On Saturday, 5 October 2024, at around 8:00 A.M., about 15 families from the village of a-Lubban al-Gharbiyah went to harvest olives on their lands, located on the north side of the village, north of Route 446. About an hour later, dozens of settlers arrived, some masked and armed. The settlers initially spread out among the plots and did nothing, but at around noon, they began attacking the harvesters with clubs, metal pipes, knives and stones, with some threatening the Palestinians at gunpoint so they would not dare resist. The settlers injured 20 residents, some of whom were taken to a hospital for treatment. They also smashed the windows of two cars parked at the site.
Within about half an hour, soldiers arrived at Route 446 and some of them advanced towards the groves while firing in the air and remained as the settlers continued attacking the harvesters. Other soldiers prevented other villagers from heading towards the groves. The settlers also attacked families attempting to escape. Some of the families managed to reach the road, where they got into a verbal altercation with the soldiers. At around 1:30 P.M., about 10 Border Police officers joined the soldiers on the road, firing live rounds in the air and throwing stun grenades at the Palestinian residents, who fled towards the village. The soldiers and Border Police officers remained at the site until 3:00 P.M. and then left.
Village residents watched the settlers, who stayed in the grove until about 7:00 P.M. They discovered the next day that the settlers stole items they had to leave behind when they fled.
B'Tselem researcher Muhammad Romaneh collected testimonies from several of Palestinian olive harvesters on October 6, 2024:
Testimony of H.O., 62:
On Saturday, 5 October 2024, I picked olives with my family on our land. Around 12:45 P.M., my grandson Hussein, 7, started crying and said he wanted to go home. He must have been bored and tired. My son A. asked me to take him home and said he found out from the village WhatsApp group that there were settlers in the al-Khirba area. I took off with Hussein, and on the way, A.M., a resident of the village, called me and asked me to drive him home after he heard that there were settlers around. On the way to A.M.’s plot, I saw Israeli military vehicles and a small police vehicle next to them. I stopped and asked one of the young men who were there what happened, and he replied that nothing had happened and that the police and the army had come to solve some problem. He said that he heard a settler say in Hebrew to one of the residents: “If you kiss my foot, I’ll let you pick your olives.” Meanwhile, A.M. kept calling me nonstop. He must have heard the voices of the residents and settlers, who were 50 meters away from him, and he and his family were afraid.
I got to A.M.’s plot around 1:00 P.M. He was there with his wife. I turned the car to face the army and police jeeps and started helping A.M. load his agricultural equipment onto the car. When we finished, A.M. sat next to me and his wife got in the back seat, next to my grandson. As soon as I started the car, I saw A.M.’s son, 34, arriving. He was about to get in and sit next to his father in the front, when suddenly a settler vehicle arrived behind us at high speed. I heard them speaking in Hebrew. They shouted at him: “Stop!”. Stop!” I asked A.M.’s son to get inside quickly, and as soon as he got in, a settler holding an iron club and an iron pipe arrived. There was another settler, with an M16 rifle, behind him. He forced open the driver’s side door and ordered me in Hebrew to give him the car keys. I told him, “You’re not the police or the army, and you can’t give me orders like that.” He tried to take the keys by force, but I managed to take them out of the ignition and hide them in my clothes. The settler hit me on the head with the metal pipe, near the left eye. I put my hands over my head to protect myself, and then he hit me on the arm with the iron pipe. When he tried to hit me a third time, the pipe hit the car. I managed to grab it with my right hand, but he replaced it with the metal club he had in his other hand and hit me with it on the left arm. When he tried to hit me again, I managed to grab the club with my right hand, and at that moment, the armed settler pointed the barrel of his rifle straight at my stomach and said to me in Hebrew: “Let go of the club or I’ll kill you.” Meanwhile, another settler was brutally hitting A.M. and his son with a club. When A.M.’s wife tried to help her husband and son, he hit her on the hands, while my grandson Hussein screamed in fear and tried to hide.
When the armed settler ordered me to let go of the club, I did and locked the door quickly with my right hand. I took the keys out of my clothes, started the car, and sped out of there. I saw the settlers had broken my car window with their clubs.
After driving about 50 meters, I came across some young guys from the village who were on their lands. They helped us out of the car, got us into their cars, and we drove together to Route 465. We stopped by my house for 15 minutes, and then I found out that my sons and my brother, 55, had also been attacked by the settlers. A few minutes later, my son A. showed up in blood-soaked clothes. We drove to a medical center in the village of Deir Ballut with A.M. and his son and stayed there for more than two hours. They did tests and CT scans and found that I had a fracture in my left arm and that A. had a fractured finger. They gave us casts and then we went home, changed, and drove to the Palestine Medical Complex. The medical team there examined me, A.M., and his son, and we got more CT scans. When the results of the CT scans came out, the doctors decided I needed to stay in the hospital to get “platinum” implant surgery on my left arm. I had the surgery on Sunday, October 6, 2024. It took about three hours, and I’m still in the hospital.
Testimony of H.A.S., 60:
On Saturday, 5 October 2024, at 8:00 A.M., my wife and I went out with our sons Diaa’, 27, and ‘Alaa, 25, and our daughter Lama, 18, for our first harvest day of the year. ‘Alaa has special needs, and his intellectual abilities are much lower than his age. We went to our one-dunam plot (1 dunam = 1,000 sq. meters), in the al-Makassed area, which is part of the al-Khirba area, north of the village.
We started in the Karam al-Hanun area, where there aren’t too many olive trees. My three brothers also came with their families and worked beside us. We brought harvesting equipment, mats, and food. It was quiet, and we finished harvesting four olive trees around noon.
