Photo caption: Sheikh Sa’id flanked by his son and wife immediately after being shot by a settler .
Editor’s note: The West Bank is the portion of Palestine which borders the Jordan River. Rakeez is located in the “South Hebron Hills,” also known as “Masafer Yatta.” “Settlers” are Israelis who “settle” in Palestine, as American “settlers” would “settle” in Indian territory with goal of pushing them out.
Rakeez is the collective name for a few family compounds located at some distance from each other south of a-Tuwani village. The fact that this is not a locality in the usual sense of the word, not even on the small scale of the South Hebron Hills, makes the families living there especially vulnerable to violence of the settlers and their occupation forces’ backup. The close contact we made with the family of Harun Abu ‘Aram, shot and critically wounded at Rakeez in 2021 led to contact with other families there.
One of these families is that of 60-year-old Sheikh Sa’id. He has a very special personality –friendly, thin, quick and vivid. He combines religious commitment and knowledge that has granted him recognition as Sheikh among the surrounding inhabitants, a deep connection with the earth that characterizes him as a farmer, and the handy knowledge of a master mason. In our first encounters he dedicated most of his talk with us to religious matters and Koran stories. At a later stage of our acquaintance, he opened up and told us about himself and his many years of work in various places inside Israel, before he settled down on his own land at Rakeez about 15 years ago.
Avigail is a town of “settlers” next to Rakeez. The Israeli government officially recognized it in 2023 and recently extended its recognized territory. This comes at the expense of Rakeez inhabitants, the fields of whom Avigail settlers wish to take over and annex to their own settlement. The ongoing war that broke out on October 7, 2023 enables Avigail and its settlers to act with their whole determination, violence and cruelty in order to make this happen. On the other hand, the scant Rakeez inhabitants have not surrendered or left but continue to stick to what was left of their own living space with whatever power they still have.
A considerable part of our visits with Sheikh Sa’id in the past year and a half came after Avigail settlers raided his fields, including the actual family compound. In our last visit, taking place Tuesday, April 15, 2025, he told us how during the previous night, around 11 p.m., he awoke to the sound of heavy equipment entering from Avigail into his highest field. When he came there alone, he was attacked and beaten by the raiders and his cell phone was taken away. At the end of our visit that day, the Sheikh led us to the field and showed us the damage that nocturnal raid had left – the gate was uprooted, a part of the fence and several trees were vandalized, and in their stead the raiders had planted iron rods that usually serve as a field line. Sheikh Sa’id was determined to refurbish his field and raise its gate again.
Two days later, on Thursday, April 17, 2025, we received a telephone call about what had happened to Sheikh Sa’id and his son a short while earlier. Around 6 p.m. Avigail settlers returned to the field to continue their takeover work. When Sheikh Sa’id and his 15-year-old son arrived in an attempt to stop it, they were attacked by the settlers. The security officer of Avigail pushed the son to the ground and when the father came to help him up, the officer pushed down the father too and shot one of his legs. A little while later members of the family arrived as well as volunteers and neighbors, and soldiers. Sheikh Sa’id’s evacuation to a hospital was by a military ambulance that had stood by at the site all the while.
Toward midnight we were notified that he was hospitalized in Beer-Sheva’s Soroka hospital. When we tried to visit him the next day, Friday morning, we found out that he was kept in the Intensive Care Unit as a detainee, according to the occupation’s ironclad logic that the Palestinian is always the guilty aggressor, and the settler always the victim trying to defend himself. The army declared that the security officer who shot Sheikh Sa’id was “acting within normal procedure” (see Haaretz newspaper report), while Sheikh Sa’id’s son was sent to detention and defined as a detainee as well. Thus, soldiers were “guarding” the Sheikh’s hospital bed. These soldiers prevented us from seeing him when we got there.
We still managed to receive information about his condition from the medical Staff. We passed on this information to the family members at Rakeez whom we saw later that day. The information was that blood vessels in the hit leg were irreversibly damaged to the point that it had to be amputated. On Friday night the operation took place and the leg was removed above the knee. On Saturday, Attorney Shehada Ibn Bari was sent by The Human Rights Defenders Fund to visit Seikh Sa’id. He found him aching, sad and worried, especially about the condition of his detained son.
On Sunday, April 20, 2025 the military court at Ofer jail conducted a session about the detention of the Sheikh and his son. The first judge extended their detention, but Attorney Riham Nasrah who represented them there appealed and managed to have another judge rule that Sheikh Sa’id and his son were to be released at a 5,000 shekels (about $1389) bail each. Their legal proceedings have not ended, but for the time being the son was expected to be freed on Monday April 21, 2025, whereas Sheikh Sa’id is to undergo a long, torturous process of rehabilitation.
From Israel’s predatory point of view these days, this story is a minor point in the continuous mass slaughter and amputations that know no end. From our point of view, this story is a whole world. We are getting ready to help Sheikh Sa’id and his family as best we can, just as we helped the late Harun Abu ‘Aram, and still accompany and support his family and other victims of the occupation terror in the South Hebron Hills.