On Wednesday afternoon, 15 March 2023, members of the M’aali family from the Palestinian village of a-Taybah arrived at their agricultural farm, which lies east of the village. At around 2:00 P.M., Khairi M’aali (47) took the flock out to pasture about 100 to 200 meters away from the farm. While he was grazing the flock, two masked Israeli settlers arrived, one of them armed with a club. The armed settler approached Khairi M’aali, waving the club and threatening him. The other settler chased the flock, trying to make it run. Meanwhile, Khairi’s son Fares also arrived.
At this point, four more settlers arrived. They threw stones at the flock and led some of it to an unknown location. In the meantime, more members of the M’aali family arrived, including Khairi’s elderly parents, and tried to drive away the settlers by throwing stones. The confrontation lasted about half an hour and consisted mostly of shouting, as well as some mutual stone-throwing and blows from the settler’s club. The settlers ultimately retreated, and the family members collected the animals, some of which were far away, and returned them to the farm. Khairi M’aali and his parents suffered bruises, and M’aali filed a complaint about the assault with the Binyamin police the same day.
In a testimony he gave B’Tselem field researcher Iyad Hadad, Khairi M’aali, said:
We have a farm with 152 heads of sheep on land we rent from a resident of the village of a-Taybah, located east of the village.
On Wednesday, 15 March 2023, at around 2:00 P.M., I was on the farm with my sons Fares (21), Rammah (15) and Firas (12), my wife Nadhmiyeh Khairi (40) and my brother Mahmoud (50). We took the flock out to pasture about 100 to 200 meters from the farm, and then two masked settlers suddenly appeared in front of me, one of them armed with a club. One settler walked towards the flock, and the other, the one with the club, approached me, waving it and threatening me. In the meantime, four more masked settlers showed up, and they also started chasing our flock. Just then, Fares joined me, and we both shouted at them not to come near the flock. I told Fares to call my father, who was at home, and ask him to come help us. The settlers backed away from the flock, and then two of them joined the settler with the club and started throwing stones at us. We threw stones back at them to defend ourselves. In the meantime, two of the settlers, who stayed near the flock, dragged away our donkey, which the flock is used to following, and started leading the flock away. We chased after them and got into a bit of mutual shoving. We managed to get some of the flock back, but they took away the rest, and we didn’t know where.
About ten minutes later, four more settlers showed up, and Fares, my brother Mahmoud and I stood in front of them, and there was mutual yelling and shoving. In the meantime, my parents, Sadeq (77) and Farhah (81) and some other relatives of ours arrived. We got into mutual stone-throwing. We tried to keep them away from the farm with the stones and a rake. The clash lasted about half an hour, and in the end, they started slowly retreating. The stones they threw at us hit me all over my body, and I mainly got hit hard in the chest. My father was hit in the right shoulder with the club, and my mother was injured in the right leg by a stone.
After they left, I went to file a complaint at the Israeli police station in the settlement of Rimonim, and they directed me to the Binyamin police station. I went there and filed a complaint.
When I went back home, I found out from the family that they had found the 31 missing sheep roaming around near the farm, and that my father went to the Palestinian police in a-Taybah and filed a complaint there. My parents went to al-Amal Clinic in the village of Silwad, where they got their wounds treated, and then they were discharged.