Settler terror devastates West Bank olive harvest
Israeli military restrictions and over 150 settler attacks in the past two weeks have prevented many Palestinians from harvesting this year’s crop.
Early Sunday morning, 53-year-old Afaf Abu Alia was harvesting olives with her brother and children along with other families and protective presence activists in a grove near Turmus Ayya, a Palestinian town north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. She managed to fill just one basket before a mob of 100 settlers descended from the nearby outpost of Or Nachman.
Armed with clubs and stones, the settlers began attacking harvesters and activists, setting several vehicles ablaze. “We had left our equipment in my brother’s car and retreated as they got closer,” she told +972. But when they returned to the car to flee, the tires had been slashed. Soldiers arrived, detained her brother, and fired tear gas at them.
Choking from the gas, Abu Alia sat under a tree to wait for her brother. “Suddenly, I saw settlers running towards me. I tried to flee, but one caught up and hit me on the head and arm with a club. They also threw stones at people nearby.”
Abu Alia was taken to the Istishari Hospital in Ramallah, where she spent a night in the intensive care unit with a brain bleed and received 18 stitches in her head. “I thought that was it, that I was going to die,” she told Middle East Eye from her hospital bed, where she remains in serious condition.
The olive harvest in Palestine began less than two weeks ago, and already it is shaping up to be one of the most violent yet. Across much of the West Bank, Israeli forces are preventing Palestinian farmers from reaching their groves — even in areas where access was unhindered during last year’s deadly harvest season — and arresting and deporting international activists assisting the farmers. At the same time, settlers are destroying olive groves, cutting down trees and lighting them on fire, while attacks on harvesters are growing in both frequency and severity.
Afaf Abu Alia receives treatment at the Istishari Hospital in Ramallah after being wounded in an attack by Israeli settlers and soldiers in an olive grove near Turmus Ayya, in the occupied West Bank, October 22, 2025. (Oren Ziv)
According to the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, 158 attacks have been recorded against olive pickers since the start of the harvest season on Oct. 9. In the first week of the harvest alone, 27 villages were affected by attacks on harvesters, theft of crop and harvest equipment, and the destruction of olive trees.
On Oct. 10, as Palestinian and international activists from the Zaytoun2025 solidarity campaign joined farmers in the fields, a group of settlers accompanied by soldiers attacked harvesters in the village of Beita. Although no prior coordination is required to harvest olives in this area, soldiers ordered the farmers to leave. When they refused, soldiers fired tear gas, while settlers hurled stones and assaulted both harvesters and journalists. Twelve vehicles were torched during the incident, including the car of AFP photojournalist Jaafar Ashtiyeh.
The following day, farmers discovered that at least 200 olive trees belonging to residents of Khirbet Abu Falah and Turmus Ayya had been cut down overnight. “They arrived while we were asleep and cut all the trees,” said Samir Shouman, a land owner from Khirbet Abu Falah, speaking to +972 on Friday as farmers and activists returned to the groves to assess the damage. “We waited all year for this moment, but as you see there are no olives and there will be no oil this year.”
In a rare occurrence, Israeli soldiers accompanied the harvesters on that visit — widely seen by the farmers and activists as an attempt to contain public outrage after the highly publicized attack on Sunday in Turmus Ayya, which was captured on video by American journalist Jasper Nathaniel.
Nathaniel told +972 that the army had facilitated the ambush. “We were trapped by settlers in one direction. We tried another way, and the army blocked us,” he said.
When he got out of the car to ask the soldiers for help because settlers were blocking their exit, the soldiers pointed their guns at him. “They said they’d help and move the settlers, but then they sped off and left us with two settlers on an ATV, one of them with a gun,” he recalled. “Two minutes later, 100 settlers appeared out of nowhere and attacked us.”
Even Judea and Samaria District Police Commander Moshe Pinchi — who has previously stated that protecting settlements takes precedence over maintaining law and order, and under whose command settler violence has surged — wrote in an internal police forum that “the images haunted my sleep.” Yet shocked as he may have been, no arrests have been made. What’s more, the police investigation has focused narrowly on a single settler, rather than the coordinated nature of the attack and apparent greenlight settlers received from the authorities.
An Israeli military spokesperson told +972 that “upon receiving the report [on Sunday], IDF and Israel Police forces arrived at the scene to disperse the disturbances.” Nathaniel rejected this version of events. “That never happened,” he said. “The attack lasted between 15 and 20 minutes, the [army] knew we needed help, and they left us alone.”
‘I had to remind the officer I was nearly killed’
The day after the attack in Turmus Ayya, harvesters returned to their fields near the Or Nachman outpost. Established in 2024, Or Nachman sits between Turmus Ayya and Al-Mughayyir in Area B of the West Bank, where Israel exercises security control and the Palestinian Authority nominally maintains civil order, and has been evacuated by the Israeli army several times — but each time rebuilt. Burned vehicles from the previous day’s attack still lined the road.
