In recent years — and especially since 7 October 2023 — there has been a sharp increase in both the number and severity of settler attacks against Palestinians. The incidents reported on this blog do not reflect all incidents of settler violence in the West Bank, but only those that B’Tselem was able to document and investigate.
View of farmland and the security road from the village. Photo: Abdulkarim Sadi, B’Tselem
On 15 October 2024, the Faqqu’a village council notified residents that the Israeli DCO had issued them permission to access their lands that lie between the village and the Separation Barrier beginning the next day. The notice stated that the farmers must maintain a distance of 100 meters from the barrier, even though the area was not issued a closure order. A source within the security establishment confirmed to Ha’aretz that in this area, “Palestinians are not required to coordinate olive harvesting with Israeli authorities, although they are advised to notify them before approaching the barrier.”
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Hanan Abu Salameh. Photo courtesy of the family
On Thursday morning, 17 October 2024, the Abu Salameh family went to pick olives on their land east of the village. Hanan Abu Salameh, 59, and her husband Husam, 66, left first, around 7:30 A.M., and were soon joined by their son Fares, 40, and a laborer they had hired for the harvest. Shortly after they began working, a military vehicle appeared on the “security road” adjacent to the barrier, and a soldier got out of it and fired in the air. The members of the family, who were picking olives in a plot about 150 meters from the barrier, took the shot as a warning and decided to move to a plot about 200 meters from the barrier.
Two other families were harvesting olives in that part of the village land at the time. One of them, Mustafa Abu Salameh’s family, who are related to Hanan and Husam, were working about 350 meters away from them. This family initially picked olives about 70-80 meters from the barrier, but around 9:00 A.M., soldiers arrived and threw a tear gas canister at them, prompting the family to move to work in a plot more than 100 meters away from the barrier.
Hanan, Husam and Fares Abu Salameh and their laborer continued to work for about two hours, roughly 200 meters from the barrier. At around 10:30 A.M., a military vehicle appeared on the security road, and a soldier got out and started firing at them without warning. The four harvesters ran toward the tractor they had parked a little further away from the barrier, and Hanan reached it first and turned around. She was shot in the upper body and fell to the ground.
Husam and Fares drove Hanan away in Fares’ car. They transferred her to an ambulance that took her to Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin, where she was pronounced dead.
According to media reports, the Military Police Investigation Unit launched an investigation into the incident, and the deputy battalion commander leading the force has been suspended until it concludes. The media also reported that the morning after Abu Salameh was killed, the division commander issued new open-fire regulations for the harvest season, prohibiting firing at olive harvesters.
Nevertheless, years of experience show that this investigation, too, will come to nothing and will not achieve justice for Hanan Abu Salameh and her family. Its sole purpose is to legitimize Israel’s ongoing lethal open-fire policy against Palestinians.
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Background
The village of Faqqu’a is located northeast of the district city, Jenin, and is home to about 4,500 residents. In 1948, the village lost more than half its historical land, which remained on the other side of the Green Line. The village lost hundreds more dunams when Israel built the Separation Barrier. Today, most of the land available to the village stretches south and east of it, with one narrow strip of cultivated land to the west, adjacent to the barrier. During the previous olive harvest, which coincided with the start of the war in Gaza, villagers were too afraid to access the plots near the fence and did not pick olives there.
B’Tselem field researcher Abdulkarim Sadi collected the testimonies:
Hanan’s son, Fares Abu Salameh, 40, a father of two, said in a testimony he gave on 29 October 2024:
On 15 October 2024, after the village council announced that the army was letting us harvest olives in our plots starting on 16 October, my father decided we would start the day after, on Thursday, 17 October.
My father and mother drove to the land in their tractor at about 7:30 A.M., and I went to pick up a farm hand we hired to help us with the harvest. I got to the plot about 10 minutes after them. We started harvesting in a section that’s more than 150 meters away from the fence, because we knew the Israeli authorities had ordered us to stay 100 meters away from the road along the fence.
Around 8:00 A.M., we saw a white jeep drive up and stop on the road by the fence, opposite us. Two shots were fired in the air from inside the jeep. We took that as a warning not to get close to the fence, so we decided to move even further away and started harvesting trees that were more than 200 meters from the road by the fence – to avoid trouble with the army.
We continued picking olives there until about 10:30 A.M., and then a white pickup truck drove up and stopped. Four soldiers got out and one of them started shooting. It lasted for about two minutes. I think he fired 15-20 bullets there. We ran towards our tractor and my mother, who got very scared, ran first. Suddenly I heard her scream: “I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot!” and then she fell down.
Hanan’s husband, Husam Abu Salameh, 66, a father of seven, said in a testimony he gave on 19 October 2024:
I picked olives with my wife, my son and the laborer who was with us until about 10:30 A.M. Then, suddenly, four soldiers showed up in a white pickup truck. They got out and one of them started shooting in our direction without no warning and for no reason. We started running away to dodge the bullets.
My wife, Hanan, was very scared and ran ahead of us toward our tractor. I had parked it at the entrance to the grove, about 250 meters from the separation fence next to which the soldiers were standing. Suddenly, Hanan shouted, “I’m injured, I’m injured,” and fell to the ground. The moment my wife was hit and shouted out, I saw she was bleeding in the chest area. We reached her, and she was having trouble breathing and couldn’t speak. Fares and I picked her up right away. We put her in Fares’ car and started driving to the hospital. On the way, we called a Palestinian ambulance, which met us near the Deir Abu Da’if village intersection, and the crew put her in the ambulance. When I looked at her, I realized she was taking her last breaths, and she really did pass away before we made it to Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin.
There was no justification for what happened to my wife. The soldiers only wanted revenge and to kill Palestinians. There were no acts of resistance or clashes in the land around us. The farmers were busy working in their groves, taking advantage of every moment to harvest their olives because last year, after the war in Gaza started, they were afraid to go to their land near the fence.
Mustafa Abu Salameh, 62, a father of five, said in a testimony he gave on 19 October 2024:
When they announced we could go harvest olives, I arranged with relatives who live near us to go to the harvest at the same time, to take advantage of the time they had given us and finish picking as quickly as possible. My wife, my son and I went to our land and started working there around 8:15 A.M. At about 9:00 A.M., while we were busy harvesting at a distance of about 70-80 meters from the road by the fence, I saw a white jeep driving along the road and stopping. A soldier inside the jeep threw a tear gas canister in our direction, but it didn’t reach us. I understood from that behavior that we had better move even further away from that road, so we went to pick olives off trees that were more than 100 meters from the fence.
At around 10:30 A.M., we suddenly heard gunfire that lasted about two minutes. We feared for our lives and decided to go home. It was only after we were away from the area that we found out the shots were aimed at my relatives, who were harvesting their land more than 200 meters from the road by to the fence and about 350 meters from where we were.
As soon as we left the area, I heard that our relative, Hanan Abu Salameh, had been shot in the chest. I saw her son’s car speeding away when they took her to the hospital, and I also saw a white pickup truck with four soldiers by the fence.
We were three families in that area: my family and two other families of cousins of mine. There were no acts of resistance and no kind of provocation. All the farmers just wanted to harvest their olives as quickly as possible.
