Rabihah Dar 'Awad (68), described how two masked and armed settlers entered her house carrying clubs. The settlers attacked her with pepper spray, hit her and her grandson with clubs, and threw a Molotov cocktail into their house before leaving. The fire spread to nearly all the rooms. Rabihah and her grandson were rescued by fellow villagers:
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Rabihah Dar 'Awad, Photo by Iyad Hadad, B'Tselem
On 21 June 2023, at round 1 P.M., my seventy-two-year-old husband Muhammad had gone out to the village center. I was at home, on the second floor, with my eight-year-old grandson Hijaz. Hijaz was sitting on the bed playing with an iPad, and I was sitting next to him. Suddenly, I heard shouts and sounds of destruction around the house. Before I could go out to see what was happening, a masked settler appeared at the entrance holding a club and some other object in his hand that I couldn’t identify. The settler sprayed something in my eyes with that object, apparently pepper spray. I felt my eyes burning. I ran inside the room and he chased me. I was very scared and froze from the shock. I started screaming. Hijaz also started screaming, and then the settler attacked me with the club and beat me all over my body: my back, my stomach, my head. He tried to hit Hijaz, but I hugged him to protect him, and then the settler started kicking me.
A few minutes later, another settler entered. He was also masked. He shouted at us and also attacked us with the club. The two settlers remained inside my house for a few minutes, and then left. I noticed that one of them had a bottle in his hand. I got up to close the door, and at that moment, the one holding the bottle threw it towards me. I closed the door, but the bottle had already fallen inside and shattered. It turned out to be a Molotov cocktail. The living room caught fire, and the electricity went out. I began to smell smoke coming from outside and heard the crackling sound of burning furniture. Hijaz said, “Grandma, there's a fire,” and I told him that it was okay, that there was no fire, so that he wouldn't be afraid. I told him we should close the door and hide. We went into the bathroom, and I sat with him on the toilet seat. We hid there, but the smoke infiltrated the room and I felt short of breath.
"Let's pray together," I said to Hijaz, and I began to pray that we would come out of this safely. I also hoped that prayer would distract him, but he couldn't calm down. He was crying and breathing heavily out of fear. He said, “I'm tired, I don't feel well, I smell fire.” I kept trying to calm him down.
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Rabihah Dar 'Awad's living room, torched by the settlers. Photo by Iyad Haddad, B'Tselem
I didn't know what was happening outside the bathroom where we were hiding. Later, I realized that the fire had spread throughout the entire house. Everything caught fire except for the room and the bathroom we were hiding in.
After about half-an-hour, I heard someone shouting in Arabic. I couldn't recognize the voice and was afraid that it might be settlers. The voices got closer, and then I saw that it was my husband and other villagers who were looking for us in the house. We came out of the bathroom, then out of the room, and from there escaped through an internal door to our private parking area. Fortunately, my husband had taken the car out that day. If the car had been parked there, the settlers would have set it on fire, and we wouldn't have been able to leave through that route either. We might have died in the fire. As soon as we came out, my husband, my thirty-eight-year-old son Bilal, and other youth from the village moved us away from the house. After that, they took us to the house of family member in the village center, where we stayed for a few days. The youth extinguished the fire in our house.
I suffered injuries to my thighs, abdomen, back, and shoulders, as well as above my right hip. Because of the smoke inhalation, I’m still suffering from a cough and shortness of breath.
Meyasar Hamud (71), who suffers from impaired mobility, described how her home was set on fire by settlers while she was inside, alone:
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Meyasar Hamud. Photo by Iyad Hadad, B'Tselem
For the past 15 years I’ve suffered from a heart condition, and over the last decade, also from herniated discs in my neck, which have caused partial paralysis in my left arm and leg, making walking difficult for me.
Our house is located on the northern side of the village. It's a private residence. My thirty-seven-year-old daughter Ansam currently lives with me, along with her four children. She came to help me about ten months ago. Her husband remained in the United States. Our family has two more houses next to mine: To the north there’s a two-story house, and to the west a one-story house. These houses belong to my sons – Ashraf (51) and Najeh (47) – who live in the United States with their families. They vacation here.
