A Palestinian commission has documented 409 attacks on olive harvesters in the occupied West Bank in the first three weeks of October, as this year's harvest has been marked by sharply increased violence and, according to farmers and rights groups, widespread theft of the crop itself.

Source: Petra via Fana News — CWRC statement, 22 Oct 2026

The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CWRC) said armed Israeli settlers carried out 317 of the attacks between October 1 and 21, while Israeli forces were responsible for 92. The incidents included preventing farmers from reaching their fields, physical assaults, forced expulsions, crop theft and the destruction of trees and equipment, the commission said.

Nablus governorate recorded the highest number at 166 incidents, followed by Salfit with 91 and Ramallah and al-Bireh with 69 — Nablus and Salfit together accounting for about 63 percent of the total. The commission said 287 incidents directly targeted farmers, including 50 physical assaults, 18 arrests during harvesting and 11 shooting incidents. It said Ali Hassan Al-Bazzari, from Burqa north of Nablus, was killed after being shot by settlers while harvesting olives on October 7.

Olives carried off to a settler press

In Lubban al-Gharbi, Palestinian farmer Ahmed Salem told Reuters that settlers hit his olive trees with sticks and drove off with the olives, dumping them into sacks and taking them to a nearby settler outpost to be pressed into oil. “How would you feel if something that belonged to you was being violated, and you could do nothing about it?” the 50-year-old said.

Source: Reuters, 22 Oct 2026

Israeli rights group Yesh Din said on Wednesday it had recorded 125 physical attacks on Palestinian olive harvesters in the 24 days since the season began and 168 incidents of crop theft, with Israeli military forces present in at least a quarter of cases. Its executive director, Ziv Stahl, said restrictions near the hundreds of small settler outposts established since 2022 mean Palestinians often cannot enter their own groves, while “settlers can come and go freely.”

Another farmer, Samer Ben Shamsi from Beita near Nablus, told Reuters masked settlers attacked him on October 9 and sped away with his harvest after he and other farmers fled. “We pay in blood for the olives,” he said. Palestinian authorities say three Palestinians have been killed during this year's harvest.

Israel's response

An Israeli military official told Reuters it takes acts of violence, criminal activity and attempts to undermine security very seriously, but did not comment on the reports of olive theft in the presence of the military. Israel says it is investigating some of the incidents. An Israeli government spokesperson said olives “picked by a Jew in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people” did not constitute theft, and added that no one should take the law into their own hands.

The couple at the outpost whose press settlers have urged Israelis to use declined Reuters requests for comment, and the Yesha Council, which oversees settlements, did not immediately respond. UN bodies and most countries deem Israeli settlements on land occupied in 1967 illegal under international law; Israel rejects this, viewing the territory as disputed rather than occupied. Reuters reported the attacks have accelerated ahead of an Israeli election next week.