Israeli Settler Attacks Cripple Hebron Sheep Market Before Eid Al-Adha

In Hebron, livestock traders said the sheep market in the southern West Bank city has been crippled in the days before Eid al-Adha, with hundreds of sheep remaining unsold inside overcrowded pens.

Mohammed Ahmed al-Labib, who has worked in the sheep trade for nearly 50 years, said, “In past years I would sell at least 50 sheep before Eid. This year I have sold only five,” and he described the season as catastrophic compared with previous years.

Al-Jazeera Net

Labib said sheep prices have doubled, with the price per kilogram rising from around five Jordanian dinars to more than 10.5 dinars, and he linked the hardship to Palestinians’ ability to buy sacrificial animals this year.

Trader Ismail Bani Hassan said, “Today a sacrificial sheep can cost 700 dinars, while people can barely provide for their essential needs,” and he blamed rising breeding costs and repeated attacks on shepherds in Bedouin areas and Masafer Yatta south of Hebron.

The Arab Weekly also tied the market’s decline to the worsening economic crisis facing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including delayed public sector salaries and escalating attacks by Israeli settlers on livestock breeders.

In H2, MSF said access to health care is nearly impossible for Palestinians because the area is one of the most restricted in the West Bank, with 21 permanent checkpoints run by Israeli forces.

MSF’s head of mission in the occupied Palestinian territories, Marietta Provopoulou, said, “H2 is the worst representation of the daily suffering of the Palestinian people living under occupation,” and she added, “We are not only seeking to provide health services in H2; we want to remind people that they deserve to be respected and treated with dignity.”

Al-Jazeera Net

MSF nurse Lina Abu Dayyeh said, “Usually we have between 40 and 80 patients per day,” and she described patients’ financial situations as creating psychological pressure amid attacks and a “disastrous economic situation in H2.”

A patient told MSF that her three young nephews, including a baby, were killed in a house fire after Israeli soldiers refused to allow fire trucks to enter H2.

The article said that without special authorization, Palestinians are forbidden from driving in this zone, and it described how residents may have to cross as many as four checkpoints to reach the MSF clinic or cannot access it at all.

Mediapart described terror in the West Bank after what it called the murder of a family by the Israeli army, saying the family was returning from Nablus when they were targeted by the Israeli Border Police on the night from Saturday to Sunday.

Khaled, 11, survived and testified, “I opened the car door and called for help, shouting, 'My family has been killed!',” and he said a soldier pulled his hair and beat him while shouting, “We killed dogs!”

The article said the parents and two children were killed, and it framed the incident as part of a broader escalation by the Israeli army and Border Police.

WAFA reported that an Israeli colonist attacked a Palestinian mother and her child in Khirbet al-Markez of the Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, after breaking into her family’s dwelling, inflicting bruises on them.

WAFA quoted activist Osama Makhamra saying the colonist “physically beat up a mother and her child,” and it placed the incident within a wider pattern of notices ordering halts on construction and demolitions in the Umm Qissa area of the Yatta wilderness.