Palestine weekly: Israeli settlers attack journalist and diplomats

With more than a month left of the olive harvest season to go, United Nations deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said on Friday that the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) had recorded more than 200 Israeli attacks on Palestinian farmers since September 1, eclipsing the 185 that OCHA documented across the entire 2025 harvest season.

The attacks have already killed one Palestinian, injured more than 120 and damaged more than 2,500 trees. The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission recorded 34 Israeli attacks on Friday that injured at least 19 people, with another 40 on Saturday.

Israeli settlers are carrying out such widescale attacks and thefts with backing from some religious figures. On Friday, Rabbi Dov Lior, spiritual guide of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party, ruled that settlers may take olives from Palestinian orchards, proclaiming “Jews are permitted to harvest olives even in areas far from Jewish settlements in order to publicly demonstrate our ownership of the land and thereby fulfill the commandment of conquering the land”.

“An olive tree today is more significant in the campaign for Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank] than an M16 rifle,” said one post in a settler chat group this week.

“Settlers are stealing the Palestinian olive crop on a vast scale, never seen before in my 22-year history of working on this issue,” said Sarit Michaeli, formerly the international advocacy director of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

Under this ideological push, dozens of attacks on olive harvesters have been reported each day. On October 16, in Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, about 80 masked settlers armed with clubs charged at Palestinians picking olives. During the attack, Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine, 63, fell and was beaten for more than 10 minutes by settlers, videos and her own account attest. She suffered broken ribs and needed hand surgery, while her camera, phone and passport were stolen. Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak reported that soldiers later shot a village council member, Abdel Jaber Obeid, in the thigh.

Then, on Saturday, masked settlers with clubs attacked a delegation visiting Taybeh, east of Ramallah, that included Belgium’s consul general, French and Polish diplomats, and church representatives. A window of a Belgian consulate vehicle was smashed. French mayor Bernard Baudoux, 78, was kicked and beaten during the attack.

In response to these incidents, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington was “very disturbed”, while US Ambassador Mike Huckabee called Levine’s attack “a despicable act of terror carried out by masked cowards”. France demanded arrests and the European Union said it expected “full accountability”.

In response, Israel’s military called the Taybeh attack “severe”, and leader of the Yashar party, Gadi Eisenkot, described settler violence as “Jewish terror under the auspices of the government of Israel”, according to The Times of Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, however, offered a conditional condemnation of Levine’s attack, saying questions remained about “who initiated the violence”. After the attack in Taybeh, his office equivocated on the matter, too, remarking that “the more serious the accusation, the stronger the evidence required”.

On Monday, police and the domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet launched “Operation Olive Leaf”, arresting 10 Israelis in raids near Ofra and Shiloh in connection to these attacks on foreign journalists and diplomats.

Attacks across the West Bank

However, no other arrests or investigations have been announced for the dozens of other settler attacks against Palestinians reported this weekend alone. Beyond the headline incidents, masked settlers – often alongside soldiers – targeted farmers, flocks, homes and land.

Attacks included:

• Settlers beat two women in Beit Lid on Tuesday and injured an American citizen, Haytham Tayseer, in Burqa on Thursday, leaving him with deep head wounds.
• Six people, including four women and a child, were injured in Ma’in, in Masafer Yatta, on Saturday, the Red Crescent said.
• Settlers burned four vehicles in Turmus Aya, including a civil defence vehicle, and set fire to a mosque in Mikhmas, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
• Settlers stabbed to death about 20 sheep in Kafr Malek, Mayor Najeh Rustum told Al Jazeera.
• Bulldozers uprooted hundreds of olive trees in Kafr Malek, and settlers cut down 120 olive trees in Kisan, near Bethlehem, Wafa reported.

Gaza: Halted trade deepens hunger fears

In Gaza, the ever-worsening humanitarian situation is now deteriorating even more rapidly. Israel declared on October 14 that no commercial goods would be allowed to enter Gaza, blaming a dispute between merchants and Hamas over a 10,000-shekel ($3,220) per-truck fee. Gaza’s Government Media Office called that a “blatant disinformation campaign”, saying the sum was a voluntary contribution to a fund for widows and orphans. By Sunday, prices had jumped significantly: a carton of eggs rose in price from 35 shekels ($11.30) to 60-70 shekels ($18-$21), and a sack of flour from 25-35 shekels ($7.50-$10.50) to about 80 shekels ($24), residents said.

Such price increases are taking place just as the World Food Programme announced this week it would cut the number of people it feeds monthly in Gaza from 1.6 million to 1.1 million. Gaza’s Health Ministry said 466 people have died of malnutrition since 2024 and 67 percent of the population faces crisis-level food insecurity or worse through year-end.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces continued to kill Palestinians in Gaza each day. As of October 19, Gaza’s Health Ministry put the toll since last year’s “ceasefire” at 1,522 killed and 5,421 wounded – 27 killed in the past week, against 33 the previous week and 38 the week before. The cumulative death toll has reached 74,480 since October 7, 2023.

Among the Palestinians killed:

• Three children, including Muhammad Riyad Abu Hammad, 14, in Deir el-Balah – the Education Ministry said shrapnel pierced his school bag on his way home from school on Saturday – and Misk Hazem al-Dalu and Tamer Shadi Subh, who were killed in the Maghazi camp and Beit Lahiya, respectively, on Sunday. UNICEF said more than 340 children have been killed since the ceasefire.
• Drone strikes in the past week killed Ahmad Raja al-Shaer and Basel Nabil Qeshta in al-Qarara; Reem Awad in a strike on a Gaza City apartment; Mahmoud al-Madhoun and Ubaida Murtaja in Gaza City; Abdullah and Imad Jaber and Sheikh Majid al-Sabbagh, a Quran school director in Tuffah, on October 17; Amer al-Horani near a Jabalia clinic the same day; and police officer Abd al-Jawad Joudeh in Rafah.
• Shootings killed Saddam al-Za’anin in Jabalia, Hatem Abu Hasanein by quadcopter fire, Huda Abu Adwan, 49, in al-Mawasi and Wijdan Shurrab, 28, in eastern Khan Younis, according to Wafa and local activists.

Israel’s military said several of those killed this week were Hamas members. None of its claims has been independently verified.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces continued advancing the “Yellow Line” deeper into Shujayea on Saturday, placing concrete blocks on al-Qa’qa Street. The line demarcates areas under Israeli control, which now extend across about 65 percent of Gaza, far beyond what was envisaged under last year’s “ceasefire” agreement.