Lubban al-Gharbi, West Bank, October 22 (Reuters) – With tears in his eyes as he recalls how Israeli settlers beat with sticks his cherished olive trees and took the olives, the Palestinian Ahmed Salem said he feared being attacked if he tried to intervene.
For decades settlers have intimidated Palestinians who harvest their olives in the occupied West Bank, but this year not only has violence risen dramatically, but thefts have also become widespread, according to Palestinians, Israeli human rights groups, and the UN.
The settlers bagged Salem’s olives and then drove them by car to a nearby Israeli settler outpost to be turned into olive oil, the 50-year-old Palestinian told Reuters about the incident that occurred about two weeks ago near his village, Lubban al-Gharbi.
“How would you feel if something that belonged to you were being violated and you could not do anything about it?” he asked.
The couple living at the outpost, where the olive processing facility for olive oil production is located, refused Reuters’ requests for comment, while the Yesha Council, which oversees Israeli settlements in the West Bank, did not respond immediately.
The attacks intensified on the eve of next week’s Israeli elections, in which polls indicate that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his pro-settler coalition may lose to opponents who have adopted a more critical stance toward settler violence.
Olive harvesting begins with the arrival of cooler weather, allowing Palestinian families to gather in the lush orchards they have tended for generations.
“My six-year-old son remembers going there with me, eating there, making tea there,” Salem said.
With hundreds of small settler outposts established under Netanyahu’s government since 2022, the Israeli Defense Forces have increasingly restricted Palestinian access to nearby areas, including many olive groves.
“This creates a situation in which Palestinians, in many cases and in many lands, especially near settlements and outposts, cannot enter the lands and harvest the trees,” said Ziv Stahl, executive director of the Israeli rights group Yesh Din.
“But the settlers can go back and forth freely, and that’s what they do.”
Even when Palestinians manage to access their trees, it does not occur without risk. Yesh Din reported on Wednesday 125 physical assaults against Palestinian olive pickers in the 24 days since the harvest began and 168 incidents of harvest theft, with the presence of Israeli military forces in at least a quarter of the cases.
An Israeli military officer said he takes acts of violence, criminal activity and attempts to compromise security very seriously. The officer did not refer to the settlers nor comment on the reports of olive theft in the presence of the Israeli forces, who, on the other hand, uprooted trees with excavators, citing the need to prevent Palestinian attacks.
The removal of the olives from the Palestinians elicited very divergent reactions among Israeli rabbis.
“I call this stealing. From my point of view, I define it as theft, and it is forbidden,” said Zev Weitman, a rabbi at the Alon Shvut settlement, south of Bethlehem.
Prominent Orthodox Rabbi Dov Lior stated that settlers should harvest throughout the West Bank, arguing in an open letter that Palestinians had no property rights to the land and that the olive harvest fulfilled “the commandment to conquer the land.”
