How Jewish settlers stole our donkeys

On the afternoon of October 5, I received a phone call from my cousin, who said with great urgency: “Settlers are stealing your donkeys. Come here, fast”.

My father is a farmer who owns a few acres of land in the South Hebron Hills of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Jewish settlers have erected an illegal outpost about 300 metres away from our neighbourhood and remain stationed there, fully armed and menacing. They often barge into our village. Sometimes they burn our trees, sometimes they smash our cars, and on days when they are not in the mood to attack us, they steal our livestock.

As I rushed out of my house following the phone call, I discovered that all four donkeys we owned were gone, missing from the trees they had been tied to.

My cousin pointed to three men, one of them wearing a kippah, who were walking in the distance down a dusty road cutting through a vast expanse of low-lying hills, where Palestinian farmers grow barley, wheat, figs, almonds, olives and vegetables. Our donkeys, dragged by ropes, trudged behind them with unease. The sight broke my heart.

I took out my phone and ran toward a mound. Gasping for breath, I began to record the daylight theft. That was all I could do. Confronting a settler can mean inviting violence upon yourself. In March 2018, a settler gang in an SUV ran over me, severing my left leg in two. After two surgeries and over a year of physiotherapy, I was able to stand on my feet.

My father had filed a police report against the driver, but his efforts had proven in vain. The Israeli police let the driver go. A year later, another settler shot and injured my cousin. We reported the crime to the police, but the attacker wasn’t arrested. Instead, my cousin was summoned to the police station for several months and was asked to pay a “fine” for provoking the settler to open fire in “self-defence”.

It is known among us Palestinians that involving the police is pointless in the occupied West Bank — unless you are part of a Jewish settler gang, looking to attack Palestinians and knowing the police will not only shield you, but possibly also reprimand your victims.

Yet, my father duly went to the police station the day the donkeys were stolen. While he was determined to report the theft, he also hated himself for going there, knowing it would be a humiliating ordeal. He was made to wait outside for several hours, which is the norm for Palestinians. When my father was finally accorded the chance to explain what happened, the police officer heard him out for a mere few seconds and then curtly told him, “Go back to your village”.

Later in the day, Israeli forces passed by our farmland. I pointed in the direction of a path of dense trees next to the illegal settler outpost where our donkeys had been placed after they were stolen and explained to them what had happened. The soldiers barked the same words at me: “Go back to your village”.

Flashback

A year ago, we owned six donkeys. Sometime in September 2023, settlers stole one donkey from our farm. A few days later, they returned and stole two more. Out of the three stolen donkeys, two somehow broke free and returned home, leaving us with four donkeys.

Almost every Palestinian farmer in the occupied West Bank is dependent on donkeys, especially during the olive harvesting season in the fall. This is partly due to the fact that driving cars is risky if you’re Palestinian — the Israeli army and illegal settlers have demarcated the land, prohibiting Palestinian cars from entering numerous neighbourhoods. The limits are so arbitrary and the demarcations so spontaneous that certain areas can become no-go zones for Palestinians overnight. If you get close enough to these “off-limits” zones, you run the risk of being attacked by settlers — or even shot.

Given the network of checkpoints and separated roads reserved for Jews only, owning a car as a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank is almost pointless. It can even be a liability. In the summer of 2022, Israeli forces stopped me in the nearby village of Al Fakheet. They checked my ID and driver’s licence, and although everything seemed to be fine, the officer ended up confiscating my vehicle for 40 days. The car was quite new, just a few months old. I had bought it mainly for transporting the seasonal yield of wheat and barley from our field to godowns. I was forced to pay all kinds of fines, which totalled about 6,000 shekels (around $1,560).

Donkeys therefore come in handy. Illegal settlers and their protectors, the Israeli forces, are at ease when they see Palestinians using donkeys in today’s age. They can’t, however, stand seeing us in 4x4 vehicles.

Ever since Israel began bombing Gaza incessantly on October 7, 2023, settler attacks in the occupied West Bank have increased tenfold. Every day, without exaggeration — every single day, they come to our farmland wielding guns and menacing us. They attack us and destroy our crops and vegetable gardens. When we try to push back, they open fire as Israeli forces, lingering nearby, permit their terror. Their goal is simply to ensure that no Palestinian farmer ploughs his field or grazes his livestock. And they are succeeding. It’s become impossible to take our animals out for grazing. We now have to buy food for them year-round. This expense used to be incurred only during the winter months.

My father told me all this is done to starve our animals first, and then us; that all this is done to force us to leave our homes and lands.

But we are not going anywhere. We will stay; this is the nature of sumud (Palestinian resilience). We will protect our land as long as we are breathing.

[NOTE: This first-person account is by Sami Hureini as told to Mehboob Jeelani, an Executive Producer at TRT World].