On Thursday, 10 August 2023, at around 10:00 A.M., Muhammad Abu Sbeih (41) and his friend Bilal Abu Mayalah (30) drove to Abu Sbeih’s farmland in a jeep. The land, located south of the village of Bani Na’im, in an area known as Janun al-Batma, covers about 2.5 dunams (1 dunam = 1,000 sq. meters), and the two friends were planning to resume construction of a concrete fence around it. On arrival, they discovered the construction materials Abu Sbeih had left at the site the previous day had disappeared and drove off to look for them and ask farmers in neighboring plots if they had witnessed the theft. After a three-hour search that ended in nothing, they returned to Abu Sbeih’s plot and noticed two settlers about to drive away from it (according to Haaretz, one of the settlers was an off-duty soldier). Abu Mayalah, who was driving the jeep, positioned it to block the settlers’ way, while Abu Sbeih called the police. The two settlers, who were armed with M-16 rifles and a handgun, got out of the car and approached Abu Sbeih and Abu Mayalah, who had also got out of the jeep, and demanded they clear the way, holding their weapons menacingly.
The settlers then went up to the jeep, opened its doors, began removing items from it and tried to put it in neutral and push it off the road, but Abu Mayalah managed to get into the driver’s seat and brake. At that point, one of the settlers sat in the passenger seat and started removing the car insurance and land ownership papers out of the glove compartment and fiddled with a Quran he found in it. Abu Sbeih picked up a stone from the ground and shouted at one of the settlers: “Shoot me, Kill me!” When Abu Sbeih tried to prevent the settler from damaging the documents, the settler who was standing next to the jeep, grabbed him by the hand and then the neck and pushed him out of the jeep.
The settlers continued bullying Abu Sbeih and Abu Mayalah for about forty minutes, rummaging through their belongings and removing items from the jeep while holding their weapons menacingly. They even tried to prevent the two from documenting the incident. Some soldiers and an officer who arrived in the area told Abu Sbeih and Abu Mayalah to move the jeep and let the settlers leave. When Abu Sbeih told the officer he suspected the two had stolen from him and they had to wait for the police, one of the settlers punched him in the face in front of the officer, who did nothing more than shove him away. The officer promised Abu Sbeih he would check the military cameras to see if the settlers had, in fact, stolen his property and then ordered him to clear the way. After the jeep was moved, the settlers left. Unsurprisingly, the officer never got back to Abu Sbeih.
About 500 meters west of the plot, the settlement of Ma'ale Hever (Pnei Hever) was established in the 1980s. South of the settlement, the outpost Hevar Desert Farm was established.
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www.btselem.org/video/2023092...