On Saturday, 22 February 2025, at around 9:00 A.M., settlers arrived at the road leading to the village of Deir Dobwan in the Ramallah District and removed a dirt barrier residents had put up a few days earlier to prevent settlers from approaching village homes. Around noon, after the road was opened, two settlers walked over to the village from the direction of a nearby outpost and started a confrontation with shepherds who were grazing their flocks on village land. After about two hours, about 15 young men who had come from the village gathered nearby, and two of them stabbed and wounded the settlers.
More settlers arrived and evacuated the wounded, and after about ten minutes, about 40 settlers charged at village residents who were in the area and fired live rounds at them. The residents fled, and then, about 40 settlers arrived at the residential compound of a shepherding family in the village.
The settlers, most of whom were masked and some of whom were armed, ordered the residents at gunpoint to go into their homes and stay inside. They went into the sheep pens of two farmers, which contained hundreds of head of sheep, and began taking the flocks out. When the residents tried to protest the theft, an armed settler ordered them in Arabic to get the women and children out of the houses, leave the sheep behind and go. The settler stole a phone belonging to one resident and smashed another’s. He then hit one of the residents in the back with the butt of his rifle and demanded under threat that they leave the place within two minutes.
As the residents moved away from their homes, they saw the settlers leading the flocks they had taken out of the pens, about 1,000 head of sheep, in the direction of the nearby outpost known as Hanina’s Farm. Meanwhile, masked settlers stole two cars from the residents, as the military blocked the exit from the village to the area where the settlers had attacked and prevented the young men from getting there and driving them away.
After the settlers left, the residents returned to their homes and found the pens almost completely empty.
Muhammad al-War, 39, a father of two, related in a testimony he gave B’Tselem field researcher Mohammad Romaneh:
On Saturday, while we were tending to the sheep and feeding them as usual, I heard gunfire to the west of our tents. At the same time, my neighbor called me and told me there were many settlers on the road next to his farm.
I went out to see what was happening, and after about a minute, I saw many settlers climbing over the fence opposite our tents, from the southwest, and running toward the tents.
It was frightening, and my children started screaming and crying. Most of the settlers had their faces covered, and you could only see their eyes. I estimate there were about 50 settlers, and seven or eight of them were armed with long rifles.
Only one of them didn’t have a face cover. He had a short beard and blond hair and looked about 40.
The settlers split up into groups, and each group headed to a different sheep pen. They started opening the pens.
At the same time, a masked settler went up to my car and tried to open it, but it was locked.
Then armed settlers came up to me, cocked their guns and pointed them at me. They shouted and ordered all of us to go into one residential tent.
My wife, my children, my father’s wife, my brother and I all went into one tent, and an armed, masked settler stood at the entrance to the tent with his back to us.
After two minutes, the settler whose face was visible came into the tent and signaled for me to come closer to him, then said in Arabic, “Leave this place with your wife, your children and your family, or you will die here today.”
I told him I would not leave and would not abandon my sheep, so he said to me: “These people (meaning the settlers) are crazy. Forget the sheep. Leave this place immediately.”
Someone called me, and when I tried to answer, the settler snatched the phone from me.
We came out of the tent, and then I saw the settlers taking our sheep out of the enclosures and leading them east. I turned back to the settler and asked him to let me go back to my sheep. He said to me: “There are no sheep. Get out of here,” and hit me in the back with the butt of his rifle. After that, I didn’t dare do anything to prevent the theft. I didn’t try to do anything to prevent the theft. There were too many settlers.
I feared for the lives of my children and my family, and we started moving away from the area. After we had gone about 100 meters, I saw two cars belonging to my neighbor, who owns a chicken farm. I thought it was him, so I stopped in front of the cars and started shouting, “Help me, neighbor, they stole my sheep,” but when the two cars arrived, I was surprised to discover they were full of settlers.
One of them got out of the car and shouted at us to leave the place immediately, so we kept walking until we reached another farm belonging to a village resident.