Firyal and 'Abd al-‘Aziz Abu Haikal (both 74) have 11 children and live in the Tel Rumeidah neighborhood in central Hebron. The couple owns an olive grove with 50 trees spanning five dunams [1 dunam = 1,000 sq. meters] – right by the fence that surrounds their home. The settlement of Admot Yishai was established opposite their home, as was the Mash'had al-Arb'in Checkpoint (Jabal al-Rahmeh). There are several military posts and security cameras in the area.
Although the grove lies right by the family's home, they cannot reach it without prior coordination with the military due to attacks by settlers. This year, they were permitted to enter their land to harvest olives from 13 to 15 October. A month earlier, on 16 September, Firyal Abu Haikal went to the grove with Hebron municipality workers, who usually help her with the harvest, and took photographs of the fruit-laden trees.
On 13 October 2020, Abu Haikal went to the plot with her daughter Samah (47) and seven municipality workers. In a testimony she gave B'Tselem field researcher Manal al Ja'bari on 21 October 2020, she described what she saw:
Samah and I got to the plot around 9:00 A.M. Seven municipality workers got there ahead of us, around 8:00. When I arrived, I saw soldiers and Israeli DCO officials arguing with them. I gathered from the workers that they were not letting them in to harvest the olives. After a while, the soldiers let us in, and then we found that most of the trees no longer had any olives on them. The settlers had already harvested them. It's clear it was them, because no one else goes in there, and there are a checkpoint and cameras in the area. We picked what was left and went home.
On 15 October 2020, I went to the police station at Kiryat Arba to file a complaint. I waited four hours until they let me in to the station. No one spoke Arabic, so I spoke in English and filed a complaint. I don't believe they'll do anything, because it's not the first time settlers have stolen our olives. They always attack us and our relatives who live in the area. We file complaints, but nothing happens.
We used to extract about seven jerricans of olive oil from the grove and pickle about 40 kilos of olives. This year, what we have left may just be enough for half a jerrican of oil and about 10 kilos of olives.