Israeli military and Civil Administration forces were present, likely due to the global attention generated by the attack, and the fact that many American citizens live in Turmus Ayya. Soldiers prevented farmers from harvesting within several hundred meters of the illegal outpost, and even under army supervision, one of the settlers identified in the video of the attack drove an ATV through the groves, filming the harvesters.
A settler films Palestinians harvesting olives a day after a violent settler attack in Turmus Ayya, as an Israeli police officer walks by, between Turmus Ayya and Al-Mughayyir in the occupied West Bank, October 20, 2025. (Oren Ziv)
A forensics team later arrived, though any usable evidence had likely been destroyed in the 36 hours after the attack. Their very presence, however, was unusual: investigations into settler violence against Palestinians are exceedingly rare.
Nathaniel, who returned to the scene, said he confronted the soldier who had abandoned them. “He told me he’d seen the video and was very sorry, and said it was an honest mistake,” Nathaniel recounted. “I don’t believe him for one second.”
He described the police investigator he’d spoken to as hostile. “I had to remind the officer I was nearly killed, that he was supposed to be investigating who did it. It caught him off guard, like he forgot that was his job.”
Investigators, Nathaniel said, seemed intent on pinning the assault on the settler who clubbed Abu Alia. “They were willing to admit one guy broke the law. But it was clear they didn’t want to implicate any soldiers or other settlers.
“They even asked me how I knew they were settlers and not Arabs chasing me and asked if I heard Hebrew,” Nathaniel continued. “I refused to play that game. I told them that they knew as well as I did that they were settlers.”
A Palestinian resident of Turmus Ayya stands beside a car burned the previous night during a violent settler attack, between Turmus Ayya and Al-Mughayyir in the occupied West Bank, October 20, 2025. (Oren Ziv)
One of the harvesters who returned to Turmus Ayya on Monday was Ali Al-Kouk, 59, who owns 80 olive trees but is barred by the Israeli army from accessing most of them. “In the past you could reach your land,” he told +972, as he separated olives from leaves and branches. “Today, most areas are inaccessible. There’s no greater humiliation than not being able to reach your own land while settlers are protected by the army. Even after the attack, settlers patrol to intimidate people.”
Nasser, another farmer, added that in previous harvests, they would spend weeks with their families in the groves. “Last year we came for 15 days with everyone, brought a truck and worked all day. Now we come to work quickly, for one or two days. [The settlers] come to kill us.”
An Israel Police spokesperson told +972 that they had “initiated a comprehensive investigation” into the attack on Sunday, as part of which “intensive investigative and intelligence operations have been conducted to identify those involved, gather evidence, and bring them to justice.” The spokesperson did not answer questions regarding whether police are investigating the whole incident or just the attack on the woman, whether arrests were made, and why forensic teams arrived only a day and a half later.
‘Not a single olive was left on the trees’
Besides attacking farmers, Israeli settlers have ramped up their destruction of Palestinian olive groves — even before the start of this year’s harvest.
In the morning of Oct. 3, Ayman Ghoneimat was in his home in the town of Surif, north of Hebron, when he saw a group of masked settlers descend from a nearby outpost with handsaws. “They began cutting and breaking the branches of ancient olive trees,” he recalled. “After about 20 minutes, they set the trees on fire and returned to the settlement outpost they had established near the village about five months ago.”
The next day, Ghoneimat was shocked to discover that the settlers had returned during the night and cut down dozens more ancient olive trees in the same area — a valley home to hundreds of olive and other fruit trees.
An olive tree that had been torched by Israeli settlers, near the village of Sa’ir, in the occupied West Bank, October 23, 2025. (Oren Ziv)
“Around 200 olive trees have been destroyed this month by settlers,” Ghonemiat told +972 earlier this week. “One-hundred of these trees belonged to me, including 40 that had been growing for generations, aged between 15 and 40 years. I also had a new piece of land that I planted earlier this year with about 50 young olive trees. Those too were cut down and broken by hand, deliberately and brutally.”
In the nearby town of Sa’ir, settlers have also been destroying olive groves before Palestinians have a chance to harvest them. Youssef Salameh Shalaldeh, a Palestinian farmer from Sa’ir, owns with his brothers about 30 dunams of land planted with olive trees.
On the afternoon of Oct. 8, Shalaldeh and his family received alarming news: settlers were harvesting olives from their trees. When they rushed to the site, they saw four settlers, one of whom was armed, violently beating the olive branches.
