West Bank Palestinian farmers face attacks, olive theft from settlers as violence continues

Ahmed Salem, a Palestinian man living in the West Bank, said he witnessed extremist Israeli settlers hitting his olive trees with sticks and taking off the olives, saying he feared being attacked if he attempted to intervene.

Extremist settlers have intimidated Palestinians harvesting their olives in the West Bank for decades, but this year, not only has recorded violence increased sharply, but reports of theft have 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, he told Reuters.

"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 election next week that opinion polls show Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Right-wing coalition could lose to opponents who have taken a more critical stance against settler violence.

The IDF has been reported to restrict Palestinian access to nearby areas, including many olive groves, particularly amid the establishment of hundreds of small settler outposts across the region.

"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 the IDF present in at least a quarter of cases.

An IDF 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 IDF, 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 Alon Shvut, 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."

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 olives in the West Bank 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 our enemy or us!"

The press at Avichai Farm advertises "premium products produced by Avichai Farm," including olive oil at about $20 a bottle, on a website run by the Farms Association, a settler group 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 are among those who say that the harvesting of olives from trees in groves seized from Palestinian land constitutes theft.

During this year's olive harvest, Palestinian authorities say three Palestinians have been killed in daily settler attacks, which have also injured several journalists, European diplomats, and a French mayor.

Stahl 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 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."