Yesterday, on the day of the Nakba, after a day of escorting a harvest in the village of Turmus Ayya (or rather an attempted harvest - three masked settlers armed with clubs, accompanied by the army, prevented the Palestinians from harvesting), one of the residents of the village of Ein Samia, located north of Ramallah, called us. He was upset, and said that he was fed up, that he wanted to leave and that the country is not a country of law, it is a country of “Beladim” - a nickname for the outposts that surround his village and are inhabited by extremely violent settlers.
When we arrived at the village, he told us that about an hour earlier, 15 settlers had arrived in the village, along with a police car and a military vehicle. They loaded an entire flock of sheep belonging to his neighbor onto a wagon belonging to one of the settlers, arrested the neighbor (a 50-year-old man) when he tried to protest, and drove off. Simple as that. He said that the night before armed settlers came to the village to look for "stolen" sheep. When they didn't find it, they left.
While we were trying to find out where the detainee was, and to understand where they had taken the herd of sheep, we sat and talked with the villagers. One of them said that his family was originally from Beer Sheba. In 1950 they were deported from there to the Al-Auja area, from where they were also deported in 1980, and finally landed in Ein Samia.
About ten years ago, the Israeli settlers started setting up outposts to surround them. The settlers prevented them from grazing their flocks, use their roads, attacked them on a regular basis and in general made the lives of the Palestinian residents as miserable as possible. He said that five years ago he had a herd of one hundred and fifty heads, but because the settlers don't let him go out to graze, he had to buy food for the sheep. So he already sold two thirds of the herd. Next year he will have even fewer sheep left, and the year after that, there will be nothing left, and he will be forced to leave his land once again.
The Nakba did not end in '48. It continues to this day.