At around 6:30 p.m. on April 17, 16-year-old Ilyas Saeed Rabaa spotted three armed Israeli settlers near his family’s land in Al-Rakeez, a quiet village in the Masafer Yatta region of the South Hebron Hills.
The settlers, equipped with a generator and power drill, were preparing to implant iron pillars on farmland that Ilyas’s 60-year-old father, Sheikh Saeed Rabaa, had cultivated with olive trees since 2012. “I saw them near our home,” Ilyas recalled. “I ran to my father and told him, and we both went out to confront them.”
As the two approached, tensions escalated quickly. According to Ilyas and Saeed, the settlers — one of whom they recognized as a security guard from a nearby outpost — claimed the land as their own. Ilyas began filming the encounter with his phone when one of the settlers attacked him from behind, seized the phone, and pinned him to the ground, choking him.
“I ran to help my son, yelling at the settler to stop,” Saeed told +972. “Then the guard fired a shot into the air, and another into my leg.”
Saeed collapsed instantly. Bleeding heavily, he pressed his hands against the wound in an effort to stop the flow. Meanwhile, his son lay with his head pushed into the dirt, screaming, “They shot my father! They shot my father!”
For over 20 minutes, they waited for an ambulance. Soldiers arrived but prevented neighbors and passersby from providing help. Instead of assisting the wounded, they arrested Ilyas, handcuffing and blindfolding him before taking him away in a military jeep for interrogation.
“They accused me of trying to take the settler’s gun,” Ilyas recounted. “They claimed my father had attacked them.” Soldiers kept him outside at an unknown location for a full day — blindfolded, shackled, and given only stale bread to eat.
Ilyas was later transferred to Ofer Prison, where he remained for several days in harsh conditions. “Every day, during roll call, we were forced to kneel with our heads tilted back while soldiers counted us,” he said.
Meanwhile, his father was taken by Israeli forces to Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva, where he underwent emergency surgery. Due to the severity of the injury, his right leg was amputated above the thigh. He would stay in the hospital for the next three days, handcuffed to his bed.
‘Every day, settlers enter our land’
On Sunday, April 20, while still hospitalized and recovering from the amputation, Saeed appeared in military court via medical escort. Ilyas, still in jail, appeared via video link. The judge ordered both men released on bail — NIS 5,000 each.
But Israeli authorities refused to release Sheikh Saeed immediately, claiming he was in Israel without a permit, despite the fact that the Israeli army had transported him there for emergency care.
By Monday evening, arrangements were finally made for Saeed’s transfer to the West Bank. His family was told to meet him at the Meitar military checkpoint. “We thought he would arrive in an ambulance,” a relative told +972. “But instead, a Border Police transport vehicle came. Officers warned us not to film, threatening to confiscate our phones.”
As the vehicle doors opened, an officer warned, “If you insist on filming, I’ll take him inside the checkpoint. You can collect him from there.” Seated behind a steel barrier in the van, Saeed was finally handed over to Palestinian Red Crescent medics and transported to Al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron, where he has received further treatment.
The attack on the Rabaa family is far from an isolated incident in Al-Rakeez. In 2021, an Israeli soldier shot 26-year-old Palestinian Harun Abu Aram in the neck at point blank range, leaving him paralyzed and eventually killing him. And in recent months, settlers have stepped up their presence in the village, placing several caravans just 150 meters from the Rabaa home. These mobile homes function as an extension of Avigayil — an illegal outpost that the Israeli government legalized in September 2023 and plans to further develop.
Avigayil’s expansion also threatens to absorb other Palestinian communities in the contested area of Masafer Yatta, including Al-Rakeez, al-Mufaqara, and Shaab al-Butum. Long targeted for settlement growth, the region has seen a surge in settler violence and military restrictions in recent years — particularly after October 7 — that has wiped several villages completely off the map.
Locals say settler harassment is now a daily occurrence. “Every day, settlers enter Palestinian farmland,” a neighbor of the Rabaa family explained. “They destroy crops, harass families, and try to push people off their land.”
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Despite multiple complaints, no settlers have been arrested in connection with the attack on the Rabaa family; the Israel army claims that Sheikh Saeed attacked the settlers first, and that the security guard did not violate any protocol. As he recovers from the loss of his leg and Ilyas regains his freedom after days in detention, the threats to their land — and their lives — persist.