Khallet Taha, South Hebron Hills: Soldiers and settlers drive family out of pastureland at gunpoint

On 15 November 2023, while Nuh Kharub, 54, and his sons were plowing their land, four settlers arrived on a tractor and plowed about 200 dunams (20 hectares) of the family’s land. When Kharub tried to block the tractor, one of the settlers opened live fire at him, but did not hit him. Soldiers who then arrived ordered the landowners to go home and forbade them to continue plowing.

On the afternoon of 2 December 2023, four soldiers arrived along with a teenage settler at an area next to the community, while members of the Kharub family were strolling there. They shouted at the family and ordered them to leave, threw stones at them and threatened to harm them if they returned. One of them hit the father of the family with the butt of his rifle. 

When the family members went some distance, that same soldier told the others and the settler, “if you have rocks you can smash their window.”

In a testimony he gave B'Tselem field researcher Basel al-Adrah on 3 December 2023, Nuh Kharub said:

I’m originally from the village of Dura. Eight years ago, I bought 25 dunams (1 dunam = 1,000 sq. meters) of land in Khallet Taha and moved there with my family. We raise sheep and grow wheat and barley.

Last summer, settlers razed about 60 dunams close to my house and land, put up a barbed wire fence, and planted vines there. They also set up some shacks about 200 meters from our house, and there are soldiers and settlers in them all the time. Up until then, I would graze my sheep on these lands, but since the settlers set up there, I’ve been grazing the sheep only on the land right next to the house.

On Wednesday, 15 November 2023, when my sons and I were plowing our plot, four settlers arrived in a tractor and started plowing our land. They plowed about 200 dunams. I blocked the tractor's way, and then one of the settlers fired live rounds at me, but luckily, I wasn’t hurt. Then soldiers came, ordered me to go home and told me not to continue plowing. I filed a complaint at the Kiryat Arba police that day.

On Saturday, 2 December 2023, at around 3:30 P.M., my family and I were with the flock near our house. The sheep were grazing around, when suddenly five soldiers and a settler arrived. One of the soldiers started shouting at me right away. He hit me with the butt of his rifle on the side of my body, swore at me and then told me to shut up and go home.

We started walking towards the house, and then the same soldier kicked my wife and kept swearing at us. He pushed us and said things we didn’t understand in Hebrew. After my wife told him to speak in Arabic, he threatened, saying in broken Arabic: “I shoot you,” and then he continued speaking to us in Hebrew. He also spoke and laughed with the other soldiers and the settler. I thought he was going to shoot us. Then my wife said: “Has my house become a prison?" One of them told her to shut up, in Arabic. He came close, swore at her and threw a stone in her direction, but missed. He swore again, and then they all left.