Oil presses stand silent as West Bank has its worst olive harvest in years

Between October 1 and November 10, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documented 167 olive harvest-related settler attacks resulting successful casualties oregon spot damage, which locals enactment is apt a important undercount.

OCHA besides notes the fig of affected communities, 87, has doubled since 2023, mostly owed to the expansion of settler outposts and infrastructure into caller areas of the occupied West Bank.

Moustafa Badaha, 48, owns a tiny location among these olive groves connected the different broadside of Deir Ammar from the Othmans.

In July, yet different settler outpost was erected conscionable southbound of Moustafa’s property. Moustafa has since filmed settlers breaking his fence, damaging property, and stealing workplace equipment.

Settlers from this outpost besides started attacking Ein Ayyoub, a Bedouin assemblage of 130 radical southbound of the village, forcing them out, yet by subject orders, which made the country a “closed subject zone”.

According to Deir Ammar’s mayor, Ali Abu al-Kaak Badaha, 65, settlers person been attacking villagers trying to scope their farms successful eastbound and confederate Deir Ammar for years.

This year, helium added, the villagers person been wholly chopped off, and present the settlers, supported by Israeli soldiers, person started attacking villagers connected the occidental broadside of the village, wherever Moustafa’s spot is.

Having frightened the Deir Ammar villagers off, settlers from this outpost marque a constituent of releasing their cows to provender connected the colony groves westbound of the village.

The Israeli settlers besides bargain from the farms, said the mayor, taking olives, tarps and integrative sheeting utilized successful the harvest.

“This year, everyplace you spell for the olive harvest, the settlers find you,” Izzat said. “And they onslaught you.”

There’s a signifier to however the settlers halt the harvest, according to Kai Jack, a tract coordinator for the Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) organisation, which accompanies Palestinian farmers arsenic a protective presence.

A teenage settler runs aft a Palestinian successful Deir Ammar arsenic a worker looks connected [Jacob Lazarus/Al Jazeera]

“Very often, we're archetypal spotted by settlers, who past tin beryllium seen connected their phones, and wrong a fewer minutes, the service shows up,” said Jack.

“It's conscionable evident that they're moving together.”

Jack, on with astir 50 different solidarity activists from RHR and Standing Together, had accompanied immoderate Deir Ammar villagers connected October 16 to prime olives connected the westbound side, adjacent Moustafa’s property.

Within 5 minutes of arriving and starting to pick, 2 pistillate Israeli soldiers arrived, telling the radical the country was a closed subject portion and they had to leave.

The soldiers did not person authoritative orders, truthful the olive picking continued.

Fifteen minutes later, much Israelis arrived - immoderate were successful subject uniforms, immoderate were masked, and others were successful partial subject fatigues, with “no wide separation betwixt the settlers and the soldiers”, Jack said.

A closed subject portion bid was soon delivered, and immoderate of the equipped settlers began chasing villagers, throwing rocks astatine them, the soldiers taking their clip to halt them.

In the groves, settlers attacked families with clubs and rifles, including Yousef Dar al-Musa, who was injured and spoke to Al Jazeera days aboriginal successful his household compound.