Nablus, occupied West Bank – It was Saturday morning and Bilal Mohammad Saleh, 40, was harvesting olives on the small plot of land he inherited from his father in the village of al-Sawiya, 18 kilometers south of Nablus.
As usual during the Palestinian olive season, most family members were there to help. His wife and four children as well as his siblings and other family members were present when he was shot in the chest by an Israeli settler.
“Bilal was a poor, hardworking man of the land,” says his uncle Yasir Shaheen. “All his life he struggled, ever since he was orphaned at a very young age.”
He was with Bilal and other relatives Saturday morning when, he says, the Israeli army told the family they had three minutes to leave their land.
“The soldiers knew the settlers were going to attack us and did not stop them,” he said.
Translation: His name is Bilal. His face is familiar to many passersby in downtown Ramallah, where he sold sage, thyme, thyme, figs and prickly pears. He is 40 years old and comes from the village of al-Sawiya, south of Nablus. This good and simple man went out this morning to pick olives, and a settler shot him in the chest.
Al-Sawiya and its 3,500 inhabitants are surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements which stifle daily life. The villagers own 12,000 dunums (1,200 hectares or 2,965 acres) of land, but they can only build or work on 600 dunums. The rest is controlled by Israel.
“Everything has to be reviewed by the Israeli occupation and get its approval, from picking olives on our land to construction and other matters of life,” says Nihad Arar, the head of the village council.
Settlers from illegal settlements attack and harass villagers “all year round,” he says. “(They) cut down our trees, burn our farms, steal our olives and are known to attack Palestinians inside their homes and on their own properties. »
Everyone’s Favorite Herb Seller
Bilal was a familiar face in downtown Ramallah, where he went every day after collecting wild herbs and plants from the hills near his village.
He had dropped out of high school and become a tiler, like his brother, until he began venturing into the hills to gather wild herbs to sell.
He sold sage, sumac and thyme as well as figs and prickly pears when it was in season. And of course, he harvested the olives when they were in season.
Hazem Shaheen, Bilal’s brother-in-law, says settlers from Rahalim had previously attacked the family while they were harvesting olives.
“They would steal our ladders and our olives, all under the protection of the Israeli army who only watches over us,” he said.
“They are encouraging the settlers to attack us. We can barely work on our land and have to go there in secret. Every year they attack us.
The Israeli military did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment at the time of publication.
Some Israeli media reported Monday that Bilal’s attacker was a soldier on leave and that Israeli military police had brought him in.
On Saturday morning, Hazem said, he spotted four settlers wearing religious clothing heading toward where Bilal was picking olives with his family.
Yasir says he “told Bilal and his family to move away and come closer to us so we could be together.”
“The settlers started approaching us shouting and swearing, and from a distance of 100 meters, one of them fired a single bullet,” he said.
The bullet hit Bilal in the chest. He fell to the ground from the ladder he was on.
Hazem explains how they “left everything behind, carried it up the ladder and ran through the trees to the main street.”
“We put him in a private car and took him to Salfit Hospital, 15 kilometers away,” says Yasir. Unfortunately, Bilal was pronounced dead on arrival.
Hazem says Bilal’s wife and children, the youngest of whom is nine, “are horrified and have not stopped crying.”
His wife, Ikhlas, is still in shock. “He just wanted to protect me and the kids. We got scared when the settlers got too close to us and he went to confront them. None of us expected them to shoot him like that.