Israeli settlers beat Palestinian farmers in video as mountain attacks during Western Olive harvest
Ramallah, West Bank (AP) – Israeli settlers descended on Palestinian olive harvesters this week in Israel’s West Bank, beating them with club-shaped clubs and sending at least one to the hospital.
The attack on Sunday in the town of Turmus Ayya, captured on video obtained by the Associated Press, comes as Palestinians say settler violence in the region is getting worse. The United Nations and rights groups have raised the alarm as the harvest year begins and Palestinian farmers are at greater risk during the olive harvest.
“The recent violence has increased in scale and frequency,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the Palestinian Authority for Human Rights, said in a statement released on Tuesday. “Two weeks into the beginning of the 2025 harvest, we have already seen heavy attacks by artestine residents, women, children and foreign solidarity activists.”
In one of the videos obtained by the AP, a man was seen running through an olive grove and hitting at least two people with a club, including a woman as she lay on the ground. The set man was seen wearing a tzitzit, a traditional Jewish garment.
The woman was admitted to hospital with serious injuries, said the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Palestine.
In a separate video, more than a dozen masked men were seen walking down a village road in a village on the edge of the olive grove, chasing a car. One ottimerler lowered the car and opened the door. The rider managed to escape and run away from a group of men running after him.
A third video showed flames and smoke billowing from several mangled vehicles.
Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the head of the West Bank Forces told an internal police WhatsApp group that the masked case “kept him up at night” and ordered officers to bring justice.
Israel’s military and police did not respond to an AP request for comment on the attack.
Turmus Ayya, whose people are mainly Palestinian Americans, has long been the target of submissive attacks, but residents say the violence is becoming more painful during the Hamas war. It is arranged in a valley surrounded by hills that are joined by Israeli cleaning and residential areas. As he killed in Palestine the 14-year-old Palestinian-American, Amer, by Israeli forces in the city in April protests against the violence of cleansing the violence and the hidden military failure to end the conflicts with the residents.
A large scale violence, originating in the west. The UN says that the first half of 2025 saw 757 attacks causing injury or damage to property – an increase of 13% compared to the same period last year.
The first week of the olive harvest season has seen attacks on more than 150 trees and more than 700 olive trees were removed, broken or poisoned, according to Muayyad Shaaban, who heads the position of the Palestinian Authority that monitors violence.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza strip, in the 1967 war. The Palestinians want those territories for an independent independent state. Participating organizers hold the basic Cabinet key they have donated and the residents say what is important in the West Bank.
___
Melzer was reported from Tel Aviv.
