On the morning of 15 April 2021, Hisham Hamud (30), a married father of one, discovered that settlers had invaded the building site of his home in the southern part of the village. The settlers stole a cement mixer, damaged equipment and tools, and vandalized the walls of the house and the fence around it. They also broke and uprooted some 15 olive, citrus and almond saplings Hamud had planted a month earlier. Hamud estimates the damage to his property at about NIS 10,000 (~3,080 USD).
This is the sixth time B’Tselem has documented damage by settlers to residents of Jalud or to their property in 2021. The settlements of Shilo and Shvut Rachel and the outposts of Ahiya and Esh Kodesh were established about a kilometer from the village. Ahiya was established several hundred meters east of Hamud’s home.
In a testimony he gave B’Tselem field researcher Abdulkarim Sadi, Hisham Hamud described the damage the settlers caused him:
In early March 2021, we started building our home on a plot belonging to my family. The plot is about two dunams large [1 dunam = 1,000 sq. meters] and lies in the southern part of Jalud, in an area defined as Area B. I’m a construction worker, so I started building the house myself and was able to lay the foundations.
On Thursday morning, 15 April 2021, while the Israelis and the settlers were on holiday because of Independence Day, I went to the building site. When I got there, I was shocked to find it severely damaged. They’d vandalized equipment, tools and the support pillars I was building. The criminals probably came from the east, from the settler farm called “Ahiya” that was established east of my plot, because they broke through the barbed-wire fence I’d put up around the plot and cut a large opening in it from the east, in order to get into the construction site.
The last time I worked at the site, I made three pillars out of planks and fixed them to pour cement into them, but the criminals knocked them down and damaged all three. I was amazed to find a small electric cement mixer I use for construction gone. I bought two cement mixers for 2,200 shekels (~677 USD) just two months ago. I tied one with a chain and bolt to a tree trunk at the construction site, so they couldn’t steal it. Instead, they cut its power cord. The other cement mixer wasn’t locked because I couldn’t find another chain, and they stole it.
They emptied about 30 sacks of cement on the ground and poured about three cubic meters of water on it, making it completely unusable. They also broke the lock on an old refrigerator that I use to store work tools, and stole them. On top of that, they cut, uprooted and broke 15 citrus, almond and olive saplings I’d planted in early March in the garden of my future home.
Here in Jalud, we’re used to extremist settlers carrying out such attacks by now. I have no conflict with residents of the village or of other villages, and the site was fully surrounded by a barbed-wire fence a meter and a half tall. They left a 2.5-meter-wide breach on its eastern side, facing the “Ahiya” farm, which is about 300 meters away. When I was looking for the stolen equipment, I found tools on the road leading there.
I estimate the damage they caused me at almost 10,000 shekels. They did everything in the dark and no one saw them. I work all week in a settlement to support my family, and put some of the money into building this small house for us to live in. Since I got married about 10 years ago, we’ve lived in a rented house in the village.