Saeed al-Amour
Saeed al-Amour, or more formally, Saeed Muhammad Ibrahim Rabaa al-Amour (ِArabic: سعيد محمد إبراهيم رباع العمور), is a Palestinian indigenous-rights activist and fellah (farmer) from Al-Rakiz, a hamlet in Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank. He has been the subject of sustained Israeli, Arab and international media coverage concerning his family's refusal to vacate their agricultural land for Israeli settlers from Avigayil and his status as victim of repeated episodes of extreme Israeli settler violence and military detention.[1][2][3]
On 17 April 2025, the armed civilian security coordinator of Avigayil shot al-Amour in the right leg, resulting in its amputation at Soroka Medical Center. Al-Amour and his son were arrested following the shooting, but were subsequently released on bail. Video footage reviewed by The Times of Israel refuted the Israeli military's initial account of the confrontation.[4] Following his return to Al-Rakiz, he continued cultivating and defending access to the land, but was subjected to sustained assaults and detentions.[5][6]
Background
Al-Amour was born at the depopulated Palestinian village of Sarura, east of Yatta, and after being expelled from it by settlers, he moved with his remaining family to Al-Rakiz. Both villages formed part of the long-established indigenous Palestinian agro-pastoral landscape of Masafer Yatta, whose communities developed as dependencies of Yatta practicing dryland cultivation, seasonal grazing and residence in excavated caves. Historical and ethnographic evidence indicates that this pattern of habitation substantially predates the Israeli occupation in 1967. Reporting by Amira Hass in Haaretz, drawing on historical documentation assembled during the Masafer Yatta litigation, noted evidence for inhabited communities outside Yatta—including al-Rakiz—before 1967.[7] Academic studies describe this settlement system as an intergenerational cultural landscape in which Palestinian families combined cave dwelling, animal husbandry, cultivation, cisterns and terraced agriculture.[8] Sociologist Federica Stagni, whose field research in Masafer Yatta was conducted between 2016 and 2022, nalyzes its Palestinian inhabitants as Indigenous communities based on nherited pastoral and agricultural practices, local ecological knowledge and intergenerational continuity.[9]
According to Israeli publication Local Call, described Saeed's family inherited the land together with his siblings from his father, who cultivated wheat and barley there and died in 2003.[1] Around 2018 a shepherd found an evacuation order issued by the Israeli Civil Administration against agricultural work on the family's private land. Several weeks later, Civil Administration personnel bulldozeds ]their home. Al-Amour's wife, Khawla, witnessed the family's agricultural terraces being demolished and the trees on the plot uprooted. The reporters subsequently verified the uprooting and demolition.[1] In April 2025, the Civil Administration told The Times of Israel that the area concerned was claimed as "state land," against which al-Amour had submitted several complaints concerning incursions onto his property.[4] On 14 April, Al-Quds reported that Israeli settlers had again his terraces, trees and a surrounding fence.[10]
Local Call, in a later photographic profile, reported that a settler struck him while he attempted to record events on his telephone and knocked him to the ground.[11]
Shooting of Saeed Muhammad Rabāʿ al-Amour
| Shooting of Saeed Muhammad Rabā‘ al-Amour | |
|---|---|
| Part of Israeli–Palestinian conflict | |
| Location | Khirbet al-Rakiz, Masafer Yatta, South Hebron Hills, West Bank |
| Date | 17 April 2025 |
Attack type | Shooting |
| Weapons | Firearm |
| Victims | 1 wounded (Saʿīd Rabāʿ al-ʿAmūr) |
| Perpetrators | Israeli settler |
The shooting of Saeed al-Amour occurred on 17 April 2025 in Khirbet al-Rakiz. An armed Israeli settler wearing an IDF uniform shot him at point-blank range while he was on his land, seriously injuring him and leading to the amputation of his right leg.[12][13][14][15]
Incident
According to B'Tselem’s field investigation, four armed settlers—including the security officer the illegal nearby settlement of Avigayil—entered Saeed's agricultural land near his home in Khirbet al-Rakeez, and began erecting poles and stretching wires through his property. When al-Amour approached them with his sons and demanded that they leave, one of the settlers attacked his 16-year-old son Ilyās, who was filming the incident on his phone. As al-Amour intervened to protect his son, the settlement guard fired two shots into the air before shooting al-Amour at point-blank range in the leg.[12]
Israeli soldiers arrived at the scene shortly after the shooting. Instead of detaining the assailant, they arrested the injured father and his son. Al-Amour was taken to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, where he underwent two surgeries; doctors amputated his leg above the knee due to the severity of the wound.[12]