When we finished working, we all sat down together for lunch. Then I walked with my sons about two kilometers to the al-Makassed area to check on our olive trees there and harvest them. That area is also inside the al-Khirba area, and we have eight olive trees there.
When we were about 200 meters from the al-Makassed area, we saw a group of at least 15 settlers who must have been lying in wait for us behind a stone wall and came out as soon as they saw us. They appeared to be in their 20s and 30s and were wearing civilian clothes with kippahs. Some of them were masked. Three of them had rifles and the rest had wooden clubs and metal pipes. They stopped about two or three meters away from us.
My son ‘Alaa walked about half a meter ahead of me. The settlers shouted at us in Hebrew (which I understand very well): “Why are you here? This is our land. You’re not allowed to be here,” and they immediately started beating ‘Alaa. One of the settlers hit him on the right shoulder with a stick. ‘Alaa, who has special needs and his body is weak, can’t defend himself. When I saw him being beaten, I immediately grabbed the settler’s hand forcefully and, at the same time, pushed back another settler who was about to attack us. A third settler hit me on the shoulder with a stick and took my cell phone from my hand. The three of them beat us all at the same time with clubs and sticks, and I couldn’t tell who was beating me on the back, head and the whole body anymore. At one point, I managed to break free and rescue ‘Alaa. We escaped and ran for about 100 meters, but the settlers chased us, kept beating us with clubs, swore at us in Hebrew, and shouted over and over that this was their land and we were not allowed to go there. We couldn’t escape their blows.
When we arrived at the pickup truck that belongs to A., one of the villagers, the settlers left us and started vandalizing the truck and smashing its windows. Then they went to attack A. and his brothers, who were picking olives in their groves about 50 meters from the truck. ‘Alaa and I ran until we reached a spot where some of the villagers had gathered, and there were no settlers there yet.
The villagers started pouring cold water on my body. I checked on my son and saw bruises all over his body. After that, we went back to the rest of the family in Karam al-Hanun. No settlers went there, but when we heard gunfire on the main road, we all went home, and then I found out the Israeli army had arrived in the area following the settler attacks.
When we got home, my nephew, who is a doctor, checked us and said we had serious injuries, but we didn’t need to go to the hospital, and he gave ‘Alaa and me painkiller shots.
Since then, I’ve been too afraid to go to my land and harvest the olives. I’m afraid the settlers will come back and attack me and my sons. My brothers and their families feel the same way. They don’t want to go to the al-Khirba area anymore to harvest their olives, even though most of our groves are there and we have many olive trees there, which can yield around 30 gallons of oil. In previous years, we used some of this oil at home, and sold some to make a living. I need this income. I used to work as a laborer inside Israel, but I’ve been out of work since Israel revoked Palestinian laborers’ work permits after October 7.
Testimony of S.A.S., 54:
On Saturday, 5 October 2024, we arrived at our groves at 9:00 A.M. and started preparing the equipment we unloaded from the two vehicles and harvesting the olives right away, because we thought we only had until 4:00 P.M. We stopped working around noon and started getting food ready.
Around 1:00 P.M., while we were eating, my brother Qassem got a phone call from our neighbor, who told him that settlers were attacking village residents who were picking olives in the al-Khirba area. At that time, we heard noises coming from the direction of Qassem’s (Volkswagen) Polo and he went to see what was going on there. The car was no more than 40 meters away from where we were, but at a higher spot that was out of our line of sight.
I followed Qassem, about 15 meters behind him, and then I noticed eight settlers, some of them masked. I recognized three of them, because they held us up that morning on the way to the groves. They ran towards us, holding clubs and sticks. I shouted to Qassem to be careful because the settlers were coming up behind him. Qassem stopped, and they just caught up to him and started beating him brutally with wooden and iron clubs and sticks. I started screaming and calling to my brothers Hassem and Yusef for help, and then the settlers turned away from Qassem and saw Hassem, Yusef, my sister Samar and my nephew Hussein, standing about 20 meters away from us. The settlers walked towards them, and when they passed me, one of them violently pushed me, knocking me to the ground, and then hit me on the right shoulder with a wooden club and kicked me with his shoes. Then he left me and joined the other settlers who had already got to Hassem, Yusef and Samar. They started hitting Hassem, knocking him to the ground, then Yusef approached them and tried to talk to them, but they pushed him too, and knocked him to the ground.
The settlers tried to throw a large stone at Yusef, but it missed him and hit Hassem’s left leg. They beat my nephew Hussein, too, and threw stones at him, breaking his arm. They also broke some of our agricultural equipment.
The beating lasted about ten minutes. There was no way to defend ourselves and no chance to run. Then the settlers left, probably when they saw Israeli soldiers approaching. Six soldiers came up to us, half of them women. The officer spoke to us in fluent Arabic and introduced himself as “Captain Walid.” He asked us: “What are you doing here?” Yusef answered that we were harvesting olives and told him about the whole incident. The officer gave us five minutes to get out of there and went with another soldier to where my brothers’ cars were parked. Four soldiers stayed with us, including two female soldiers. Qassem went to the vehicles, where one of the soldiers gave him first aid and bandaged his head. His face was covered in blood.
I left with my brothers, who were all injured. Around 3:30 P.M., I went with Hassem and Yusef to the Palestine Medical Complex in the city of Ramallah, and the doctors told me I had a crack in my left shoulder. They treated us, then discharged us. I got home at around 9:30 P.M.. Qassem and his son Hussein were treated at a clinic in the nearby village of Qibyah.
