The scene shocked many and highlighted the violence of this year’s olive harvest in the Israeli-occupied West Bank: A young masked man punches an elderly Palestinian woman in line picking olives, which then collapse to the ground.
The incident during an attack by Israeli settlers, filmed by an American journalist, took place in the town of Turmus Ayya near Ramallah, a hotspot of violence this year.
“Everyone fled because the settlers suddenly attacked, maybe 100 of them,” said witness Yasser Alkam. AFPadding that a Swedish activist also had his arm and leg broken by settlers.
Alkam, a Turmus Ayya town official, said the woman, 55-year-old Um Saleh Abu Aliya, was beaten as she waited for her son to drive her away from a crowd of settlers.
“Fighting back would only bring more violence, sometimes with the support of the army,” lamented Nael al-Qouq, a Turmus Ayya farmer who was prevented from reaching his olive trees that day.
Extended settlements
Not far from the site, an Israeli flag fluttered in the wind at a settlement post, illegal even under Israeli law.
The army eventually arrived at Turmus Ayya and dispersed the crowd with tear gas, a AFP journalist witnessed.
But not before the youths who came down to the village burned at least two cars.
The head of the West Bank Israeli police, Moshe Pinchi, told his district commanders to find the man who attacked Abu Aliya, according to a leaked WhatsApp message reported by Israeli media.
The Israeli army said so AFP that it is “working in coordination with the Israel Police to enforce the law regarding Israelis involved in such incidents”.
But Turmus Ayya is far from an isolated case, and AFP journalists have seen at least six different cases of Palestinians being denied entry to their land, attacked by settlers or victims of vandalism during the 2025 olive harvest.
Clashes in rural areas reached new heights this year, prompted by ever-expanding Israeli settlements and increasing numbers of settlers – not all of whom engage in violence against Palestinians.
More than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
All settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.
‘displaced’
Near Turmus Ayya, in the village of Al-Mughayyir, a villager was prevented from harvesting entirely.
“I own ten dunams (one hectare) of olives. All I have left are the olive trees in the garden of the house… They uprooted it all,” Abdul Latif Abu Aliya, 55, told AFP.
Abu Aliya’s land borders a road on the other side, three trailers of which make up a newly installed outpost.
After a settler was injured during an argument near Abu Aliya’s house, an army order called for the trees his father and grandfather planted to be uprooted.
Bulldozers then pushed mounds of soil and roots halfway up the field and 100 meters from the family’s house, creating a barrier that Abu Aliya and his family do not cross for fear of being attacked by settlers.
Faced with unprecedented violence during this year’s olive season, the Palestinian Authority’s agriculture minister called on the international community to protect farmers and pickers.
“This is the worst season in the last 60 years,” Agriculture Minister Rizq Salimia told reporters, adding that this year’s crop was already poor due to bad climate.
Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Palestinian Territories, condemned “serious attacks” during this year’s harvest and lamented “dangerous levels of impunity” for the perpetrators.
The annual harvest, once a peaceful gathering of families in the occupied West Bank, has in recent years turned into a series of increasingly violent confrontations involving Israeli settlers, troops, Palestinian harvesters and foreign activists.
Identity marker
The season began in October and will last until mid-November, as Palestinians across the West Bank harvest olives from trees they see as deeply connected to their national identity.
The West Bank boasts over eight million olive trees for three million Palestinians, according to the Ministry of Agriculture’s 2021 census.
Every autumn, Palestinian farmers, but also townspeople whose families own a few trees, go out into the fields to pick olives, mostly by hand.
The UN humanitarian agency, OCHA, said 27 villages in the West Bank were hit by harvest-related attacks in the week of October 7 to 13 alone.
“The incidents included attacks on harvesters, theft of crops and harvesting equipment, and vandalism of olive trees, resulting in casualties, property damage, or both,” OCHA said.
