On June 22, 2023, at around 5:30 P.M., dozens of masked settlers arrived at the Jabel ‘Ayad neighborhood in the village of Jalud and attacked houses with stones. Soldiers escorting them stopped about 250 meters away from the neighborhood and did not intervene. After about half an hour, when local residents and residents from nearby villages came out to fend off the settlers with stones, the soldiers advanced towards the neighborhood and started firing live rounds, rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas canisters at them. Six Palestinians were wounded by the soldiers’ fire; three of them, including two minors, were injured by live fire and three by rubber-coated metal bullets. One man, whose skull was cracked by a “rubber” bullet, was taken to a hospital in Nablus and the rest were treated in local clinics. Four residents who were injured by stones thrown by the settlers were also treated in local clinics.
In a testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Salma a-Deb’i, the head of the Jalud Village Council, Raed Muhammad (59) said:
The settlers attacked the village with stones, and we called neighboring villages for help. The soldiers stood behind the settlers and did nothing. When we managed to push the settlers back, the soldiers started firing live rounds and tear gas canisters at us. They advanced to a distance of about 40 meters from us.
I yelled at them and asked why they were attacking us and said we were trying to defend ourselves, and then I turned around for a moment to ask the residents to be careful and stay away, and suddenly I felt a pain in my ear. I was bleeding, and my clothes were soaked in blood. Residents took me to an ambulance that was in the area and already had a wounded person in it who had been hit by live fire when he was on the roof of a house. Lucky for him, the bullet went in and out, and the injury was not serious. We were both taken to the clinic in the village of Qusrah, where they stitched up the wound in my ear and then discharged me.
The incident continued for about an hour after I was taken away, and then the settlers withdrew from the area after village residents set fire to village fields with dry vegetation to make them leave.