On Wednesday, 21 June 2023, at around 1:30 PM, I was watching television in the living room. I was alone because my daughter had gone to Ramallah with her three children. I heard a commotion, followed by three gunshots. Judging by the sound, it was live gunfire. I tried to check the security camera footage, but they weren’t working. I later learned that they’d been shot at and destroyed. After that, I heard stones being thrown and the noise of destruction and vandalism. I saw that the windows of our closed balcony had been shattered. I was very scared, especially because of my mobility issues. The sounds of destruction kept increasing.
I tried to think of what to do and where to go. The door to the balcony was locked, and so was the gate in the fence. I thought about hiding in the bathroom, but I was afraid of getting stuck there because the lock is faulty. I was worried that if someone came to help me, they wouldn't be able to get me out. I decided to go into one of the rooms and hide there. I sat down and was so overwhelmed with fear that I couldn't even send a message or make a call. I was terrified. I heard the voices of the settlers outside and the sound of destruction. Then I heard thuds on the door, as if someone was trying to break in. I began to smell smoke, and the smoke was increasingly spreading through the house. I didn't know what to do. I felt helpless. I couldn't think straight. I started praying and asking God for forgiveness. I felt dizzy and found it hard to stay alert. Slowly, I lost consciousness.
I seem to have fainted. After about half-an-hour, I woke up. Village youth came to rescue me. They lifted me on the plastic chair I was sitting on. Outside, I saw that the entire area was filled with smoke. I saw burning cars. The youth carried me about 20 or 30 meters away from my house. The street was filled with villagers who had come to help and fend off the attacking settlers.
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Mayser Hamud's home going up in falems and her evacuation. Stills from video
They put me in a car and took me to the clinic in the village center. There, they ran tests. My blood pressure was high, likely due to the panic. I stayed there under observation for a few hours.
After that, fellow villagers took me from the clinic to one of my daughters’, Sharifah’s, house. She also lives in our village. I stayed there for two or three days before moving to my son's burnt house. Moshraf lives in the United States and only uses his house here for vacations, so I went there with Ansam and her children. My house and the neighboring houses of my other children were severely damaged and are currently uninhabitable.
More than two weeks have passed since the incident and I’m still traumatized by what I went through. It’s hard to describe how terrifying it was. I narrowly escaped death. I almost burned inside my house. I only realized the grave danger I was in afterwards, when I learned that our balcony caught fire and the fire spread inside. Thankfully, the village youth managed to extinguish the fire before it reached the room where I was hiding. All the walls of the house are scorched, and it's no longer suitable for living. The glass railing of the balcony shattered, and several windows broke. The house is full of debris and broken glass. The young men who rescued me said that I was also surrounded by debris. I’m not certain, because at that point I’d already fainted.
Ever since the attack, I’ve been feeling weak and am having trouble sleeping. Does what happened to me seem reasonable to people? How can this just slide by quietly? These individuals have no compassion or mercy. What do they want from us? We just want to live peacefully in our homes. What have we done to them that they attack us, destroy our homes and lives, and try to kill us?
Now we’re waiting for the committee that the village set up to repair our homes.
Khadijah Abu 'Awad (73), testified that several settlers, some armed with weapons and clubs, attacked her home with stones and clubs. They smashed windows and set things from her yard on fire at the entrance to her house. They also ignited two sheds, a car, a swing, and trees:
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Khadijah Abu 'Awad. Photo by Iyad Hadad, B'Tselem
On Wednesday, 21 June 2023, around 1:30 P.M., I was at home with my thirty-eight-year-old son, Shaker, and his family. Our house is on Salon Street, in the northern part of the village, and about 500 meters away from the Shilo settlement.
Shaker was working in the garden when he came in agitated and said, “Mom, settlers have surrounded the house.” I had heard noises a while earlier, but I didn't go out to see what was happening. When Shaker said that, I realized we were being attacked. I looked through the window that faces north and saw dozens of settlers running towards us. They dispersed into groups of thirty or forty, each attacking a house.
