As olive harvest nears, Palestinian farmers urgently need international protection

As olive harvest nears, Palestinian farmers urgently need international protection Submitted by Fareed Taamallah on Tue, 09/29/2026 - 14:23 Settlers armed and shielded by Israel are driving West Bank olive farmers off ancestral land.

Sanctions on a handful of them will not stop the next attack Israeli military machinery uproots olive trees in the village of Beit Rima, near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, on 24 September 2026 (Reuters/Ali Sawafta) Off Every October, the ancient olive groves in my hometown and across the occupied West Bank become dynamic hubs of life and labour.

For generations of Palestinians, the olive harvest has been the pulse of our economic survival and a living link to our ancestors.

The olive tree, resilient and deep-rooted, is a symbol of who we are and of our connection to this land. As this year's harvest approaches, our villages are gripped by a dread I have not seen before.

In recent weeks, the situation across the West Bank has deteriorated sharply. Military raids, arbitrary road closures and daily incursions by armed settler militias have turned our countryside into a militarised zone.

This season is shaping up to be worse than any we have faced. With Israeli elections set for 27 October, political factions are openly competing over who can strike the most aggressive posture towards Palestinians.

Settlers are better armed than ever, equipped with assault rifles and military gear, and backed by state institutions.

Before a single olive has been picked, settler violence has already reached record levels, with the UN recording an average of more than six attacks a day in August. This terror hits close to home.

In my village of Qira, in the Salfit governorate, my family and neighbours await the harvest with deep anxiety.

Our ancestral groves, like those in surrounding villages, are targeted by the illegal settlements and outposts around them.

Harvesting our own trees, once an act of love and sustenance, has become a high-risk undertaking in which simply being present in the fields invites harassment, physical attack or expulsion.

The political climate inside Israel has turned our groves into battlegrounds.

Extremist settlers act with impunity because they know they have the structural backing of the state, the legal shield of military law and the direct protection of the Israeli army.

State-backed militias To understand what is happening in Palestinian fields, one must first dismantle the false narrative that settler attacks are mere "vigilantism" or "friction" between civilians.

Illegal Israeli settlers operate as a paramilitary arm of the Israeli state, carrying out ideological land grabs and violence with political cover and state sanction, often doing what the regular army cannot.

Settlers are systematically armed, funded and protected by official institutions. Ministers in the Israeli government openly champion, finance and encourage settlement expansion and outpost construction.

When armed settler militias descend on Palestinian groves in Qira or anywhere else in the West Bank, they are executing the state's broader policy of forcible transfer and territorial expansion.

Across the West Bank, October 2025 alone saw 264 settler attacks, an average of 8.5 a day, making it the most violent month since OCHA began collecting data in 2006 When masked settlers attack farmers with iron rods, chainsaws and live ammunition, the military does not disarm or arrest them.

Soldiers regularly stand guard, providing operational cover.

If Palestinian villagers try to defend their families or protect their trees, the army turns its weapons on the victims, firing tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and live rounds at farmers.

Settlers provide the physical violence required to push Palestinians off the land. The state provides the weapons, the political immunity and the legal mechanisms to seal off the newly seized territory.

The scale of this campaign is documented in detail by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

During last year's harvest, OCHA recorded 178 harvest-related settler attacks across 88 Palestinian towns and villages, four times the number of communities affected in 2020.

Across the West Bank, October 2025 alone saw 264 settler attacks, an average of 8.5 a day, making it the most violent month since OCHA began collecting data in 2006.

More than 6,000 olive trees and saplings were vandalised over the year. Land dispossession This year is on course to be worse.

According to the Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, 49,000 olive trees were targeted in the first eight months of 2026, nearly double the figure for the same period last year.

Around 100,000 West Bank families depend on olive income, and exports bring almost $200m into the Palestinian economy in a good year.

Beyond destroying trees, organised groups of settlers invade our groves to steal picked olives, confiscate harvesting tools, destroy storage sheds, cut irrigation pipes and vandalise vehicles.

This violence works hand in hand with a bureaucratic system designed to strip us of our land through occupation law.

The Israeli military routinely declares vast swathes of Palestinian farmland adjacent to settlements, outposts and settler-only bypass roads to be closed military zones, cutting off access overnight.

Some 128,000 dunams of agricultural land have been inaccessible to their owners under permit restrictions since October 2023.

Farmers are either barred from reaching their trees altogether or restricted to a one- or two-day window during the harvest under a "prior coordination" mechanism.

Permission is often granted only after the olives have rotted on the branch or been stolen.

Under military regulations and Ottoman-era property law co-opted by the Israeli Civil Administration, land declared "state land", or left uncultivated because farmers were blocked from reaching it, is confiscated.

By using settler violence and military orders to physically prevent us from farming, the state creates the legal pretext it needs to absorb our groves into expanding settlement boundaries.

We do not lack resilience or devotion to our soil. What we lack is basic physical protection.

In Qira, as in hundreds of villages across the West Bank, unarmed families stand defenceless before state-backed paramilitary groups.

To save our livelihoods and preserve our presence on our ancestral land, the international community must move from symbolic gestures to enforcement.

Symbolic gestures In recent weeks, a group of western states, including the UK, France and Canada, has announced bans on trade with Israeli settlements and sanctions on individual extremist settlers and settlement-linked entities.

These measures are a step in the right direction, but they fall drastically short of the scale of our reality. Sanctioning a handful of individuals ignores the state that arms and directs them.

A trade ban on settlement products, or a visa ban on a few individuals, will not stop an armed group from descending on our groves in Qira tomorrow morning.

These measures do not alter the calculus of a state that protects the aggressor and criminalises the victim.

In defence of Israel's Jewish settlers in the West Bank Read More » As long as the political, military and economic architecture behind the settlement enterprise remains intact and unpunished, diplomatic statements will fail to protect a single olive tree or save a single farmer's life.

We urgently call for an independent international protection force, or an expanded civilian observer presence, deployed directly to the agricultural zones most exposed to attack, including villages like Qira, throughout the West Bank during the olive harvest.

Western governments must go further than partial measures and impose full arms embargoes, comprehensive sanctions and a complete boycott of the Israeli state institutions, military units, companies and financial entities that arm, direct or profit from settlement expansion and the infrastructure of occupation.

The International Criminal Court, which has already issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders over Gaza, must expedite its investigation into state-sponsored land theft, forced displacement and settler violence as war crimes and crimes against humanity.

An olive tree takes decades to mature. A chainsaw or a canister of petrol in the hands of an armed settler can destroy centuries of heritage in seconds.

Every unharvested olive and every burned tree is a deliberate attempt to force us off our land. As another harvest approaches under the shadow of state-sponsored violence, the world cannot afford to look away.

We demand action, accountability and international protection before our land is emptied of its trees and its people.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

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