On Sunday, 21 August 2022, in the late afternoon, Khaled Samhan arrived at his plot of land north of Ras Karkar to discover settlers had broken 50 six-year-old olive saplings. This was not the first time Samhan was the victim of harassment by settlers from the area, who often invade his land and vandalize his farming equipment and crops.
In a testimony he gave B’Tselem field researcher Iyad Hadad, Khaled Samhan (67), a father of eight from Ras Karkar, said:
I got to our farmland at around 4:30 P.M. on 21 August 2022 and discovered settlers had broken 50 of our six-year-old olive saplings. If they could uproot the mature trees, they would have done that, too. We have a 20-dunam plot of land in the al-Maghanmeh area, north of my town.
In 2017, we planted about 150 olive saplings on a roughly five-dunam area in this plot. There were already about 40 olive trees in this section, which were more than 150 years old. After about a year and a half, on 18 August 2018, when I was on a pilgrimage to Mecca, my son Lutfi (44), who was tending to the land while I was gone, called and told me settlers had cut down and broken four ancient olive trees, 70 young olive saplings and other trees. Lutfi filed a complaint with the Israeli police, but it did nothing for us. When I got back from Mecca, I started restoring the grove and planted new trees in it.
In mid-2019, I was surprised to find a Civil Administration notice in our grove saying we had to remove the trees and the fence we put up when we restored it. I refused to do it. This is our land, and I have documents proving it. We inherited it from our ancestors, and we have every right to use it to our benefit.
I think the Civil Administration and the settlers work together.
Twenty years ago, settlers established the outpost of Nerya on our village land, two kilometers away from our plot. Since then, the settlers have been harassing us on a daily basis, and destroying our crops and groves. The settlers also often thrown trash and stones in our water cistern, and sometimes they overturn the barrels protecting our young olive saplings.
In some cases, we didn’t bother with a complaint, but the harassment never stops. On 21 December 2021, settlers invaded our grove and broke 23 ten-year-old olive trees. About four months ago, on 26 April 2022, they broke 35 seven-year-old trees.
We’re suffering injustice and we’ve given up hope. The settlers keep passing through this grove like nothing ever happened. No one is punishing them for what they’re doing, and when we complain, we get no protection from either the Palestinians or the Israelis. All we can do is trust in God to give them what they deserve and do justice.