I continued looking out the window, and initially saw them attacking my daughter's house which sits across from ours. They vandalized it with clubs and stones. Some of their faces were masked, and they were armed with sticks and guns. Others threw Molotov cocktails from their bags and set houses on fire. Then they arrived at our house, broke the windows with stones, and tried to tear down the door. I shouted, “Why are you attacking us? What are you doing? What do you want?”
We closed the shutters of the windows and peered outside through the gaps. My son remained on the closed balcony, near the entrance, to try to fend them off and protect us if they managed to tear down the door. I hid in my room with my daughter-in-law, Manar, and my three-year-old grandson. The room was quite insulated, so the smoke didn't come in. I suffer from asthma, and the smoke could have killed me. Manar started crying and screaming, and I tried to calm her down. Both of us were very frightened. Manar called her family for help.
After about 10 minutes, I saw the settlers gathering chairs, wooden furniture, the children's bicycles – anything they found in the yard – and piling it all in front of our entrance. They set it on fire. They also set fire to some couches that were in the shed at the front of the house, and to the wooden swing in the yard, along with anything they found around the house. They also tried to tear down the door, and smashed windows on the balcony. Thankfully these windows were already protected by iron bars, so my son wasn't injured by the glass shards.
I then saw the settlers set fire to the vehicle my son uses for farming. They also incinerated the shed behind the house that serves as our storage room. We keep olive oil, olives, legumes, pickles, flour, agricultural equipment, and some furniture there. Afterwards, I heard the settlers pounding on the roof of the house and destroying things up there. They stayed around the house and on the roof for about an hour, continuing to cause destruction and set things on fire. I thank God that I was in my insulated room. Otherwise, I would have died from smoke inhalation.
After an hour they left. Village youth managed to get to us. When they took us out, I saw that all the rooms in the house were filled with smoke that had entered through the balcony and windows, and it was difficult to see anything, like a fog. I felt serious shortness of breath. My son held me and helped me walk, and we exited through the back door because the front door had been repeatedly attacked and couldn't be opened. The furniture they’d set on fire was still burning. When we went outside, there was heavy smoke from the shed. There were three gas canisters in there. We’re fortunate they were empty and didn't explode; otherwise, the house would have collapsed on us.
Outside, I saw smoke rising everywhere. It was coming from all the neighboring houses. My daughter Diana’s house was on fire. Nearby, another relative, Shaker Abu 'Awad’s house was also burning. He was in the U.S., but his wife and children were in the house. The settlers also set fire to two of the family’s cars that were parked on the street near the house. There was chaos in the village. The settlers set fire to and destroyed dozens of houses and cars. I have never seen anything like this; it was like watching a war scene on television.
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Khadijah Abu 'Awad in front of her burned home. Photo by Iyad Hadad, B'Tselem
I felt dizzy, nauseous, and had very severe shortness of breath. I lost consciousness. I woke up after 15 or 20 minutes when my son Shaker poured water on my face. He hugged me and cried. He was afraid the whole time that we would die, and when we got out, he couldn't stop thanking God that we were alive. After that, I was taken to the village clinic, and I was given oxygen and used my inhaler. More than two weeks have passed, and I still feel dizzy and suffer from severe shortness of breath.
After the attack, my daughter and I were forced to move in with my brother, Tabet Joda. His house is close to my own. Shaker, Manar, and their children moved into his uncle’s house. Until our houses are repaired, our family will be scattered. The village council has established a committee to oversee the repairs, but we don't know when our turn will come. We are now relying on God's mercy and don't know when we will return to our home and be able to live normally again. For now, we are dispersed, and I see my grandchildren much less. It's difficult for me.
We saw death before our eyes. We were trapped in the house and thought that if the settlers found us, they would surely kill us. They almost burned us alive. Fortunately, the village youth rescued us. Later, I found out that one of the rescuers was the martyr, twenty-four-year-old Omar Jbarah who was killed later that day.
Settlers already attacked our house and other houses in our village this past February. They damaged our solar panels, which generate electricity for the whole neighborhood. They also vandalized cards and shattered windows at my house and my daughter’s house.
After that attack, we reinforced the windows on our balcony with iron bars, installed iron shutters, and replaced the front door with a reinforced iron door. We’re afraid they’ll attack us again. We live in a constant state of tension and fear, and every noise makes us dread that settlers are coming.
