they had seen Israeli troops enter their home.
“Firstly I rang the bell from downstairs, and then they didn’t answer,” Mr Hussein recalled. “Ten minutes passed. Then the soldiers came down and walked out to the settlement.”
He said he recognised them as Israeli soldiers from their uniforms and weapons, which they pointed at him as they left the building. “I spoke to them in English and they didn't answer me – they were talking in Hebrew,” he added.
It is the violation of the privacy and home life of the elderly that shook the family up the most.
“If there is something wrong, you carry out an investigation,” said Mr Hussein. “But they are breaking in, exploiting the fact that they are vulnerable.”
The US government is Israel’s key western ally, providing the country with billions of dollars a year in aid. Critics say that Washington needs to carry out more thorough investigations into violations carried out by Israeli authorities against US citizens, and take steps to hold Benjamin Netanyahu’s government accountable.
At least seven US citizens are among those killed by Israeli troops or settlers in both Gaza and the West Bank since October 2023. They include a 14-year-old boy, Amer Rabee, who was shot and killed by Israeli military forces in April this year.
Two Palestinian Americans were killed in July and in September 2024 a Turkish-American activist, Aysenur Ezgi Aygi, was fatally shot in the head by an Israeli soldier at a West Bank protest.
Mrs Tawil said one of her daughters had attempted to file details of the incident to the US government, but the couple had not been contacted by the US embassy in Jerusalem.
In an emailed statement, the US State Department told The National that it could not provide further details “out of respect for privacy”. It encouraged US citizens in need of assistance overseas to contact the nearest US embassy or consulate.
“We are greatly concerned when any US citizen is harmed overseas, and we stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance,” a spokesperson said.
The Tawils showed the troops their US passports, indicating that they were American citizens, but this did not change the Israelis’ attitude. “They didn’t care,” Mrs Tawil said.
