Immatin, Qalqiliyah District: A soldier shot and injured two harvesters. Settlers scattered and stole their olives

On Tuesday, 29 October 2024, around 7:30 A.M., several families from the village of Immatin went to harvest olives on their land, after receiving permission from the Israeli DCO to work there for the duration of the harvest season. The families were not allowed to access the land the previous year and could not harvest their trees.

Around 9:00 A.M., while they were working, two settlers appeared with an armed soldier. Dozens of other settlers spread out on a hill overlooking the land near the Havat Gilad outpost, which was built about 80-100 meters from the land. When the two settlers and the soldier were about 20 meters from the harvesters, the soldier fired at them without warning, injuring brothers Nashaat and Muhannad al-Bari. Nashaat’s knee bones were shattered by the bullet, and Muhannad was wounded in the forehead by a fragment.

The harvesters fled, leaving behind the olives they had picked and their agricultural tools and personal belongings. They transported the wounded brothers in a tractor-trailer they had with them to cars parked further away. From there, they were taken to Darwish Nazzal Hospital in Qalqiliyah. Nashaat al-Bari required knee surgery and prolonged hospitalization.

Later that day, some of the harvesters returned to the site. They found the olives they had picked scattered on the ground and many of their belongings missing, including Muhannad’s wife’s purse, which had a cell phone and personal items inside.

In a testimony he gave B’Tselem field researcher Abdulkarim Sadi on 31 October 2024, Nashaat al-Bari, 45, a father of four from Immatin, said:

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In the early morning of Tuesday, 29 October 2024, after the DCO informed us we had coordination, I went with my wife and about 40 other family members to our land northeast of the village, in an area called al-Jabal al-Ahmar. We have about 70 dunams (7 hectares) there, and we wanted to take advantage of the days the Israeli DCO gave us to harvest after they didn’t let us access the area last year, once the war broke out in Gaza.

We started harvesting the olives in a plot about 80 to 100 meters away from where the Havat Gilad outpost was established. Half an hour later, two vehicles suddenly drove up from the direction of Havat Gilad, a white pickup truck and a green car. Two settlers in white shirts and a soldier got out of them. Other settlers spread out in the plots, but they didn’t get close to us.

Then, without warning, the soldier started shooting at us with his rifle from 30 meters away. I started shouting, “Why are you shooting at us?” but he ignored me. I turned around to escape and just then, a bullet hit me in the back of my left leg and I fell down. My brother and my wife ran over quickly to protect me, and then my brother was hit by a fragment in the forehead.

The soldier fired seven or eight bullets. My relatives fled, and my brother and cousins picked me up and carried me to the tractor-trailer parked far away, at the entrance to the plot. They drove me in it about 500 meters to where the cars were parked, and from there, they took Muhannad and me in a relative’s car to a hospital in Qalqiliyah. I spent a few days there and had surgery because a bone in my knee was shattered. From there, I was transferred to a hospital in Nablus, where I had more surgery, most recently on 8 December 2024, to implant bone and platinum in my knee. On Monday, 10 December 2024, I was discharged for follow-up care at home.