Shepherd says settlers stole sheep before Eid al-Adha in West Bank

Sameeha Rasheed was ready to turn her family’s sheep into an Eid al-Adha sacrifice. By dawn, the animals were gone, taken from a pen in Masafer Yatta in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

About 45 sheep were stolen from Hariba al-Nabi, south of Hebron, leaving Rasheed’s household without the livestock it had set aside for one of Islam’s holiest occasions. For a shepherding family, the loss cut in two directions: it erased the holiday sacrifice and wiped out part of the family’s economic base.

Eid al-Adha is built around slaughtering livestock, sharing the meat and gathering family around a ritual tied to sacrifice and provision. In Masafer Yatta, where herding families depend on animals for both income and observance, the theft meant the holiday could not begin as planned. What should have been a moment of worship and communal meal became a morning of absence in the barn.

Images from May 21, 2026 showed the aftermath inside the barn after settlers allegedly attacked the village and stole sheep ahead of the holiday. The scene captured the scale of the disruption: a seasonal religious observance reduced to damage, empty pens and a family left to absorb the loss.

The incident unfolded against a broader surge in violence and insecurity across the West Bank. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said October 2025 saw the highest monthly number of Israeli settler attacks since it began recording such incidents in 2006, with more than 260 attacks causing casualties, property damage or both. It also said that from Jan. 1 to Sept. 1, 2025, at least 2,787 Palestinians were injured in the West Bank, including 494 injured by settlers.

Masafer Yatta has remained especially exposed. Amnesty International said in February 2025 that Shi’b Al-Butum, a community there of about 300 Palestinians, was at imminent risk of forcible transfer. In that setting, even the set-aside animals for Eid become vulnerable, and the pressure on shepherd families is not only economic but existential.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, the approach of Eid still brought the usual market bustle, including in Nablus, where families were buying sacrificial animals. In Masafer Yatta, the theft showed the opposite reality: for some Palestinians, the holiday begins not with celebration, but with loss.