On Friday, 20 September 2024, around 6:00 P.M., settlers blocked the northern entrance to the village of Deir Nizam with their cars and attacked Palestinian passengers with stones. Bilal Tamimi, who arrived at the site in his car with his toddlers, ages one and two, and his mother, pulled over about 500 meters away from the entrance to the village and had to wait for about 15 minutes. He started driving towards the village only after hearing from other local residents that the settlers had left.
However, after driving about 100 meters, the family's car came across a settler car that was blocking the road with several settlers standing next to it, some armed with sticks.
Bilal Tamimi, 31, told B'Tselem what happened then:
After driving about 100-150 meters, I suddenly saw several settlers standing on the side of the road, some of them holding sticks. As soon as they saw my car, they moved to the middle of the road and a white vehicle blocked it. The settlers started running towards my car and other cars that were there to attack us with sticks. The cars started turning around, and I tried too, but I had trouble because of the car behind me. Then, one of the settlers came up to our car, put his hand through the left back window, where my mother was sitting with my one-year-old son, Zakariya, in her lap, and pepper-sprayed him in the face. I managed to turn around and quickly drove to the medical center in the town of Bir Zeit, about 20 kilometers away. There was a very strong smell of pepper in the car, and we could barely breathe. Our faces were red, especially Zakariya's. The doctors recommended we wash his face with baby shampoo every few hours and discharged us after about an hour. We got home around 8:30 P.M.