On Sunday morning, 20 October 2019, at around 6:00 A.M., residents of Qaryut went to harvest their olives. Among them were the Lbum family, who own about two dunams of land with some 20 large olive trees southwest of the village, in the area of Harayek a-Sheikh. The settlement of Eli was established about a kilometer away from their land, and the DCO does not require them to coordinate their arrival. At around 9:00 A.M., soldiers came there from the direction of the settlement and ordered the farmers to stop working and leave, on the grounds that their presence required coordination. The residents refused to leave and the soldiers backed away, but returned at approximately 12:30 P.M., fired teargas canisters at the farmers and forced them to leave.
The next day, the Lbum family and other village residents began harvesting their trees in another plot that lies northwest of the village, in the area of Yatisha, also close to the settlement of Eli. The following day, 22 November, soldiers arrived at that plot, too, and tried to drive the farmers away. Some of the families complied. The members of the Laboom family waited for the soldiers to leave and continued with their harvest.
‘Awad Lbum, 34, a father of four, told B’Tselem field researcher Abdulkarim Sadi:
On 20 October 2019, when we were harvesting olives in the area of Harayek a-Sheikh, soldiers came and ordered us in Hebrew to leave. I said to them: “I don’t speak Hebrew.” One of the soldiers spoke with my wife in English and told her we had to get off the land because our being there required coordination. I told my wife: “Tell him this is Area B and we don’t need coordination.” The soldier showed us a map on his cellphone and said: “According to the map, this area requires coordination.” He said we had to leave or else he would resort to other means. Then the soldiers left.
We stayed and kept on picking the olives. At midday, around 12:30, the soldiers came back and started firing teargas canisters at us. We had to leave, because of the teargas and because my wife is seven months pregnant. Two days later, when we were harvesting our land in the area of Yatisha, soldiers again showed up and tried to drive us away. We can’t afford not to pick the olives, so we waited for them to leave and then kept on working.