HEBRON, Palestine / ISTANBUL

Despite losing his leg in a settler attack, elderly Palestinian Saeed Ammour is determined to stay on his land in Massafer Yatta village in the southern West Bank.

"I will stay on my land,” Ammour, a farmer in his 60s, told Anadolu on Wednesday.

“I have lost one of my legs, but this is my land and my right, and I will stay here no matter what happens. It is a part of me that I cannot give up."

"This land is our homeland, and we will never abandon it or leave it, despite the harassment we face,” he stressed.

Last week, Ammour was shot by an illegal Israeli settler during an attack on his farmland in the village. His right leg was amputated at an Israeli hospital after the attack.

“For more than two years, illegal Israeli settlers have staged attacks against locals, uprooted trees and bulldozed farmland,” he said.

He said illegal settlers attacked his farmland days before the assault in which he lost his leg.

“I confronted the settlers and fought them, until Israeli police intervened,” Ammour recalled.

When Ammour filed a complaint with the Israeli police, his complaint was rejected.

Again, illegal settlers attacked his farmland, opening fire and shooting him in his right leg.

Left bleeding on the ground for around 40 minutes until an Israeli ambulance arrived at the scene, Ammour was transferred to the Soroka Medical Center in southern Israel for medical attention.

“There, I was not treated like an injured person, but as a prisoner. I was handcuffed to the hospital bed. My leg was amputated; I don’t know how and why,” Ammour said.

"I was not in a hospital but in a prison with my hands tied to the bed.”

Later, the elderly man was handed over to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and transferred to Al-Ahli Hospital in the West Bank city of Hebron.

“They want to displace me and my neighbors from here in order to control our lands, but this is not going to happen,” a determined Ammour said.

“This land is a part of me that can’t be taken away.”

According to Palestinian figures, at least 770,000 illegal Israeli settlers are living in the occupied West Bank across 180 settlements and 256 settler outposts.

Data from the official Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission showed that illegal Israeli settlers carried out 860 assaults on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank in the first quarter of 2025.

Nearly 960 Palestinians have been killed and over 7,000 others injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, according to Palestinian figures.

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land illegal and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.