Hardline Israeli rabbi ruling on stolen Palestinian olives prompts uproar

A hardline religious ruling justifying the theft of Palestinian olive harvests escalates violence and political tensions before Israeli elections.

Prominent Israeli Rabbi Dov Lior issued a Jewish religious ruling on Friday permitting settlers to steal olives from Palestinian orchards in the occupied West Bank.

Lior’s ruling claims that Palestinian landowners who could not access their olives during the harvest season due to Israeli restrictions have been sufficiently compensated in the years they had access to the fruit. According to the ruling, Jews are permitted to pick these olives to claim ownership of the Palestinian land.

Lior, born in Poland in 1933, went as far as classifying the theft of olives from Palestinian farms as an “additional virtue”, as settler pogroms and Israeli occupation continue in the West Bank.

He added that settlers should “conquer the land” far from Jewish communities in order to publicly “demonstrate our ownership” and follow biblical commandment.

“The Jewish people have never given up on the Land of Israel, as we express in our prayers every single day,” the ruling continues. “The Arabs never purchased the land from the Jewish people or from any individual Jew, and therefore it is stolen land in their hands… They never bought it in any way and it remained under the ownership of the Jewish people.”

Harvest violence

The ruling coincides with another wave of settler pogroms against Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest season. On Friday. at least 19 people were injured in 34 attacks by the Israeli military and settlers on Palestinians harvesting their crops across the West Bank.

An American photojournalist working for The Washington Post was assaulted by settlers while covering the daily violence, and five vehicles were torched.

Many Palestinian farmers have been unable to access their crops due to Israeli restrictions and the dangers from the settlers.

While settler pogroms are not exceptional, they come weeks before Israeli elections, with a push by far-right parties to gain the support of settlers and their supporters. But not all Jewish religious leaders backed the call to steal Palestinian olives.

Religious backlash

Rabbis from the religious council of the Gush Etzion settlements published a letter calling the illegal harvesting of Palestinian crops theft, blasphemy, and a moral defect.

Tzohar, an organisation of 800 orthodox rabbis, said in a statement that only the state has the authority to confiscate property. As long as the state recognises Arab ownership of the olives, they belong to them, it added.

Mamoun Abu Amer, an analyst on Israeli politics, told Al Jazeera that there could be political reasons behind the religious groups’ rejection of Rabbi Dov Lior’s comments.

“The position of the other rabbis who rejected this call might be a move driven by political motive and pressure from entities within the government to give the impression that these are anomalous voices that do not represent the general opinion of the settlers.

“The Israeli government is trying to portray that those who carry out these riots are a limited-number group that does not represent public opinion in the settlements, and that the settlers are peaceful, good, and law-abiding, and that the issue is confined to the ‘Hilltop Youth‘ boys who commit these crimes,” he explained.

Rabbi Dov Lior holds immense influence among hardline settler groups, such as the Hilltop Youth, who fiercely back his hardline religious decrees that oppose any territorial compromise with Palestinians.

He is also a prominent figure within Israel’s Religious Zionist movement and serves as the spiritual guide for the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

“Ben-Gvir relies on the religious rulings of Rabbi Dov Lior, which rely on biblical texts and the Book of Deuteronomy,” Abu Amer noted. He claimed that Rabbi Lior adopts the most extreme interpretations in the Jewish religion.

“There is an important matter, which is that Ben-Gvir competes via the TikTok platform, propaganda, and populist rhetoric, and this is a rhetoric that serves him and brings him votes, given the environment and general atmosphere in Israel after the events of October 7, as there is a ‘market for extremism’ in the Israeli society,” Abu Amer added.

Knesset member Gilad Kariv of the left-wing Democrats Party criticised Lior, accusing him and his followers of dragging Israel into a flood of moral vice.

“Whoever stands on the sidelines in this issue joins the camp of Rabbi Dov Lior and his criminals,” Kariv said.