Palestinian Ahmed Salem was overcome with tears as he recalled how Israeli settlers used to hit the olive trees dear to his heart with sticks and then fled with the fruits. He said that he feared being attacked if he tried to intervene.
For decades, settlers have been terrorizing Palestinians during the olive harvest season in the occupied West Bank. But this year, according to Palestinians, Israeli human rights organizations and the United Nations, not only has the intensity of violence escalated, but crop theft has spread widely.
Palestinian Salem (50 years old) told Reuters about the incident that occurred about two weeks ago near the village of Al-Laban Al-Gharbi, where he lives, that the settlers emptied his olive crop into bags and then transported it to a nearby settlement site to be pressed and turned into oil.
He asked, “How do you feel?” You? When you see something that is yours...yours, someone is attacking it, and you are unable to do anything.”
A couple who live in the settlement site and own an olive press, which settlers called on Israelis to use to press the olive crop grown in the West Bank, did not respond to repeated requests from Reuters for comment, while the Yesha Council, which oversees Israeli settlements in the West Bank, has not yet responded to requests for comment.
The pace of attacks has accelerated ahead of the Israeli elections scheduled for next week, in which opinion polls indicate that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition supporting the settlers may lose to competitors who have taken a more critical stance on settler violence.
“Settlers move freely”
The olive harvest season begins with falling temperatures. This allows Palestinian families to gather in the lush orchards that they have taken care of, generation after generation.
Salem said: “My son, who is six years old, remembers that we left. We ate there...we made tea.”
With the establishment of hundreds of small settlement outposts under the Netanyahu government since 2022, the military has increasingly restricted Palestinian access to neighboring areas, including many olive groves.
Ziv Stahl, executive director of the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, said: “This has led to a situation in which Palestinians are unable, in many cases and on large areas of land, especially near settlements and settlement sites, to access their lands and harvest the fruits of their trees.”
She added: “But the settlers can move freely, and this is what they do.”
Even when Palestinians can access their trees, it is not without risks. Yesh Din reported, on Wednesday, that there had been 125 physical attacks on Palestinians collecting olives within 24 days since the beginning of the harvest season, and 168 incidents of theft of the crop, with Israeli army forces present in at least a quarter of the cases.
An Israeli military official stated that the army deals seriously with acts of violence, criminal activities, and attempts to undermine security. The official did not address the settlers or comment on the reports that olives were stolen in the presence of army forces. In separate incidents, the army uprooted trees using bulldozers, justifying this as necessary to prevent Palestinian attacks.
The seizure of the olive crop from the Palestinians sparked mixed reactions from Israeli rabbis.
“I call it theft,” said Zeev Whitman, rabbi of the Alon Shvut settlement south of Bethlehem. From my point of view, I consider it theft or burglary, and it is forbidden.”
Prominent Orthodox Rabbi Dov Lior permitted settlers to pick olives throughout the West Bank, stressing in an open letter that Palestinians have no property rights to the land, and that harvesting olives fulfills “the obligation of settling the land.”
Settlers on the Internet: “Either us or our enemy”
Hundreds of acres of land surrounding the village of Salem, the western adobe, were fenced off and seized between 2023 and 2026 by Avichai Farm, an Israeli outpost established on a nearby hill. These lands include olive groves.
Salem said that the villagers saw the settlers picking olives from the seized land and transporting them to a press at the settlement site.
With the start of the olive harvest season, settlers posted on social media calls for Israelis to harvest West Bank olives and bring them to the Avichai farm press.
A message on a Telegram account created by a group of settlers said: “Luxury oil and at the same time strengthening Jewish control over vast areas of our land!... Either us or our enemy!”
The farm press promotes “luxury products produced by the Avichai farm” and sells one bottle of olive oil for about $20 through a website run by the Farmers’ Association, a settler group that Reuters reported receives significant financial support from the Israeli government, which says the goal is to promote peace.
The Farmers Association has not yet responded to a request for comment, and the couple who live on the farm with their children declined to be interviewed by a Reuters reporter who approached the area on Sunday.
On a road leading to Avichai's farm, Reuters spoke to a man who asked to remain anonymous and said he drove his car from a settlement about 90 minutes away to squeeze 14 bags of olives from trees he said he planted himself.
Residents of the village of Al-Laban Al-Gharbi, and other Palestinians who lost their lands due to settlement expansion, described picking olives from orchards in the seized Palestinian lands as theft.
United Nations bodies and most countries consider Israeli settlements established on territories occupied during wars to be illegal under international law relating to military occupation. Israel rejects this and considers these lands disputed and not occupied.
“We pay the price of olives with blood.”
During this year's olive season, the Palestinian authorities said that three Palestinians were killed in daily attacks by extremist settlers, and these attacks also injured a number of European journalists, diplomats, and a French mayor.
Stahl, of the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, said that the violence “is part of an ethnic cleansing campaign that paves the way for the annexation of the West Bank without its Palestinian residents.”
Israel, which has previously discussed the idea of annexation, says it is investigating some facts.
An Israeli government spokesman pointed out that olives “picked by a Jew in the ancestral land of the Jewish people” are not considered theft and that Jews own and grow “millions of olive trees” in the region. The spokesman added that no one should take the law into their own hands.
Palestinian farmer Samer Ben Shamsi said that masked settlers attacked him on October 9 in the Palestinian village of Beita near Nablus, then fled quickly in a small truck loaded with olive crops after he and other farmers fled.
Ben Shamsi said: “Now they are stealing without deterrence because there is a government that supports them, and a powerful force behind them. The army and police are on their side.”
He added that during the past year alone, settlers shot him in the leg, beat him, and destroyed his property.
He continued, saying: “We pay the price of olives with blood.”
