Ambushed, dragged to a hilltop outpost, beaten unconscious: Palestinian teen Owais Hammam recounts his brutal torture by Israeli settlers and soldiers.
By Faiz Abu Rmeleh, Reposted from 972 Magazine, December 10, 2025
On a white hospital bed in the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah, 18-year-old Owais Hammam struggles to catch his shallow breaths. His face speaks before he does: deep scratches, dark blue bruises, swelling from his neck down to his legs. With great effort, he slowly recounts what transpired last Wednesday afternoon (December 03), when he was abducted and brutally tortured by a group of Israeli settlers near his village of Kharbatha Bani Harith, northwest of Ramallah.
Hammam had gone for a short walk near a spring he knew well, believing that he would be far from danger. While he stopped to pray, a group of settlers suddenly surrounded him, as though they had been watching him since the moment he arrived. Before he could grasp what was unfolding, blows were raining down on his body. He quickly lost the ability to stand. Moments later, he felt himself being dragged up a hill towards Sde Ephraim — a settler outpost Israel legalized in 2024.
Hammam recalled those hours as if they were happening all over again: his hands tied tightly behind him, rifle butts striking every part of his body, stones thrown at him as he lay on the ground, insults and curses that never stopped. Some of the attackers wore civilian clothes, others soldiers’ uniforms. One loaded his weapon beside Hammam’s ear and told him he would not make it out alive.
Hammam soon lost consciousness from the pain, and when he awoke, he found himself in the hands of Israeli soldiers, who continued beating him until the next morning. He was also interrogated by an officer in the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and denied even a sip of water, despite the fact that he was fasting.
Hammam’s father sits beside him in the hospital bed, recounting the anguisseth of waiting for his son to return after disappearing last Wednesday (December 03). Only in the early hours of the following morning did his family receive a call from the Shin Bet informing them that settlers had seized Hammam and handed him over to the army.
When he was finally brought to the hospital, doctors said he required close monitoring and continuous IV fluids to stabilize his condition, due to the severity of the beating. And yet, his father said, Owais’ morale remained high, as though survival itself had become an act of resistance.
“My son came back from death,” he added. “I feel as though he has been born again.”
The attack on Owais is not an isolated case. It comes amid an unprecedented surge in settler terrorism across the West Bank, where near-daily assaults — often carried out with the Israeli army’s support — amount to a systematic effort to reshape the region’s demographics in favor of Jewish settlement. Since the start of the war on Gaza, Palestinians in the West Bank have lived in a constant state of anticipation: waiting for the next attack, the next threat, the next victim.
In Area C, which the Israeli military directly controls, Palestinians have for years faced the organized pressure of state-backed settlers, who have driven dozens of communities off their land and established 40 new outposts just in the past six months. Now, however, they pursue Palestinians not only in Area C, but in Area B and even Area A, which are nominally under partial and full Palestinian Authority jurisdiction. Many residents speak of attacks reaching people who previously had no direct contact with settlers.
According to the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, November alone saw more than 2,000 attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, including over 600 by settler militias. Senior Israeli officials have recently warned that with the growing power and impunity of extremist settler groups, the state is increasingly losing control of the situation on the ground.
The Israeli army said it was investigating reservist forces for their role in the attack on Hammam, and a military source told The Times of Israel that his injuries were “disturbing.” The army added that forces had arrived after reports of a Palestinian “expressing an intention to carry out an attack,” and claimed that some of his wounds were the result of falling on rocks.
Outside Owais’ hospital room, a cleaning worker passes through the corridor, repeating a sentence that seems to capture everything: “Survival here has become a daily miracle.”
Faiz Abu Rmeleh is a photojournalist from the Old City of Jerusalem. He is a member of the Activestills collective, and has worked for several local and international newspapers.
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