On the morning of Saturday 9th August, around 7:30 a.m. a settler with sheep stopped on the cliff of Al-Khalayel mountain, right in front of Abu Naemm’s family, and he stayed there watching them for about an hour. At 8:40 a.m. the settler began descending towards the family’s property with his sheep. As he came closer, the Palestinian family recognised him as Moshe, a well known settler constantly perpetuating attacks on Palestinian property and land in the Al-Khalayel area. He trespassed on Abu Naemm’s property and stood right above their tents with a donkey and sheep, while taking pictures of the two ISM volunteers who were present. This is an example of settlers’ provocative behaviour towards Palestinian families and communities who are constantly under the threat of being displaced and dispossessed of their properties.
On the afternoon of Sunday 10th August, a settler harassed the Abu Naemm family. He left the donkey and sheep on the entrance of Abu Naemm and entered the property. He started to film the activists and called the army. He was complaining “there are activists here”. A few minutes after, an IOF vehicle followed by an ATV arrived. One IOF soldier, two army reservists (settler soldiers) and two settlers (one of them the well-known settler from around here, Moshe)
interrogated the family and asked for the internationals’ passports. They claimed that the settler had been harassed and that he had ‘the full right’ to shepherd wherever he wanted. Army and settlers were almost an hour inside the property talking to each other, subjecting the family to remain outside under the sun without any explanation. When the family approached the army asking what was happening, they answered ‘No problem was there’. Finally, they left. This was another example of collaboration between settlers and the occupation army, further continuing the routine harassment to the Palestinian community of
Khalayel.
On the morning of Thursday 12nd August, two young settlers attacked the Abu Naemm family with the collaboration of army and police. Early in the morning, the settlers were shepherding their sheep around the Palestinian Abu Nasser’s house (6.46 am). They lay down on the family’s property, looking at the sheep, and prayed on the family’s rug. Meanwhile, the settlers’ sheep were eating the family grass, and encouraged to go near the Palestinian sheep. The settlers started to walk towards Abu Naemm house with their livestock. Abu Naemm family called the police but they never appeared. The two settlers started to harass the family and attacked them with a wooden stick; they pushed, shouted and filmed family’s faces. At some point, they started to call by phone. A reservist soldier arrived at 10 am and started to talk with the two settlers. The reservist soldier was recently spotted in an Al Jazeera video, where he went to Nablus and was dressed in Muslim clothes in order to assassinate Palestinian teenagers who were standing on the street.
After half an hour, the occupation army arrived, four soldiers. They started to talk with the two settlers and the reservist soldier, harassing the family. After a while, occupation forces started to claim that the family was in an illegal zone, asking them for the official property permission of the land, and interrogating them.
The settlers accused them of intimidating and attacking them. A drone started to fly around the area and to the shabab who were watching. At 11 am, two patrol policeman arrived in a police van and asked for the family’s identification. They entered to the property searching for a “stolen sheep” and detained the family for a while, asking them questions. After more than one hour under the hot noon sun, the police let the family go, saying “our job here is done”. After a while, the occupation forces and settlers also left, with one of the soldiers of the army saying to a volunteer “We are also human, you know”.
Abu Naemm family and Al-Mughayyir community is suffering an increase in harassment, intimidations and attacks through the continued collaboration between settlers and occupation military forces. This is not random violence, but situated within the wider context and ongoing escalation of colonial violence and ethnic cleansing in the Palestinian villages to the East of Ramallah, and across the occupied West Bank. Despite the violence, threats and the intimidation campaign carried out by the settlers and the soldiers, the Abu Naemm family will continue to remain steadfast on their ancestral land.