As War Rages, Israeli Settlers and Soldiers Try to Block the Palestinian Olive Harvest - Israel News - Haaretz.com

These days in November are normally the peak of the Palestinian olive harvest in the West Bank; entire families spend days bringing in the crop and holding picnics in this ritual of both work and pleasure. Then the farmers and family members send the olives to presses to produce olive oil.

But for years now, the harvest has been marred by violent assaults by settlers. And this year some farmers have simply given up amid recurring threats from settlers,   a campaign by Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party,   restrictions on movement by settlers or the army, and a sharp rise in violence.

The underlying sentiment can be seen in far-right WhatsApp groups. A screenshot from one shows the message “Warning, this isn’t a harvest, this is the next murder. On Route 505, 200 meters east of Migdalim Junction, ‘harvesters’ are just a few meters from the road.”

A link was attached providing the exact location where the far-rightists believed they had spotted Palestinians picking olives. In another message, a member of the group wrote “olive harvest warning!” and attached a list of locations and an instruction to report other locations to the local emergency hotline.

A Palestinian farmer in an olive grove in Deir Istiya, last weekend. Credit: Moti Milrod

The threats weren’t confined to WhatsApp. “Masked people wearing army pants come, and sometimes soldiers; we can’t tell the difference,” Lafi Shalabi, head of the   Turmus Ayya village   council near the Shiloh settlement bloc, told Haaretz last week. “They tell us while they’re brandishing their guns: ‘If we see you one more time, we’ll shoot you.’”

The village was in the headlines in June after settlers set fires there and vandalized property. Shalabi estimates that 80 percent of the villagers didn’t harvest their olives this year. This appraisal joins the 99 reported incidents of violence, blocked access and destroyed property this season, according to Israeli rights group Yesh Din.

By comparison, in all of last year, just 38 incidents were recorded. In 18 of the cases from this year, soldiers chased olive harvesters out of areas where the farmers were not required to coordinate with the army beforehand.

The rights group Haqel says that in the Shiloh Valley in the northern West Bank, an area where Palestinian olive farmers are required to coordinate, the army hasn’t scheduled any dates for harvesting olives. Farmers from the small town of Deir Istiya add that they haven’t received any dates for picking olives in areas that require coordination.

A road leading to the Palestinian village of Deir Istiya which was blocked, last weekend. Credit: Moti Milrod

‘A huge number of Arabs’

The campaign to prevent the harvest   is not being waged solely by members of the “hilltop youth” activists   for illegal Israeli outposts. Last week Smotrich, who is finance minister, sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant entitled “The continued abandonment of the security of settlers in Judea and Samaria” – the West Bank.

In the letter, Smotrich said the army was letting Palestinians pick olives near roads and settlements, areas where Palestinians harvest olives every year. He also called for the creation of “sterile security zones around the communities and roads” and the “blocking of entry to these areas by Arabs, including for the olive harvest.”

Religious Zionism MK Tzvi Succot,   who was recently appointed chairman of the Knesset subcommittee on West Bank affairs, sent a similar letter to Gallant calling for a ban on olive harvesting near settlements.

A screenshot from a Whatsapp group of far right activists, where Palestinian olive groves are being discussed.

Succot told Haaretz that his main concern was the potential for intelligence gathering under cover of the harvest. “When Palestinians come near the communities, the residents fear that maybe some of them are exploiting this to gather intelligence and plan a terror attack,” he said.

At the end of last month, when a Palestinian seriously wounded a settler near the settlement of Rimonim, settlers said the attack occurred under cover of the olive harvest, but Yesh Din says the main violence is the spate of settler attacks on Palestinians picking olives.

Succot countered: “The thing in general is that Jews are in these communities and are mainly afraid of dying.” He added: “There are extreme incidents, I don’t deny that, but if somebody comes and says that what’s happening today in Judea and Samaria is that settlers are attacking Arabs, he’s radically distorting the reality.”

In a press release Succot issued about the letter, and in a recent report on right-wing Channel 14, it was alleged that the murder of the Fogel family in 2011 was made possible by the olive harvest. Those killings – a mother, father and three of their six children – took place in March, but the settlers say one of the perpetrators surveilled the family’s house months before during the harvest.

Israeli volunteers hold olives at the village of Deir Istiya, last weekend. Credit: Moti Milrod

Succot and Channel 14's effort was joined this month by a group calling itself Wives of Reservist Soldiers Judea and Samaria. With the aid of a PR firm that also represents clients such as the right-wing group Honenu and the Samaria Regional Council in the West Bank, the wives called on the army to halt the olive harvest near settlements “at a time when 80 percent of the men in these communities have been called up for reserve duty.”

On Channel 14, Yiska Cohen, who was introduced as the organizer of the wives' forum, was quoted as saying, “I just got on the road and saw huge numbers of cars, a huge number of Arabs picking olives. And we all know that every olive harvester could also be something else.”

‘Wait for the big Nakba’

Deir Istiya has 26,000 dunams (6,420 acres) of olive groves, according to the local council. Some of them are very old, while others were planted in the last decade. Some of the families still earn their livelihood from farming; the harvest is a major event for them.

But since the war with Hamas in Gaza broke out on October 7, many West Bank farmers have been blocked from their olive groves because the plots are near main roads used by settlers.

For the villagers, the danger hit home about two weeks ago in an incident involving 54-year-old Ayoub Abu Hajla, a former member of the local council. Abu Hajla told Haaretz last week that he had visited his plot next to the road to pick olives when a settler suddenly approached him.

“He said to me, ‘What are you doing here? Don’t you know you’re not allowed to be here?’” Abu Hajla says, adding that the settler then “punched my friend who was with me in the head and broke some of his teeth, and also beat up a cabdriver who was nearby.”

When the villagers returned to their cars, they discovered threatening notes in Arabic on the windshields. “You wanted war, just wait for the big Nakba,” one note said, referring to the flight and expulsion of 700,000 Arabs during Israel's 1947-49 War of Independence.

Another added: “You have a last chance to flee to Jordan in an organized way. Otherwise we’ll expel you from our holy lands that God bequeathed to us.”