‘They came to kill:’ Settlers are cleansing Sa’ir valley of its lawful residents
Abdel Rahman with his son.
Gideon Levy reports in Haaretz on 16 May 2025:
Sa’ir Valley is off-limits to Palestinians by order, and the order comes from violent settlers. The fertile valley, which was the site of two pastoral villages along with groves of olive and apricot trees belonging to residents of the nearby town of Sa’ir, has been cleansed since the start of the war by settlers living in Asfar, aka Metzad, a settlement atop Mount Qanub.
Dror Etkes, who tracks Israeli settlement activity in the territories, terms the Asfar settlers “100 percent violent.” Asfar, which was established as a Haredi settler outpost in 1984 and became a haven for shababniks – yeshiva dropouts – and “hilltop youth,” terrorizes the area. Even before the war in Gaza, in February 2022, we visited the area and met with Mohammed Shalalda, who was then 73, and his nephew Yaqub, 45, both of them wounded and bandaged following an attack by settlers from Asfar. The two had been pummeled with stones and beaten with clubs and required hospitalization.
The (nonexistent) restraint ended completely after October 7 here – as it did across all of the West Bank – in this valley that lies northeast of Hebron. The combination of emergency squads, which in most cases are nothing but wild militias of violent settlers in uniform, together with violent settlers in civilian garb and the national government of settlers that encourages this ethnic cleansing, has created a new reality for the Palestinians.
The 15 families who lived in the village of Jurat al-Khail abandoned their homes and fled for their lives, leaving all their property behind, in the face of the settlers’ intimidation. They left following the pogrom that was carried out in the village on September 3, 2024, and not one of them has dared to return. According to the villagers, the settlers told them that anyone who tried to go back would be shot to death. Since then, the settlers have looted what the shepherds left behind in their homes and on their land. In one case, a video shows them arriving from the direction of Asfar and stealing the village’s water pipes.
Three weeks ago, on April 23, a family from Sa’ir came to the forbidden valley to work its land. The Tharawa family has a plot of two dunams (half an acre), on which they grow olives and apricots. They arrived in the afternoon with their group, which included grandparents and the children. They too were forced to flee when they were attacked with clubs and rocks by settlers who descended from Asfar.
The Tharawas did not file a complaint with the Israel Police. “When we complain to the police, they treat us like we’re criminals, so we didn’t file a complaint,” they told us this week when we visited them in their home in Sa’ir. They too will not return to their land. Sa’ir Valley has been definitively cleansed of its inhabitants and its landowners. It’s doubtful that they will ever be able to return.
A little boy in pajamas decorated with characters from Marvel comics enters the living room, carrying a scary-looking rock. It’s the rock that the settlers threw at his father’s head as he tried to protect his two small sons bodily. The rock, which remained in the car as they escaped, still has signs of blood on it. Wallpaper depicting an image of European waterfalls, mountains, waterbirds and fir trees covers one of the walls of the Tharwas’ living room, where we sat this week.
The father of the family, Shadi, 35, who has two children, worked until the war as a room attendant at the spa-hotel at Kibbutz Ein Gedi, on the Dead Sea. He’s wearing a white T-shirt with the inscription, in English: “Only the strong survive.” Abdel Rahman, his firstborn son, the one with the rock, is 5, and Rushan, his daughter, is 3. His wife, Sajud, is 26 and is in her ninth month of pregnancy.
Around midday on April 26, a Saturday, the family visited its plot in the valley. The extended family of six made the 10-kilometer drive in the family’s Mazda pickup, and immediately got to work – this is apricot-harvesting season. Suddenly, with no warning, six settlers fell on them from behind and without a word began hitting them with clubs. One was masked, another was armed, all were between the ages of 15 and 25, the family estimates, all wore kippot and had sidelocks. All in the spirit of Shabbat Hamalka – the Sabbath Queen.
The family ran toward the pickup, with the settlers, wielding clubs and holding stones, in hot pursuit. Shadi managed to get the two children into the back seat, along with his pregnant wife. Grandmother Nahida, 48, and Grandfather Abed Ahmed, 54 – his parents – remained outside with him. The settlers pounded the truck with their clubs and shattered the windows. Then they hit the grandfather in the back and the arm, as he tried to protect his head from their blows.
Abdel Rahman with his son. Settlers threw a stone at his father’s head as he tried to protect his two small sons bodily.Credit: Alex Levac
Shadi pushed him into the driver’s seat and told him to start the engine. Unnerved, his father had trouble with the ignition at first. Shadi’s mother, terrified, her arm fractured from the blow of a club, also managed to get into the car. Then a settler came, carrying a rock, which he aimed at the back seat, where the children and the pregnant woman were crouched. Shadi sprawled over the children, protecting them with his body. He’s convinced they would have been hurt otherwise.
“They came to kill,” he says. The rock struck Shadi on the back of the neck.
Shadi got into the pickup and his father began driving, while the settlers went on throwing stones at the vehicle. Then they noticed that the settlers had set up a roadblock of stones in order to prevent them from escaping. Shadi shouted to his father not to stop, and the pickup hurtled through the stones. The vehicle almost turned over, Nahida says.
The whole incident lasted about 10 minutes, they estimate, before they succeeded in escaping. They drove to the clinic in Sa’ir, which referred Shadi to Alia Hospital in Hebron, to determine whether the blow of the rock had caused internal injuries to his head. “It was like a bad dream,” his mother says.
The grandmother emerged with a fracture in one arm, the grandfather with bruises on the head and back. Shadi is bruised as well, but did not suffer any internal injuries. The children suffered no physical harm, alhamdulillah – praise be to God.
Grandmother Nahida, 48, and Rushan, 3. Nahida emerged with a fracture in one arm, the grandfather with bruises on the head and back.Credit: Alex Levac
Yusuf, 36, a cousin, lived in Jurat al-Khail before fleeing to a nearby cave, but was compelled to abandon that quickly as well. Since then, equipped with a video camera that he received from Nasser Nawaj’ah and Manal al-Ja’bri, field researchers for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, he has been documenting developments in the abandoned valley and sharing the footage with the organization. The videos show the settlers coming down to what was the Palestinians’ village, stealing and wreaking destruction. Today, the village is a ruin. Its huts and its lone stone house were destroyed.
The High Court of Justice is currently deliberating a petition of the villagers to return home. On March 11, representatives of the High Court department in the State Prosecutor’s Office, Matan Steinbach and Yonatan Zion Mozes, wrote to the petitioners’ lawyer, Suleiman Shahin: “Your clients’ intention to return to the place on March 12-13, 2025, was made known to the relevant personnel on the ground so that they will take it into account as part of the deployment of the operational forces throughout the sector. We will be in touch and again refer you, if needed, to the police emergency unit to deal with any event in real time…
“The view of the army is that there is no security reason to prevent the return of your clients and their families to the place, and that it is not within the purview of civilian elements of one kind or another to order them to leave the community, still less to act independently to cause them to do so.”
It is not within the purview of any civilians to order them to leave – fine, lofty words, but the villagers are very afraid. This week they didn’t even agree to drive with us to their village, not even for a short visit in order to view the destruction. So overwhelming is their fear of the settlers on the hill.
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