On 23 December 2021, about half an hour past midnight, Ahmad Abu Sneineh (37), a resident of Hebron, was driving home on Route 60. As he passed by the Givat Harsina neighborhood in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, he noticed about 10 settlers who left the settlement, escorted by soldiers, and threw stones at his car, shattering the windshield. Abu Sneineh, who was unharmed, continued driving for about 200 meters and stopped by the roadside, where he saw the settlers fleeing back to the settlement. After he reported the incident to the Israel Police and the Palestinian DCO, an Israeli police car arrived at the scene. An officer photographed the damage and suggested Abu Sneineh file a complaint at the police station in Kiryat Arba, which he did the following day.
In a testimony he gave B’Tselem field researcher Manal al-Ja’bari on 25 December 2021, Abu Sneineh described the attitude of the officers at the station:
The next morning, at around 8:00 A.M., I went to the police station in Kiryat Arba to file a complaint. They kept me waiting outside until about noon, and then an officer who spoke fluent Arabic opened the gate for me. He took me to an interrogation room with an interrogator who didn’t speak Arabic. I asked him to get a translator, but he said that there was no translator at the station at the time. I had to give my statement in English, even though my English isn’t good.
I asked the interrogator to get footage from the settlement’s security cameras to prove my point, and he asked me, “What’s your proof that they were settlers?” I answered, “How can anyone other than settlers enter and leave the settlement? He replied that they’d watch the security camera footage and call me the next day. I went home, and no one from the police has called me since.
Now I need to repair my car window. I called the insurance company, but it won’t cover the damage caused by the settlers’ attack.