At around 10 am on Saturday, 61-year old farmer Sadik al-Bari was attacked by around 25 Israeli settlers, who surrounded the man and his wife while they were working in their field, and began pelting them with rocks. Al-Bari stated, "I was in my field when suddenly more than 25 people arrived and began to throw stones. They cried 'go away.' Where can I go? I was doing nothing wrong, simply working my land. They covered their faces with their shirts and threw stones at my wife and me. It was the first time I had seen these settlers. They want me to leave, but tomorrow I will go to my field again."
The elderly farmer attempted to file a complaint with the Israeli police department built on illegally occupied Palestinian land near Hebron, but was informed by the officer in charge that the police department was closed. Only after intervention by the Israeli human rights group 'Rabbis for Human Rights' was the station opened to al-Bari in order to file his complaint. In the complaint, al-Bari stated that both he and his wife sustained injuries from the rocks thrown at them by the settlers.
The Israeli police departments located on illegally occupied Palestinian land are given a mandate by the Israeli government to protect the Israeli settlers that have seized Palestinian land in violation of international law. They are, as a result, extremely reticent to pursue investigations of Israeli settler attacks against the Palestinian civilian population. In the Hebron area, attacks on Palestinian civilians by Israeli settlers occur on a daily basis, and investigations of these incidents by Israeli police are extremely rare. The attacks often intensify on Saturdays, when Israeli settlers gather together after prayer services for the Jewish holy day of Shabbat, in order to attack Palestinian civilians who have been living for millenia on land that the Israeli settlers consider to be theirs by 'divine right'.
