Saeed Hamous has been on edge since Saturday. That day, he said, Israeli settlers who rampaged through his town, Huwara in the West Bank, stole dozens of sheep from him.

Hamous had bought the sheep and began raising them as his main source of income after no longer being allowed to work in Israel, which dramatically reduced the number of Palestinian workers allowed into the country from the West Bank in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre.

The 37 sheep the settlers made off with had comprised most of his flock, the 63-year-old said.

“When someone comes and takes your livelihood, you are destroyed. Your soul is completely destroyed,” Hamous told The Times of Israel during a meeting at Huwara’s town hall this week.

Extensively documented on video, Saturday’s raid appeared to bear the hallmarks of settler violence that has become devastatingly common across the West Bank. Footage showed dozens of masked settlers riding in on pickup trucks, taking livestock, beating residents and throwing stones at locals and motorists passing through the town, which straddles a main West Bank artery.

But according to residents, the raid appeared to be more organized than the seemingly haphazard violence, harassment and theft of previous confrontations and settler rampages.

Settlers first entered Huwara and carried out inspections of livestock pens, claiming that they were searching for stolen sheep, locals say. When they returned to take the animals by force, others carried out acts of violence across the town, in moves that appeared to have been pre-planned.

The incident was “organized and coordinated, not a random attack,” Huwara Mayor Kamal Odeh told The Times of Israel. “They knew where the sheep were, saw how many, and took them.”

Odeh said that residents lost roughly 60 sheep during the attack, not including lambs, at an estimated value of NIS 300,000 (around $100,000). In addition, a jeep worth approximately $20,000 was stolen from a local garage.

According to media outlets affiliated with the settler movement, Israelis had entered the town to retrieve sheep they allege were stolen from a nearby outpost. Clashes broke out when Palestinians began throwing stones at the settlers, the reports claimed.

However, on Sunday, the Kan public broadcaster reported that the owner of the supposedly stolen sheep had told the Israel Defense Forces on Saturday morning that his sheep had not been taken, but had escaped from their pens.

No arrests were made during the Huwara violence, though two suspects in their 30s were arrested the next day over alleged involvement in the attack. “Additional arrests are expected,” police said Sunday.

The next day, the detention of the two suspects — residents of a nearby outpost — was extended by three days.

At the conclusion of the detention hearing, the suspects’ attorneys said that the shepherds had been in mortal danger inside the town while trying to retrieve sheep allegedly stolen from them, and that they had no connection to the violence that took place at the same time.

The Honenu legal aid organization, which represents the two suspects, did not respond to a request for comment from The Times of Israel regarding the claim that the attack had been organized and coordinated.

Residents of Hawara said settlers took sheep belonging to two residents from three separate locations. Both victims described a similar pattern: Early Saturday morning, individual settlers showed up and demanded to inspect the sheep pens, alleging that stolen livestock were there.

Hamous told The Times of Israel that at around 7 a.m. he received a phone call from his daughter-in-law saying settlers were near his son’s home, which is located next to one of the two family sheep pens.

He arrived and saw two settlers sitting at the entrance to the house “as if they owned it.”

“I know a little Hebrew, so I asked them, ‘Can I help you with something?’ They told me, ‘Go away, go home,’” he said.

Fearing they would assault him, Hamous went inside and began calling people in the town to update them on the situation.

After some time, he said, a patrol of four soldiers arrived. According to Hamous, the force belonged to the........

© The Times of Israel