While olive picking season is yet to officially begin, Palestinians began early efforts to reach their groves this week – and so did the Israeli settlers. Across the occupied West Bank, harvesters were beaten, trees were burned, crops and tools were stolen, and Israeli soldiers closed land to its owners. Meanwhile, in Gaza, Israeli strikes continued to ignore a year-old “ceasefire” as the territory’s humanitarian and medical systems slid further towards collapse, with winter around the corner.
The week’s violence suggests a bloody olive harvest to come in the occupied West Bank. On October 3 in Jabal Qamas, between the towns of Osarin and Beita south of Nablus, settlers from the illegal Mevaser Shalom outpost attacked a family of harvesters. The pogrom left one man, Hussam Adily, in critical condition, and injured his brother and mother, according to Israeli activist Jonathan Pollack and Arabic-language media reports.
The settlers then entered Osarin, ransacking a home and smashing cars. Although the Israeli military opened an investigation, it said the attackers had fled before soldiers arrived, The Times of Israel reported. Similar pogroms on Palestinian olive pickers occurred across the north and centre of the West Bank, including in the villages of Rantis, Sebastia, Beit Imrin, Deir Sharaf, Aqraba, az-Zawiya, Ramin and Arrabuna.
Farmers were pepper-sprayed, run over, or struck with sticks and fists, with several requiring hospital treatment, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa and local field reports. In Beita’s Jabal al-Arma, Israeli settlers opened fire on pickers and forces lobbed tear gas directly at them. With attacks also came theft: Settlers made off with harvested olives, ladders and tarps in Sinjil – where thefts have been a near-daily occurrence for more than a week, according to Sinjil resident Ayed Jafry – as well as in Rafat, Kafr Ra’i, Faqqua and elsewhere, according to Wafa.
Trees were targeted, too. Near Abu Dis, settlers torched roughly 55 olive trees, along with a family’s freshly picked harvest, according to Wafa. Elsewhere, settlers drove their flocks through Palestinian-owned groves, ruining crops in villages including Burqa, al-Mughayyir and Beit Duqqu, according to local field reports.
Where settlers were not blocking the harvest, soldiers often were. Israeli forces turned farmers away from their own land in Deir Istiya, Farkha, Haris, az-Zawiya and Silwan, confiscating identification cards and, in some cases, tools, according to Wafa. In Beita, the Israeli army halted a harvest after settlers showed up.
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