About 10 minutes later, a military vehicle arrived, accompanied by security from the settlement of Asfar. Instead of protecting the farmers, the soldiers expelled the Palestinians from their own land, allowing the settlers to remain.
Elsewhere in Sa’ir, settlers have lit fires that have ravaged entire groves. On Thursday, Jaddi Hamdan Shalaldeh, 35, walked among his desiccated trees. “Today we came to our land to pick the olives, as we do every year. But we had already heard about what happened: the entire land has been burned, and there isn’t a single olive left on the trees that we can benefit from.
Palestinian farmer Samir Shouman assessing the damage from a settler attack on his olive trees, near his home in Khirbet Abu Falah, the occupied West Bank, October 24, 2025. (Oren Ziv)
“Every year I used to get around 10 to 12 tanks of olive oil,” he continued. “This year, not even a single drop — this is what the occupation has left us with. The goal of the settlers is to seize and colonize this land, and to drive us out of it by any means possible. But we will not leave this land except over our dead bodies.”
Targeting solidarity activists
Israeli authorities have also intensified their campaign against international activists arriving for the olive harvest. Last week, 32 activists were arrested in the village of Burin near Nablus after the army declared the entire village a closed military zone. Initially, only seven activists were deported — whom police claimed wore symbols associated with the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), which Israel designated a “terror organization” in 2021 — but later the authorities decided to deport everyone.
“We came in response to a call to participate in the harvest, to stand with families under threat,” Merlin, a solidarity activist from the U.K. who participated in the harvest in Turmus Ayya, told +972. “As for the steps against us — arrest and deportation — I think activists know the risks. It only strengthens our conviction in what we’re doing: if Israeli authorities take our presence here so seriously, just standing and picking olives and documenting assaults when they happen, it proves how important it is for internationals to keep coming.”
Last year, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir set up a special task forceto target foreign activists in the West Bank and expedite their detention and deportation. During the 2024 olive harvest, activists reported threats, intimidation, and false accusations during interrogations, and 15 were arrested and deported — a number that, this month alone, has more than doubled.
“It’s clear the decision to deport solidarity and human rights activists was predetermined, and all the ‘procedures’ were just protocol,” explained Riham Nasra, an attorney who represented several of the deported international activists. “This isn’t the result of proper legal review, but reflects political interests, leaving Palestinians in the field to face settler violence alone.”
Solidarity activists flee as a Palestinian vehicle is set on fire by Israeli settlers during an attack on the first day of the olive harvest, in the West Bank village of Beita, October 10 2025. (Avishay Mohar/Activestills)
Avi Dabush, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, organizes Israeli volunteers to accompany Palestinian farmers for the olive harvest. He told +972 that since the current season began, the army has barred them from accessing groves almost every day under the pretext of “closed military zones.”
“Before October 7, there were years with only three ‘closed military zone’ orders all season — and even then, it was possible to negotiate or to say ‘We’ll be finished in an hour or two and we’ll leave,’ or ‘We’ll move to a different area,’” he recalled. “Now it’s much tougher. It feels like the army is eager to expel.”
According to Dabush, these restrictions are the result of settler pressure. “There’s a settler campaign claiming that the harvest is being used for terror. Last year, the message was to prevent harvests within 200 meters of settlements. This year, the message is to cancel the harvest altogether.”
On Thursday, farmers from Sa’ir gathered with activists to go to their groves in the valley, near where settlers had established an outpost a few months ago. Shortly after the farmers started picking olives, three masked settlers wielding clubs came running down the hill.
As the settlers approached the farmers and the large number of journalists present, soldiers and Border Police officers arrived and asked them politely to go back, while pushing and shooting both tear gas and live fire at the farmers and journalists, saying it was a “closed military zone.” They claimed that in the coming days people could arrive “with coordination.”
Israeli soldiers confront Palestinian farmers attempting to harvest olives on their land near the village of Sa’ir, in the occupied West Bank, October 23, 2025. (Oren Ziv)
“It’s always like this, the army and the settlers together,” Ibrahim Salame, 55, a landowner in Sa’ir, told +972. “The settlers attack the olive groves, and the army comes and prevents us [from working]. Whenever we come down to the valley, the settlers approach so we have to leave.”
Eid Ghafari, an activist from the village of Sinjil, described a similar dynamic. “Today, we see settlers wearing army uniforms, sitting in outposts — they’ve become one system,” he told +972. “The army does the settlers’ work by closing off the land, and settlers enter from other directions and set up caravans. There are areas that have been inaccessible since the war began.
“When we try to enter the land, the army stops us and orders us to turn back,” Ghafari continued. “They protect the settlers, and shoot at harvesters. In the past, 2,000 people came, many who rely on olives for their livelihood. Now everyone is scared, and those who come to their plots often find that settlers have already harvested their olives.”
A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.