Olive harvest season marked with assault by Jewish settlers

Palestinian residents examine olive trees on their land damaged by Israelis in the Yatta district of Hebron, West Bank on 24 May 2025.
Mamoun Wazwaz APA images

As Palestinian farmers began harvesting olives following the first October rain, Israeli settlers also launched their annual campaign of harassment, assault and theft.

In the first two weeks of the harvest season, the UN monitoring group OCHA documented more than 85 harvest-related settler attacks on Palestinians and their property across 50 towns and villages in the occupied West Bank.

More than 110 Palestinians have been injured, 50 of them by Jewish settlers and the rest by the military.

Settler attacks during the harvest season have ranged from violent assaults on farmers, theft of olives and harvesting equipment, cutting down or uprooting trees, to obstructing access to land, among other violent attacks, including burning cars belonging to Palestinian residents.

In many incidents, Israeli soldiers accompany the extremist settlers, “either standing idly by or actively assisting the attacking settlers,” Yesh Din – an Israeli group that monitors settler activity in the West Bank – said.

Both settlers and soldiers “have so far enjoyed complete impunity for attacks against Palestinians, even deadly ones,” the United Nations human rights office said on Monday.

In the first week of October, settlers had already cut down some 300 trees, according to Yesh Din. The group said no arrests were made, and shared pictures from the Palestinian villages of Kafr Qaddum in the north and Sair in the south.

This number has grown at least tenfold since, with more than 3,000 trees and saplings – primarily olive – have been vandalized, OCHA reported.

A widely shared video last week captured a masked Israeli settler clubbing a Palestinian woman and brutally beating her.

Afaf Abu Alia was knocked unconscious by the attack and had to be hospitalized.

The video was taken by US journalist Jasper Nathaniel, who is reporting on settler violence from the West Bank.

Nathaniel described it as “the most heinous act of violence I’ve ever seen” in a post he wrote on his blog.

“When I get back home from the West Bank, I don’t know how I’ll even begin to explain the sheer terror in the olive fields this season,” Nathaniel wrote on X on Tuesday.

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“State-sponsored”

Yesh Din released footage showing an armed Jewish settler stealing bags of harvested crops belonging to Palestinian farmers, as well as their harvesting equipment, in the village of Burin, south of Nablus.

Notably, the settler can be seen in the footage driving an all-terrain vehicle, possibly one of the dozens ceremoniously gifted to settlers in July by the Israeli settlements ministry with funding from the World Zionist Organization.

Yesh Din termed it “state-sponsored theft.”

The vehicles were given specifically to illegal farming outposts – which are makeshift settlements illegal under even Israeli law – with the stated goal of “strengthening the resilience” of these Jewish-only colonies and “deepening” Israeli control of the areas, according to The Times of Israel, citing government ministers.

The ministry also gifted settlers floodlights, water trailers, generators and drones, among other things, all designed to make the outposts more habitable when they are not yet connected to electricity, water or sewage networks.

Once those infrastructural utilities are connected, the outposts grow until they’re recognized as official settlements.

Over the past year, Israeli settlers constructed 84 new outposts – compared to 49 the year before.

Both of those figures represent a sharp increase compared to the previous average of eight outposts built per year over the past decade.

In that way, Jewish settlers can be seen as creating facts on the ground – actions that the Israeli state tacitly permits if not actively encourages, and later formalizes as official policy.

Intensifying attacks

Israeli attacks on the Palestinian olive harvest season also constitute an assault on Palestinian heritage and identity.

The autumn olive harvest is not only vital to Palestinian economy, but it’s also the centerpiece of culture and folk symbols.

It’s also essential to the crown jewels of Palestinian diet – pickled olives and olive oil.

About a decade ago, UN figures indicated that the olive oil industry accounted for a quarter of the agricultural income in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Today, 80,000 to 100,000 Palestinian families “rely on the olive harvest for their livelihoods,” the UN human rights office said.

“It is not an understatement to say that the harvest season is the economic backbone of rural Palestinian communities.”

Since 7 October 2023 and throughout Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, settler violence has been on the rise.

In the first half of the year, nearly 800 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians or their property – in some cases both – were recorded. This constituted a 13 percent increase compared to the same period last year.

The UN human rights office contextualized the intensifying settler attacks within the context of Israel’s ambitions for annexation of the West Bank.

“Settler violence is escalating far beyond the olive harvest season, making life impossible for Palestinians in many communities across the occupied West Bank and leaving them with no genuine choice but to leave their homes,” the human rights office stated.

Even as Israeli politicians and lobbyists try to muzzle exposure of Jewish settler violence against Palestinians by calling it “blood libel,” settlers brag about the crimes they commit against Palestinians on their private communication channels.

“The offenders proudly count the number of Palestinians they injured, the houses and vehicles they burned, and the damage caused to thousands of trees and other Palestinian property,” Yesh Din reported.