Settler Attacks Turn West Bank Olive Harvest Into Daily Terror for Palestinian Villages

Palestinian villages across the occupied West Bank have become open-air prisons of fear as armed Israeli settlers, emboldened by new illegal outposts, launch relentless attacks that have turned the sacred olive harvest season into a period of dread and violence.

In the village of Turmus Ayya north of Ramallah, farmers no longer linger under their trees with family picnics. They now race against time, harvesting in small, nervous groups while constantly scanning the hilltops. A recently established illegal outpost on privately owned village land has brought settlers within striking distance, allowing them to mobilise in minutes via WhatsApp groups, hide among olive groves, and ambush anyone daring to tend their fields.

October witnessed the highest level of settler violence ever documented by the United Nations, averaging eight confirmed attacks every single day — arson against vehicles, vandalism of mosques, destruction of factories and the uprooting of centuries-old olive trees. The onslaught continued into November with at a similar pace, with the UN logging at least 136 additional incidents in the first three weeks alone, marking 2024 as one of the most violent years on record.

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A particularly brutal assault on 70-year-old grandmother Afaf Abu Alia from nearby Al-Mughayyir village shocked even seasoned observers: video footage showed a settler repeatedly striking the motionless woman with a spiked club after she had been loaned trees to harvest. Though the attacker was unusually charged with terrorism, rights groups stress such accountability is the exception — only 3% of investigations into settler violence since 2005 have ended in convictions, while probes have plummeted under Israel’s far-right security cabinet.

With outposts sprouting weekly and settlers openly patrolling valleys in armed vehicles and drones, Palestinian communities have been forced into desperate self-defence: mosque loudspeakers blare emergency sirens at the first sighting of intruders, young men rush to form human barriers at village entrances, and farmers now every farmer carries a phone camera hoping to document attacks that rarely lead to justice — a grim testament to the near-total impunity settlers enjoy in the occupied territory.

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