On Thursday, 24 October 2024, seven members of the ‘Amarneh family from the village of Imreihah went to harvest olives on their plot of land on the southern side of the village. Farmers did not previously need Israeli permission to access this area. While the family was picking olives, three settlers arrived, shouted at them, and assaulted one of them. The family members managed to fend them off and the settlers left.
A few minutes later, about 10 settlers and four soldiers drove up in pickup trucks, threw stones at the family and stole 21 sacks of olives they had harvested, as well as farming equipment.
Khalil ‘Amarneh, 65, a father of six, spoke about the incident in a testimony he gave B’Tselem field researcher Abdulkarim Sadi on 26 November 2024:
In the early morning hours of Thursday, 24 October 2024, I went to harvest olives with my wife, our children, and some relatives – a total of seven people. We spread out the plastic tarps and harvested until around 12:30 P.M., and then, suddenly, three masked settlers showed up and attacked us. They started shouting at us, acting all crazy to scare us, and ordered us to leave our land.
While I was arguing with one of the settlers, another one attacked me from behind, hitting me on the right elbow and right leg with a stick. My children and relatives managed to push back and get the settlers to back away. They ran towards an outpost that was set up more than 2.5 kilometers southeast of our land, in the same direction as the Dotan settlement.
After the three settlers left, we went back to harvesting, but a little while later, about 10 settlers and four soldiers drove up in pickup trucks. All of them, the settlers and the soldiers, threw stones at us for about five minutes. They stole 21 bags of olives, two electric olive shakers, and a battery to charge the shakers. The settlers loaded the olive sacks onto their trucks, which were parked at the edge of our land and left.