DaysofPal – Once again, rising Israeli settler violence and military devastation have tainted Palestine’s olive harvest season, a time long associated with family, tradition, and perseverance. From the hills of the occupied West Bank to the devastated fields of Gaza, Palestinians say their most ancient source of livelihood is under systematic assault.
A Season of Fear and Loss
In the occupied West Bank, where the olive harvest has just begun, Palestinians face a new wave of settler attacks. The UN Human Rights Office recorded 757 assaults by Israeli settlers in the first half of 2025 alone, incidents that resulted in injuries, burned groves, and destroyed property.
Settlers have targeted farmers during harvest, uprooted ancient trees, and torched olive groves, attacks that UN officials and human rights organizations have condemned as part of a deliberate campaign to uproot Palestinian life from its land.
At the same time, Gaza’s olive-rich soil has been reduced to ash. Israel’s two-year military campaign has destroyed nearly all of Gaza’s agricultural land, once home to more than a million olive trees. Over 68,000 Palestinians have been killed, and the strip’s farmland, vital to both sustenance and identity, has become unrecognizable.
For Palestinians, olive cultivation is not merely an agricultural tradition but a reflection of cultural and spiritual endurance. Around half of all agricultural land in the occupied territories is dedicated to olives, sustaining about 100,000 families, including thousands of women farmers. In good years, olive production injects nearly $200 million into the Palestinian economy.
“It’s not just a tree,” said Mohammed Abu al-Rabb, a farmer from Jablun near Jenin. “It’s our ancestors’ legacy, and their will is for us to protect it.”
The olive tree, deeply rooted and resilient, has come to symbolize sumud, the Palestinian concept of steadfastness and perseverance, a spiritual bond between people and land that endures despite occupation and loss.
Violence and Destruction in the West Bank
Settler violence against Palestinian olive farmers is not new, but it has surged in the years since the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023.
Eyewitnesses and UN observers have documented dozens of cases where Israeli forces stood by, or directly assisted, settlers attacking Palestinian farmers. During one of the most devastating incidents in August 2025, Israeli forces uprooted 10,000 olive trees in the village of Al-Mughayyir after an alleged attack on a settler nearby. Some trees were more than a century old.
Israeli Major General Avi Bluth defended the act as “deterrence,” warning that “every village should know that if they commit an attack, they will pay a heavy price.”
Restrictions on Palestinian movement have also deepened. Farmers often receive only a few days of permission to access land that takes weeks to harvest, leaving 20 percent of crops uncollected in 2023 and resulting in $10 million in losses, according to the UN Human Rights Office.
The violence has not spared lives: in October 2024, 59-year-old Hanan Abu Salami was shot dead by Israeli forces while tending her family’s olive grove near Jenin. A UN inquest found she posed no threat and had been killed without warning.
Gaza’s Fields Turn to Dust
In Gaza, where the olive harvest once sustained entire communities, Israel’s campaign has annihilated the sector. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that 98.5 percent of agricultural land has been destroyed or rendered inaccessible by bombing.
With irrigation systems, wells, and presses obliterated, Gaza’s olive industry has collapsed. The FAO reports that 86 percent of Gaza’s agricultural wells were destroyed by mid-2025. Human rights group Al Mezan has accused Israel of committing “ecocide,” warning that toxins from destroyed infrastructure could seep into the soil and water, rendering Gaza “entirely uninhabitable.”
For many in Gaza, this year marks the third missed olive harvest, with residents burning dead olive trees for fuel amid crippling shortages.
Global outrage is growing over Israel’s targeting of agriculture. Amnesty International condemned the razing of Gaza’s fertile lands, calling it part of Israel’s “use of starvation as a method of warfare” and a key feature of what the group described as “genocidal conditions of life” imposed on Palestinians.
In the West Bank, Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office in Palestine, warned that this year’s harvest is unfolding amid “severe attacks by armed settlers against Palestinian men, women, children, and foreign solidarity activists.” He noted that settler violence has reached “unprecedented levels,” often aided or tolerated by Israeli security forces.
Sunghay underscored that the assault on the olive harvest is not only economic but also existential:
“The escalating assault on the olive harvest season is one of many Israeli aggressions designed to sever connection, to annex the land, to dispossess Palestinians, and to facilitate the expansion of illegal settlements.”
He called on UN member states to pressure Israel to protect Palestinian civilians and reverse its annexation plans.
“And yes,” he concluded, “it begins with the olives.”
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