Eurasia Press & News
This year’s West Bank olive harvest was marred by continued attacks by Israeli settlers and the military, amid the continued expansion of illegal outposts.
Israeli military and settler violence in the occupied West Bank reached unprecedented levels last month, with more than 2,000 assaults reported, the Palestinian Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission said Tuesday.
The attacks in October coincided with the olive harvest, the season stretching from late September to early November and often sees a spate of harassment and attacks.
Commission head Muayyad Shaaban stated that the Israeli army carried out 1,584 assaults, while settlers committed 766, the majority of which were concentrated in the governorates of Ramallah (542), Nablus (412), and Hebron (401).
Shaaban said the attacks ranged from direct physical assaults, uprooting trees, setting olive groves on fire, preventing olive harvesters from reaching their lands, seizing properties, and demolishing homes.
This was happening while Israeli forces closed off vast areas of Palestinian land under military pretexts, he said, allowing settlers to operate with impunity in these areas.
“These escalating violations confirm that what is happening is not a series of isolated incidents, but rather a systematic policy aimed at emptying the land of its inhabitants and imposing a comprehensive colonial and racist regime,” Shaaban said, as quoted by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, The New Arab’s sister site.
He described the 766 settler attacks as state-sponsored terrorism, “planned in the dark rooms of the [Israeli] occupation government, while the terrorist militias carry out the execution with a complete disregard for basic moral and human principles”.
He stressed that, “these crimes require a firm international stance that protects the Palestinian people and saves the world from its ongoing moral crisis”.
This “settler terrorism” led to the death of a resident from the town of Deir Jarir, bringing the number of Palestinians killed by settlers since the start of 2025 to 14.
Extremist Israeli settlers carried out 352 acts of vandalism and theft targeting Palestinian properties, and uprooted, destroyed, and poisoned 1,200 olive trees across the West Bank, revealed Shaaban.
On Tuesday, footage emerged showing a man in military fatigues pointing his weapon and firing a shot into the air near a group of volunteers at an olive harvest, which included American rabbis.
A drone had hovered above the volunteers near the village of Deir Istiya, before falling on one of them and injuring her arm.
According to the footage, two men in Israeli military fatigue arrived at the scene to collect the drone after it fell.
The Israeli army had initially claimed that volunteers downed the drone by throwing rocks at it before later backtracking.
According to The Times of Israel, the Israeli army said it was investigating the incident.
Outposts and settlements
Shaaban said the settlers have also attempted to establish seven new outposts since the start of October, most of which are agricultural settlements.
Used for grazing animals, pastoral outposts have sprung up in the West Bank in recent years.
These settlements aim to seize control of empty hill areas in Area C, a zone that is the fully Israeli-controlled territory, but the illegal outposts have since expanded deeper into other West Bank areas, reaching Areas A and B – zones fully or partially under Palestinian authority.
These outposts have become centres for organised attacks against Palestinians in their homes or whilst traveling along nearby roads.
“The recent surge in attempts to establish settlement outposts can only be understood as the result of clear instructions from the political leadership of the occupying state, aimed at imposing new realities on the ground and further fragmenting Palestinian geography,” Shaaban said.
The commission also said Israeli authorities seized a total of 244,816 dunams (244.816 square kilometres) during the past month through 13 military orders, aimed at creating “buffer zones” around the Jewish settlements in the governorates of Ramallah, Nablus, Qalqilya, Salfit, and Tulkarem.
Shaaban revealed that Israeli forces carried out 25 demolitions in October, including 15 inhabited homes, as he pointed to a sharp rise in demolitions particularly in the Hebron and Jerusalem governorates.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are deemed illegal under international law, but Israel continues to build and expand them, despite drawing fury from its closest Western allies.
The current far-right government and the Knesset have taken further steps to annex the occupied Palestinian territory.
Despite his administration being a staunch supporter of Israel, US President Donald Trump warned last month that Israel would lose its crucial backing from the United States if it annexed the West Bank.
Many Palestinians wish to see the West Bank, occupied East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip as part of a future state of theirs – something the Israeli government has outright refused.
