On Saturday, 18 June 2022, at around 3:30 P.M., Muhammad Mleihat (65) and his nephew Ahmad Mleihat took their flocks, as they do every day, to pastureland about 400 meters from their homes in the community of al-Mu’arrajat-East. When they got there, the two encountered a settler who blocked their way. He ordered them to leave, and Ahmad Mleihat ran to get help. The settler called two other settlers, who arrived by car and attacked Muhammad Mleihat, beating him with clubs and kicking him. Meanwhile, Palestinians fetched by Mleihat’s nephew arrived and tried to forcefully get the settlers off him. Soldiers called by the settlers also arrived, beat the Palestinians and detained some of them. They took them, handcuffed and blindfolded, to a spot where Red Crescent ambulances were waiting. Some of the residents who were beaten by the settlers fled towards the community tents, where another ambulance crew treated them. Four of the wounded were taken to the government hospital in Jericho. The soldiers arrested four of the Palestinians, who were held at Ofer Prison for four days and released on bail of NIS 2,000 (~USD 610) each.
In a testimony he gave B'Tselem field researcher 'Aref Daraghmeh, paramedic Muhammad Dweik (34) from Jericho, a father of three, recounted:
On 18 June 2022, at around 4:00 P.M., the Red Crescent call center informed us there’d been an incident in the al-Mu'arrajat area and asked us to go there and treat wounded people. I drove there in an ambulance with the paramedic Muhammad ‘Awedat.
We got there in 10 minutes, but a settler in a commercial Ford van blocked our way. He turned the van around towards us, opened the window and started spitting and swearing at us. He drove pressed the van up against the ambulance and scratched it. If we'd been driving any faster, we would have definitely flipped over. We kept driving for another 20 meters or so and then stopped, because we saw some vehicles from a distance and were afraid they belonged to settlers. We turned around and drove back to the road, where we stopped by the roadside, opposite the scene of the incident. Soldiers and police officers came over and asked us to stay there. They said they'd bring the wounded people to us.
We stayed there for over an hour. Civilian and military vehicles brought people over to us, handcuffed and blindfolded and writhing in pain. We asked the soldiers to remove the handcuffs and blindfolds so we could treat them, and they agreed. They had bruises and various injuries to the head and hands. Meanwhile, another Red Crescent ambulance arrived from Ramallah, and I asked the crew to drive to the residents' tents because I was told some of the people who were beaten had escaped to there. In the meantime, another ambulance arrived from the Jericho call center.
The soldiers brought us more people. They were all handcuffed and injured. At first, the soldiers didn't allow us to take the injured people to hospitals and wanted to decide whom we could and couldn't take. About six people were eventually evacuated in ambulances, some of them to hospitals in Jericho – including an elderly man who was injured in his head and hands. We wanted to evacuate four other people who had bruises and were handcuffed. At first the soldiers agreed, but when we were about to put them in the ambulance, more officers and soldiers arrived and told us they were under arrest and took them away.
There were several armed settlers, soldiers and police officers there. It was a scary day.