August 22, 00:30 a.m.
On the morning of August 21, 2025 a settler claimed that he was shot and beaten in the Eastern Plains of the town of Al-Mughayyir, part of which was recently stolen from Palestinian owners by illegal settlers. This strategy of false accounts and accusations is part of the settlers campaign that enables them to carry out their plans of ethnic cleansing and illegal expulsion of Palestinian communities in the area.
The occupation forces claimed that the perpetrator that wounded a settler withdrew towards the village of Al-Mughayyir, and around 8:30 a.m. settlers spread out on the outskirts of the Palestinian village escalating their violence, inciting also online for an attack on its residents, especially targeting the father of the martyr Hamdan Abu Aliya, and the head of the village council. Online groups of settlers disseminated an incitement leaflet featuring a bulldozer, claiming their intention to demolish the village of Al-Mughayyir over the heads of its residents.
Soon after occupation forces began storming the village in large numbers, imposing its complete closure from 9:00 a.m. and a curfew on its residents. Tear gas bombs and sound bombs were fired directly at houses, homes have been stormed throughout the whole day, performing random searches and destruction and damaging of people’s property inside their houses. There have also been many reports of money and valuable items stolen by the occupation forces during these homes raids.
The widespread deployment of the occupation army in Al-Mughayyir has been continuously reinforced throughout the day by additional forces, for a total estimated amount of more than 300 soldiers present in the village, randomly breaking into peoples’s homes, detaining and arresting and beating dozens of men. The number of military present inside the village at 11:00 a.m. was more than the total number of its inhabitants.
Bulldozers started uprooting olive trees belonging to Palestinians in Al-Mughayyir, Palestinian cars were vandalized and heavily damaged, and drones have been used by the occupation forces to throw gas bombs over houses. Occupation officers have been issuing to young men in the village direct threats to destroy and vandalize their homes and arrest their families if they did not fully cooperate with them. Around 13:20 a.m. the occupation army expelled journalists from the town, preventing them from covering the escalating situation. The journalists leaving were told that raids would have been performed house by house.
The town is currently surrounded from all directions by army vehicles, border patrol and buses of the occupation forces, and ambulances were prevented reaching the area to provide tratment to the wounded. Settlers are continuing uprooting thousands of olive trees in the Eastern Plains of the village, which many of them are hundreds years old.
Residents were informed that the village would remain besieged for at least three days until the perpetrator is arrested, according to the occupation army’s version. Palestinian vehicles have been confiscated during the night, and the escalating siege and raids are still ongoing.
What Al-Mughayyir has been subjected to today, and currently still is, is an unprecedented attack on Palestinian lands and families, led by a settler campaing aimed at stealing and occuping the totality of this area. As of now, more than 8000 square meters covered by olive trees have been completely wiped out.
Despite the tragic situation, the residents of Al-Mughayyir reaffirm their will to remain on their land no matter the cost, steadfast and rooted like their olive trees. An urgent call on national institutions as well as humanitarian and international organizations has been issued by the heart of the siege to immediately reach the village and keep in touch with its residents, who are in urgent need of medical, logistics, moral and human support.
ISM calls on international media, human rights organizations, and members of civil society to publicly denounce and take concrete action against the violence and crimes against humanity being committed by the Israeli apartheid regime. The Palestinian community is urgently requesting for an immediate international intervention to save the remaining lands of Al-Mughayyir, who have previously and for multiple times being the object of settlers’ attacks and raids by the army.