The following day, police interrogated al-Amour in hospital on the false charges of "assaulting soldiers." His son Ilyās, who had been detained immediately after the incident, was interrogated at the Kiryat Arba police station on allegations of "attempting to seize a weapon," and was later transferred to Ofer Prison. Both father and son were released on bail after a military court hearing on 20 April 2025.[12]
Eyewitness accounts collected by B'Tselem and local residents indicated that the shooter was wearing an Israeli army uniform and that settlers present had repeatedly threatened al-Amour in previous weeks, ordering him to leave his land.[13][14][15]
Aftermath
After being released from Israeli custody, al-Amour was transferred by a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance to al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron, where he remained under treatment.[12] His family reported ongoing trauma and fear of further attacks. B'Tselem and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights denounced the attack as part of campaign settler violence against Palestinian residents in the South Hebron Hills under Israeli military protection.[12][14]
Subsequent assaults and detentions
On 8 August 2025, settlers assaulted al-Amour while he was on his land at Al-Rakiz. He was beaten, his crutch was broken, and he suffered injuries and bruising that required treatment at Yatta Hospital.[6][16]
On 28 August, video footage reported by The Times of Israel showed Israeli settlers walking through orchards near Al-Rakiz and knocking al-Amour to the ground. He was subsequently seen walking beside Israeli soldiers; Palestinian reports stated that the soldiers arrested him. At the time of publication, the IDF did not comment on the incident.[17]
Later in 2025, Israeli incursions continued onto the plot. In December, settlers had taken his crutches returned them after realizing that the incident had been filmed. Settlers attempted to dismantle a fence he had erected around the property. The man who had shot him continued to return to the area and mock him over the loss of his leg.[5]
On 15 December 2025, The Times of Israel reported footage showing four Israeli soldiers carrying al-Amour away following what Israeli activists accompanying Palestinians in Masafer Yatta described as another settler assault. Al-Amour had been detained after confronting settlers on his land.[18] By the end of the month that al-Amour had been detained twice during confrontations while protecting the protecting fence around his land.[19]
On 15 March 2026, settlers again assaulted al-Amour at Al-Rakiz, causing a head injury.[20] By July 2026, Al Jazeera reported that al-Amour, using crutches and a prosthetic limb, continued to work on and visit the land despite the recurrent confrontations.[3]
Media coverage and reception
Al-Amour's continued presence on his land following the loss of his leg attracted wider media attention and was presented in some Palestinian and Arab media as an example of sumud, or steadfastness. In August 2025, the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds and Jordanian broadcaster Roya News both described him as an "icon of steadfastness in Masafer Yatta", and more broadly for Palestinians.[21][22]
In 2026, al-Amour was the subject of profiles in Al-Quds and Al Jazeera that examined attacks on his family and property, his injury and subsequent loss of a leg, and his continued residence in al-Rakiz.[23][24] He was also the subject of the Channel 4 News report How a Palestinian Farmer Was Shot Defending His Home, which received the Broadcast News award at the 2026 Amnesty International UK Media Awards.[25]
In their 2026 book Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine, Marwan Darweish, Mahmoud Soliman and Andrew Rigby discuss al-Amour's shooting, amputation and subsequent return to his land in a chapter entitled "Sumud and Community-Based Protection", narrating Palestinian communal resistance to displacement in Masafir Yatta.[26]
See also
References
- 1 2 3 Mishraki Asad, Kamar; Etkes, Dror (6 June 2020). "נתניהו לא המציא שום דבר, הסיפוח כבר קורה בשטח שנים" [Netanyahu did not invent anything; annexation has already been happening on the ground for years]. שיחה מקומית (in Hebrew).
- ↑ Katie Arnold (12 August 2025). Saeed's story: shot by settlers while defending his West Bank home (News report). Channel 4 News.
- 1 2 "بعكاز وطرف صناعي.. المسن ربّاع يقارع جيش الاحتلال والمستوطنين ويرفض التهجير" [With a crutch and prosthetic limb, elderly Rabaa confronts the Israeli army and settlers and refuses displacement]. Al Jazeera (in Arabic). 13 July 2026.
- 1 2 Yohanan, Nurit (22 April 2025). "Palestinian family alleges father shot by settlers then arrested amid West Bank land grab". The Times of Israel.
- 1 2 Ziv, Oren (3 December 2025). "המתנחלים מפחדים ממצלמות יותר מאשר מאלוהים" [The settlers are more afraid of cameras than of God]. שיחה מקומית (in Hebrew).
- 1 2 "اعتداءات جديدة للمستوطنين في الخليل والاحتلال يجدد إخطار هدم قرية ببيت لحم" [New settler attacks in Hebron as Israel renews demolition notice for a Bethlehem village]. Al Jazeera (in Arabic). 8 August 2025.
- ↑ Hass, Amira (27 April 2021). "Israel Blew Up Their Houses in 1966. Now It Claims Their Village Never Existed". Haaretz.
