By Pesha Magid and Lina Obeid
LUBBAN AL-GHARBI, West Bank, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Brought to tears as he recalled Israeli settlers hitting his cherished olive trees with sticks and taking off with the olives, Palestinian Ahmed Salem said he feared being attacked if he tried to intervene.
Settlers have intimidated Palestinians harvesting their olives in the occupied West Bank for decades, but this year, not only has violence increased sharply, theft has been widespread, according to Palestinians, Israeli rights groups and the UN.
The settlers dumped Salem's olives into sacks and then drove them to a nearby Israeli settler outpost to be pressed into olive oil, the 50-year-old Palestinian told Reuters of the incident around two weeks ago near his village Lubban al-Gharbi.
"How would you feel if something that belonged to you was being violated, and you could do nothing about it?" he asked.
The couple living in the outpost, whose olive press settlers have urged Israelis to use for West Bank olives, declined multiple Reuters requests for comment, while the Yesha Council, which oversees Israeli settlements in the West Bank, did not immediately respond.
The attacks have accelerated ahead of an Israeli election next week that opinion polls show Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his pro-settler coalition could lose to opponents who have taken a more critical stance against settler violence.
'SETTLERS CAN COME AND GO FREELY'
The olive harvest starts with the onset of cooler weather, allowing Palestinian families to gather in the lush, terraced groves that they have groomed for generations.
"My six-year-old son remembers going there with me, eating there, making tea there," Salem said.
With the establishment of hundreds of small settler outposts under Netanyahu's government since 2022, the military has increasingly restricted Palestinian access to areas nearby, including many olive groves.
"This creates a situation where Palestinians, in many of the cases, many of the lands, especially in proximity to settlements and outposts, cannot enter the land and harvest the trees," said Ziv Stahl, executive director of Israeli rights group Yesh Din.
"But settlers can come and go freely, and that's what they do."
Even when Palestinians can access their trees, it is not without risk. Yesh Din on Wednesday reported 125 physical attacks on Palestinian olive harvesters over the 24 days since the season began and 168 incidents of crop theft, with Israeli military forces present in at least a quarter of cases.
An Israeli military official said it takes acts of violence, criminal activity and attempts to undermine security very seriously. The official did not refer to settlers or comment on the reports of olive theft in the presence of the Israeli military, which has separately uprooted trees with excavators, citing what it said was a need to prevent Palestinian attacks.
The removal of Palestinians' olives has met with widely differing responses from Israeli rabbis.
"I call it theft. From my perspective, I define it as theft or robbery, and it is forbidden," said Zev Weitman, the rabbi for the Alon Shvut settlement south of Bethlehem.
Prominent Orthodox rabbi Dov Lior said settlers should harvest across the West Bank, asserting in an open letter that Palestinians had no ownership rights to the land and that harvesting olives fulfilled "the commandment of conquering the land."
'IT'S EITHER US OR OUR ENEMY', SETTLERS SAY ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Hundreds of acres of the land around Salem's village, Lubban al-Gharbi, including olive groves, were fenced off and seized between 2023 and 2026 by Avichai Farm, an Israeli settler outpost built on a nearby hill.
Salem said villagers have seen settlers harvest olives from the seized land and take them to the outpost's olive press.
At the start of the olive harvest, settlers posted on social media calling on Israelis to harvest West Bank olives and bring them to Avichai Farm's press.
"Both fine oil and strengthening the Jewish hold on the vast expanses of our land!," read a message on a settler Telegram group. "It's either us or our enemy!"
The press at Avichai Farm advertises "premium products produced by Avichai Farm" with olive oil at about $20 a bottle via a website run by the Farms Association, a settler group that Reuters has reported receives significant financial support from the Israeli government, which says the aim is to promote peace.
The Farms Association did not immediately respond 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 Farm, Reuters spoke to a man who declined to be identified and said he had driven from a settlement around 90 minutes away to press 14 bags of olives from trees he said he grew himself.
Lubban al-Gharbi villagers and other Palestinians who have lost land to settler expansion say the harvesting of olives from trees in groves seized from Palestinian land constitutes theft.
UN bodies and most countries deem Israel's settlements on land occupied in war illegal under international law regarding military occupations. Israel rejects this, viewing the territory as disputed rather than occupied.
'WE PAY IN BLOOD FOR THE OLIVES'
During this year's olive harvest, Palestinian authorities say three Palestinians have been killed in daily militant settler attacks, which have also injured several journalists, European diplomats and a French mayor.
Stahl from the Yesh Din Israeli rights group said the violence was "part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing, paving the way for the annexation of the West Bank without its Palestinian population."
Israel, which has considered the idea of annexation, said it is investigating some of the incidents.
An Israeli government spokesperson said olives "picked by a Jew in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people" did not constitute theft and that Jews owned and cultivated "millions of olive trees" in the area. No one should take the law into their own hands, the spokesperson added.
Palestinian farmer Samer Ben Shamsi said masked settlers attacked him on October 9 in the Palestinian village of Beita near Nablus, then sped away in a pickup truck with his harvest of olives after he and other farmers fled.
"This year, they steal without fear because they have a state and a powerful force backing them," Ben Shamsi said, referring to the security forces.
Within the past year alone, settlers had shot him in the leg, beaten him and smashed his possessions, he said.
"We pay in blood for the olives."
(Reporting by Pesha Magid; Editing by Rami Ayyub and Philippa Fletcher)