At night settlers steal our sheep; by day, our olives. They see us but don’t care’
Gideon Levy reports in Haaretz on 31 October 2026:
This time we saw it all with our own eyes. We were standing next to the landowner and watching with him, along with some others, as a group of settlers invaded his grove, boldly spread blue plastic sheeting below the trees, took out sticks and hit the branches so that the olives would be dislodged and fall to the ground. The intruders didn’t plant these trees or till the soil, they didn’t irrigate or prune, but now they were enjoying the ripe fruits on land they usurped.
Bashar al-Masri, 62, a father of six children, tells us that this is private land, that it is officially listed in his name in the Land Registry. Now he’s standing with us and watching mutely, with veiled eyes, as the scene unfolds. It’s not hard to guess what’s going through his mind, what’s going through his heart. But of course he won’t lift a finger. He’s too afraid.
All he can do is watch his labor of recent years being looted, helpless to salvage the crop. If that weren’t enough, one of the settlers hurtles toward us, perched on a Ranger utility vehicle, and shouts vulgarly at Bashar to leave the site immediately and go home, otherwise he will come to harm. Plunderers don’t like to be witnessed committing their crimes. And all this is happening just two days after sheep were stolen from the same area – but more on that later.
On Monday we visited the olive groves of the al-Masri family in the valley below their homes, which they have been unable to access since a settler outpost was established across the way. The place: al-Rihaniyya in the Masafer Yatta area of the South Hebron Hills, north of the outpost built illegally in 2002 on the ancient archaeological site of Susya, on the ruins of the Palestinian village that had been located here, whose residents were also driven out by force, in 1986.
A herd of brown cows belonging to the settlers grazes on the land that’s been invaded. Nearby is a settler-shepherd on horseback, a local cowboy, wearing a T-shirt bearing the words: “Death to the enemy, liberty for the homeland.” This fearless fighter for Israel’s freedom leads his herd onto the plundered pasture land, while his sidekicks harvest the olives from the pillaged grove.
The cowboy’s horse steps between the grazing cows and the harvesting settlers, and then the Ranger arrives, as is typical. Only a few dozen meters separate the landowner from the ongoing plundering: The settlers are in the valley below, the Palestinians are on the slope of a hill overlooking it. The two sides glare at each other; the abyss yawns between them. Gazes of hatred and supremacy by the lords of the land, looks of rage and helplessness from its owners. Seven settlers facing off against about the same number of local residents.
“They see us here and they just don’t care,” one of the villagers says in despair. “At night they steal our sheep and by day, the olives.”
Nasser Nawaj’ah, a field researcher for B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories and the head of the nearby village called Khirbet Susya, films the settlers and sends the footage directly to the police, live. The settlers, unmasked, are harvesting energetically, as though nothing is amiss, as though it’s their land, as though these are their groves and these are the trees that they nurtured and cultivated for decades. Their vehicle heads toward us. The locals recognize the driver of the Ranger – a gift of Settlement Minister Orit Strock – as a settler named Nachman, and back off, frightened. Nachman speaks with the photographer, Alex Levac, whom he apparently mistakes for a protective-presence activist.
“We have an ideological argument,” he tells Levac. “You came to support them and we came to take our land. I respect your opinions, but you look after them and then you leave while we remain and have to deal with the problems we have with them.”
Nachman then starts to shout at the Palestinians: “If you don’t want any problems, get out of here now. Go to your homes. Don’t come out of the house.” So the even their backyards are also becoming forbidden territory, by order of the marauders. One of the locals counters: “But these are our lands.” Nachman: “Talk to the army about that.”
About 10 families live in al-Rihaniyya, all of them from the extended al-Masri family. Now a female police officer from the local station is on the phone with one of them, a man who tried to submit a complaint about the settlers’ trespassing. She threatens him: “It’s not your land. According to our information this is not your land. If you call us again, I’m arresting you for making a false report.”
Nawaj’ah, who’s more experienced in these matters, takes the phone. “There is also property damage here,” he tells the officer in lawyerly Hebrew. She yells back: “I am ending this conversation. It is not your territory. It is not your territory and I am stopping this.” Nawaj’ah tries again – “This is Area B,” he explains, referring to the part of the West Bank that’s under the full civilian control of the Palestinian Authority, while Israel is responsible for its security – and then asks the knockout question: “So whose land is this?” The officer hangs up on him. The victim has become the accused, threatened by the police and by the settlers. The plunderer is in the right.
Later Nawaj’ah shows us maps from the NGO Hamakom that show that indeed the area in question is part of Area B.
For now, he sends his video clip, in which the settlers are clearly seen harvesting stolen olives, to a police officer who once suggested that Nawaj’ah call him whenever there is an attack by settlers. The ostensible “good cop” of the Israel Police’s Shai (Samaria and Judea) District, the man answers immediately and says, “I’m on it.”
In the meantime, a few local young people are industriously building a new brick wall that will protect a storeroom for agricultural equipment, and an animal pen, near the residents’ homes. Just before our arrival, on the night between Saturday and Sunday, settlers had broken in and made off with animals.
The stolen sheep belonged to Jaudat al-Masri, 45. He has five children and has been unemployed since October 7, 2023, after having worked for years in a building supplies sore in Beit Hanina, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Since then he’s made his living from his flock of about two-dozen sheep and a 4-dunam (1-acre) olive tree grove below in the valley, which he can no longer access for fear of the settlers. With the sheep and olives taken from him, he’s now left with no way to provide for his family.
At about 1 A.M. early Sunday he was awakened by noise from the direction of the sheep pen. From the window of his house he saw three settlers breaking the locks on the door and bursting inside. They emerged carrying some lambs while herding the rest of the flock toward the settler outpost across the way.
Jaudat did not dare go out until the marauders had left. Like his neighbor, the owner of the grove in the valley we had visited, he could only watch in utter helplessness as his property was looted. Shortly afterward, when the rustlers had left, he went out and saw that the pen was empty. He soon found a lamb cowering among the trees and some adult sheep who had escaped their captors and were wandering on the hillside. All told, he tells us now, he lost three lambs and 15 sheep.
He called the police, who promised to come, but in the end the officers who were dispatched met another local resident on the main road, and told him that Jaudat had to go to the police station in Kiryat Araba, abutting Hebron, to lodge an official complaint. The officers never went to see where the break-in had occurred, the residents say. But Hebron is under siege now, and all the access roads to the city are blocked, in the wake of the attack that occurred at the entry checkpoint last week, so Jaudat has been unable to file a complaint.
We passed the information we had on to the Israel Police: about the theft of the sheep, the olive harvesting by settlers that we witnessed and the conduct of the local police. The response: “Contrary to your allegations, police officers arrived at the site on two different occasions and met the informant, who initially claimed that 70 sheep had been stolen from him. Following questioning by the police, he changed his account and claimed that only 12 sheep had been stolen. The police officer who was present at the site referred the informant to submit a complaint and also contacted him a number of times. Yet, to date he has not submitted a complaint regarding the incident. Additionally, contrary to what is alleged here, this is Area C” – i.e., under full Israeli civil, administrative and security control.
In the meantime, the shepherd installed the new, heavier locks on the door of his pen, which now houses five adult sheep and one lamb, which bleats unceasingly. Below, in the valley, the harvest continues, uninterrupted.
This article is reproduced in its entirety