- ↑ Bröckerhoff, Aurélie; Sulin, Laura; Soliman, Mahmoud; Darweish, Marwan (2024). "'The Harvest is a Poem': everyday practices as culture and resistance in the occupied Palestinian territory". Journal of Resistance Studies. 10 (1). doi:10.63961/2025.196.
- ↑ Stagni, Federica (2024). "As Wide as the Roots of the Olive Tree: Indigenous Communities of Masafer Yatta and their Eco-Resistance". Partecipazione e Conflitto. 17 (1): 149–170. doi:10.1285/i20356609v17i1p149.
- ↑ "مستعمرون يقتلعون أشجاراً ويجرفون أراضٍ بالخليل وسلفيت" [Settlers uproot trees and bulldoze land in Hebron and Salfit]. Al-Quds (in Arabic). 14 April 2025.
- ↑ "נפגעי אלימות ישראלים בגדה: פרויקט צילומים מיוחד" [Victims of Israeli violence in the West Bank: a special photography project]. שיחה מקומית (in Hebrew).
{{cite web}}: Missing or empty|url=(help) - 1 2 3 4 5 6 "مستوطنون يعتدون على طفل فلسطيني ويطلقون النار على والده من مسافة صفر، مما أدى إلى فقدانه ساقه". بتسيلم (in Arabic). B'Tselem. 22 April 2025.
- 1 2 "مستوطن يصيب مواطناً بالرصاص لإجباره على مغادرة أرضه ومنزله". الأيام (in Arabic). 18 April 2025.
- 1 2 3 "إصابة مواطن برصاص مستعمر جنوب الخليل". المركز الفلسطيني لأبحاث الصراع (CWRC) (in Arabic). 17 April 2025.
- 1 2 "إصابة فلسطيني برصاص مستوطن إسرائيلي جنوبي الخليل". قناة الغد (in Arabic). 17 April 2025.
- ↑ Rjoob, Awad (8 August 2025). "الضفة.. إصابة مسن فلسطيني مرة ثانية باعتداء مستوطنين" [West Bank: elderly Palestinian injured for a second time in settler attack]. Anadolu Agency (in Arabic).
- ↑ Yohanan, Nurit (28 August 2025). "Palestinian reports: Palestinian amputee arrested after being shoved to ground". The Times of Israel.
- ↑ Lehmann, Noam (15 December 2025). "Soldiers seen carrying away Palestinian amputee allegedly attacked by settlers in West Bank". The Times of Israel.
- ↑ Ziv, Oren (31 December 2025). "לא אירועים חריגים או קומץ ילדים: שנת שיא באלימות מתנחלים" [Not exceptional incidents or a handful of children: a record year for settler violence]. שיחה מקומית (in Hebrew).
- ↑ Rjoob, Awad (15 March 2026). "إصابة واحتجاز فلسطينيين باعتداءات مستوطنين إسرائيليين بالضفة" [Palestinians injured and detained in attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank]. Anadolu Agency (in Arabic).
- ↑ "بعد بتر ساقه برصاص مستوطن.. الاحتلال يعتقل الشيخ سعيد العمور أيقونة الصمود في مسافر يطا" [After his leg was amputated by a settler's gunfire, Israeli forces arrest Sheikh Saeed al-Amour, an icon of steadfastness in Masafer Yatta]. Al-Quds (in Arabic). 28 August 2025.
- ↑ "بعد بتر ساقه برصاص مستوطن.. الاحتلال يعتقل الشيخ سعيد العمور أيقونة الصمود في مسافر يطا" [After his leg was amputated by a settler's gunfire, Israeli forces arrest Sheikh Saeed al-Amour, an icon of steadfastness in Masafer Yatta]. Roya News (in Arabic). 28 August 2025.
- ↑ al-Qawasmi, Jihad (18 March 2026). "الشيخ سعيد العمور.. مواجهة مفتوحة مع التهجير القسري" [Sheikh Saeed al-Amour: an open confrontation with forced displacement]. Al-Quds (in Arabic).
- ↑ "بعكاز وطرف صناعي.. المسن ربّاع يقارع جيش الاحتلال والمستوطنين ويرفض التهجير" [With a crutch and prosthetic limb, elderly Rabaa confronts the Israeli army and settlers and refuses displacement]. Al Jazeera (in Arabic). 13 July 2026.
- ↑ "Amnesty Media Awards 2026: Winners Announced" (Press release). Amnesty International UK. 6 May 2026.
- ↑ Darweish, Marwan; Soliman, Mahmoud; Rigby, Andrew (2026). "Sumud and Community-Based Protection". Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine. Bristol: Bristol University Press. pp. 92–108. doi:10.56687/9781529257281. ISBN 9781529257281.