Three soldiers pounce on a shepherd sitting outside his sheep pen. They knock him over and then one of them shoots him to death at point-blank range. Fakher Jaber, a father of four, was suspected of involvement in an incident that probably never happened

On the last day of his life, two and a half weeks ago, the shepherd and his wife got up at 5:30 A.M., as usual, and immediately went out together to milk the ewes. With their flock of 120 sheep, their work is never done. Maryam recalls now that they didn’t manage to eat breakfast before the daily Ramadan fast began. After about two hours they finished milking. Fakher took the sheep out to graze and she began to make cheese from the milk, which they sell in Nablus to help make their living.

After he returned the sheep to their pen, Fakher sat down near it, removed the Quran from his pocket and began to read from it. Maryam finished making dinner. She remembers that everything was normal and relatively peaceful that afternoon, in this beleaguered community, living under the constant threat of invasions by settlers. Suddenly Maryam heard shouting. She rushed outside and saw three Israelis in uniform yelling at and wrestling with her husband. One of the men was masked, which led her to believe that they were settlers – of the type that frequently assault the shepherding communities, graze their livestock on the residents’ lands and water their flocks from their wells.