On Tuesday, 28 February 2023, at around midday, residents of the village of al-Mughayir noticed dozens of settlers near the eastern entrance to the village, escorted by the settlement’s security guard’s vehicle and soldiers. The soldiers prevented the settlers from getting close to the entrance to the village. Dozens of villagers gathered about 300 meters from the entrance and blocked access to the village with rocks and burning tires. The soldiers fired tear gas canisters at the residents who were trying to defend their village, and a few live rounds in the air. During the commotion, some of the settlers went into an orchard belonging to Rawhi Na’asan (71) and broke 74 olive saplings.
The clashes between village residents and the settlers and soldiers continued until around 4:00 P.M., when the settlers and soldiers left.
Rawhi Na’asan, 71, described what happened that day in a testimony he gave B’Tselem field researcher Iyad Hadad:
I have a five-dunam plot of land at the eastern entrance to the village, near Alon Route. Decades ago, the army put an observation tower in front of the plot, about 50 meters from it. On Tuesday, 28 February 2023, in the morning, I went to the plot and sprayed pesticide on some four to five-year-old olive saplings that I planted there about seven months ago to replace saplings settlers destroyed in the grove last summer with deadly pesticides. I stayed there until 11:00 A.M.
When I got back to my house in the center of the village, about a kilometer away from the grove, village residents called and told me there were settlers on my land. I was afraid to go there, and went to my brother’s house, which overlooks the area. From there, I saw 50, 60 settlers or more, and about 15 cars and a settlement security guard car, plus three or four military jeeps, gathered near the Alon intersection. Across from them, at a distance of about 300 meters, I saw dozens of village residents who had gathered and blocked the entrance to the village with burning tires and rocks. The soldiers fired tear gas canisters at them and occasionally live rounds in the air.
I also saw right away that more than 10 settlers had gone into my land and started breaking olive trees there in front of the soldiers, who did nothing to them and just stopped them from getting into a confrontation with the Palestinian protesters to protect the settlers. The clashes continued until 4:00 P.M., and then the settlers left.
I was afraid to go to the grove and didn’t go until the next morning, around 7:00 A.M. When I got there, I saw the settlers had destroyed all 74 saplings I had. There is nothing I can do about it. I didn’t go to the police to file a complaint because they always side with the settlers. I just notified the village council and the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, hoping they’d compensate me for the damage or donate new saplings. I insist on continuing to cultivate the land so as not to make it easy for the settlers to take it over.