On Friday morning, 31 January 2020, settlers arrived at grazing land southwest of the community, drove out two shepherds from the community and chased them. The settlers then called the Israel Police on the pretext that the shepherds had attacked them. The police arrested the shepherds, who were held at Ofer Prison for two days and released after their father paid NIS 1,500 in bail for each.
In a testimony he gave B’Tselem field researcher ‘Aref Daraghmeh on 4 February 2020, Muhammad ‘Awad (44), the shepherds’ father and a resident of Khirbet ‘Ein al-Hilweh, recounted:
The settlement of Maskiyyot lies about 200 meters east of our community. About a year ago, settlers put up a trailer and a cattle pen south of our homes, and they sometimes graze their cattle in our cultivated fields. We constantly suffer harassment by settlers when we graze our flocks. They drive us away and call police and soldiers, who make us leave the area and sometimes detain us for hours.
On 31 January 2020, my two sons went out to the pasture in the morning. After a few hours, we found out that the police had arrested them and taken them to an unknown location. It was the weekend, and we couldn’t find out where they were. Only on Sunday did one of the NGOs inform us that they had a hearing that day at the court in Salem. I drove there and waited for many hours, but they didn’t arrive. It turned out they’d taken them to Ofer Prison. I went there the next day, and there was a hearing. They were released after we were required to pay NIS 1,500 for each. They were arrested for no reason, just to please the settlers and prevent us from grazing our flocks in the area.
We don’t know what to do. The settlers want to drive us out and deprive us of our source of livelihood, and we have no one to complain to. The military and the police are working hand in hand with the settlers. The settlers take over more and more land, and then block our access to it and say it belongs to them. It becomes their land overnight, and our lives become a nightmare. We just want to live here, and have no other source of livelihood. The settlers have become like an independent state, and they’re very violent. One day they talk to us and the next they attack us, and we have no way of dealing with them. They’re armed and have an entire state behind them. They’ve left nothing for our flocks. Their cows have destroyed everything. They do whatever they want. The cows enter our sown fields, and God help us if we try to drive them away.