{"id":3117,"date":"2026-10-22T14:03:59","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T09:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=3117"},"modified":"2026-10-22T14:03:59","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T09:03:59","slug":"israeli-settlers-steal-palestinian-olives-as-harvest-attacks-grow-more-violent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=3117","title":{"rendered":"Israeli settlers steal Palestinian olives as harvest attacks grow more violent"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Settlers have intimidated Palestinians harvesting their olives \u200bin the occupied West Bank for decades, but this year, not only has violence increased sharply<\/a>, theft has been widespread, according to Palestinians, Israeli rights groups and the UN.<\/p>\n

The settlers dumped Salem\u2019s olives into sacks and then drove \u200cthem 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow would you feel if something that belonged to you was being violated, and you could do nothing about it?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The attacks have accelerated ahead of an Israeli election next week that opinion polls \u200bshow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his pro-settler coalition could lose to opponents, opens new tab<\/a> who have taken a more critical stance against settler violence.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u2018Settlers can come and go freely\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The olive harvest starts with the onset of cooler weather, allowing Palestinian families to gather \u200bin the lush, terraced groves that they have groomed for generations.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy six-year-old son remembers going there with me, eating there, making tea there,\u201d Salem said.<\/p>\n

With the establishment of hundreds of small settler \u2060outposts under Netanyahu\u2019s government since 2022, the military has increasingly restricted Palestinian access to areas nearby, including many olive groves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis creates a situation where Palestinians, in many of the cases, many of the lands, especially in proximity to settlements and outposts, cannot enter the \u200bland and harvest the trees,\u201d said Ziv Stahl, executive director of Israeli rights group Yesh Din.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut settlers can come and go freely, and that\u2019s what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even when Palestinians can access their trees, it is not without risk. Yesh Din on Wednesday reported 125 physical \u200battacks 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.<\/p>\n

An Israeli military official said it takes acts of violence<\/a>, criminal activity and attempts to undermine security very seriously.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, citing what it said was a need to prevent Palestinian attacks.<\/p>\n

The removal of Palestinians\u2019 olives has met with widely differing responses from Israeli rabbis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call it \u200btheft. From my perspective, I define it as theft or robbery, and it is forbidden,\u201d said Zev Weitman, the rabbi for the Alon Shvut settlement south of Bethlehem.<\/p>\n

Prominent Orthodox rabbi Dov Lior said settlers should harvest across the West Bank, asserting in an open \u200bletter that Palestinians had no ownership rights to the land and that harvesting olives fulfilled \u201cthe commandment of conquering the land.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u2018It\u2019s either US or our enemy\u2019, settlers say on social media<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Hundreds of acres of the land around Salem\u2019s village, Lubban al-Gharbi, including olive groves, were fenced off and seized \u200cbetween 2023 and 2026 \u2060by Avichai Farm, an Israeli settler outpost built on a nearby hill.<\/p>\n

Salem said villagers have seen settlers harvest olives from the seized land and take them to the outpost\u2019s olive press.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s press.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth fine oil and strengthening the Jewish hold on the vast expanses of our land!,\u201d read a message on a settler Telegram group. \u201cIt\u2019s either our enemy or us!\u201d<\/p>\n

The press at Avichai Farm advertises \u201cpremium products produced by Avichai Farm\u201d 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<\/a> from the Israeli government, which says the aim is to promote peace.<\/p>\n

The Farms Association did not immediately \u200brespond to a request for comment, and the couple who live \u200bon the farm with their children declined to be \u2060interviewed by a Reuters reporter who approached the area on Sunday.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Lubban al-Gharbi villagers and other Palestinians who have lost land to settler expansion say the harvesting \u200bof olives from trees in groves seized from Palestinian land constitutes theft.<\/p>\n

UN bodies and most countries deem Israel\u2019s settlements on land occupied in war illegal under international law regarding military occupations. Israel \u200brejects this, viewing the territory as \u2060disputed rather than occupied.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u2018We pay in blood for the olives\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

During this year\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Stahl from the Yesh Din Israeli rights group said the violence was \u201cpart of a campaign of ethnic cleansing, paving the way for the annexation of the West Bank without its Palestinian population.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel, which has considered the idea of annexation<\/a>, said it is investigating some of the incidents.<\/p>\n

An Israeli government spokesperson said olives \u201cpicked by a Jew in the ancestral homeland \u2060of the Jewish people\u201d \u200bdid not constitute theft and that Jews owned and cultivated \u201cmillions of olive trees\u201d in the area. No one should take the law into their own hands, \u200bthe spokesperson added.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, they steal without fear because they have a state and a powerful force \u200bbacking them,\u201d Ben Shamsi said, referring to the security forces.<\/p>\n

Within the past year alone, settlers had shot him in the leg, beaten him and smashed his possessions, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe pay in blood for the olives.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u200bin 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\u2019s olives into sacks and then drove \u200cthem to a nearby Israeli settler outpost to be pressed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}