Israeli settler militias, backed by soldiers, are laying waste to Palestinian communities – beating residents, torching crops, smashing cars, slaughtering animals. Jonathan Pollak, who accompanies Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest, recounts what he’s witnessed – and how he nearly paid for it with his life
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and twisted mouth,
The scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
– “Strange Fruit,” by Abel Meeropol
The past two years have been a period of unrestrained Israeli violence. In the Gaza Strip that violence swelled to truly monstrous proportions, but in the West Bank, too, Palestinians have suffered their share.
Every place has its own sort of violence. Here in the West Bank, Israeli violence is carried out in concert by all forces present – whether those of the army, police, Border Police, Shin Bet security service, Israel Prisons Service or settlement security coordinators, and of course, Israeli civilians. And often, these civilians carry sticks, metal pipes and stones, while others are armed with firearms. Militias operating outside of the law but within its embrace.
At times, it is the civilians who take the lead, with the official security apparatuses trailing behind them, providing cover. Sometimes it’s the other way around. The result, however, is always the same. In recent months, and more aggressively in recent weeks, since the start of the olive harvest, Israeli violence – orchestrated and organized – in the West Bank is setting new records. Such was the detrimental violence in Duma, Silwad, Nur Shams, Mu’arrajat, Kafr Malik and Mughayyir a-Deir, before the harvest even began. This is the fate of the Palestinian rural communities left to their own devices in the face of the Israeli strongholds on the frontier.
Mohammed al-Shalabi ran for his life, not yet knowing he was running toward his death, when a mob of Israelis in a gray pickup, some of them armed, pursued him and 10 others. His body was found hours later – shot in the back and marked by brutal violence.
Such was also the case for Saif a-Din Musallet, who was attacked, succeeded in fleeing for a time, and then collapsed and eventually died. He lay there unconscious and dying for hours, along with a friend who was unable to extricate him, with bands of Israeli soldiers and civilians filling the hills, still hunting for prey. Those were the harshest results of the pogrom at Jabal al-Baten, east of Ramallah, on July 11, 2025.
At those moments I didn’t yet know they were dead, but the fear of death I did know. A few hours earlier, a swarm of Israelis invaded al-Baten, and a group of young Palestinians from the nearby villages of Sinjil and al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiya set out to block them. At first the Palestinians had the upper hand, and the intruders were pushed back a little. But within a short time, Israeli reinforcements arrived in the form of a gray pickup carrying a number of armed men.
The pickup sped toward the Palestinians and hit one of them. Shortly after, as I was helping one of the young men carry the injured person, we started to run for our lives, as the days leading to this one had made what would happen to anyone who didn’t manage to escape in such situations abundantly clear.
And in fact, we did not succeed. A group of masked Israelis, armed with black police truncheons, caught up to us. The truncheons were lifted and brought down to serve blows, over and over, on the face, on the ribs, on the back, and again on the face. There was also kicking and punching, pell-mell, as the dust rose from the earth. Long moments of wild, relentless violence. With faces rendered purple and swollen like a balloon, we were also unsurprisingly the ones arrested by the soldiers when they showed up.
While we sat there, waiting to be taken to a police station, the pickup collected a few of the Israelis frolicking around the army and police jeeps, and sped in the direction of Sinjil, toward an ambulance and a civilian car whose occupants were observing the goings-on from a nearby hill. In retrospect, that was actually the start of the lynching, with all the variables of the equation of Israeli violence present: the official armed forces, the privatized ones – each in their place, playing their part.
As the hours passed, a search party set out in the pursuit of Mohammed. They did not know whether he was still alive, but Border Police troops, playing their part, prevented them from getting to the side of the hill, where his body lay lifeless and still; for their part, the pogromists went wherever they pleased. Even hours later, when I was interrogated at the police station, I didn’t know what had happened, because the officers didn’t find it fit to ask me for details about the events that led to the murder that had just occurred. It was only later when I was released that I learned about their death – two young men whose difference from me is the difference between the blue of an Israeli ID and the green of the Palestinian card.
The olive picking season was not always one attack following another, nor was it a succession of summer pogroms. Originally, the harvest was far more than an economic anchor. It was a staple of Palestinian cultural life: the family, including women and children, gathering in a natural setting; the folk songs; the cooking of qalayet bandora (a dish made with onions, tomatoes and hot peppers) over an open fire, in the shade of the trees. The assault on the olive harvest and its transformation into an affair marked by vigilance and looming disaster, goes beyond the concrete world. It’s not just a matter of pushing Palestinians out of their lands, the concrete part of ethnic cleansing. This assault is geared to subvert the emotional attachment to the land and toward cultural erasure, to the disappearance of identity. It’s not by chance that this description is reminiscent of clauses in international law that address annihilation.
The assault in which Mohammed and Saif were killed marked another horrific moment – a particularly horrific one – in a long series of pogroms. I tried – and did not manage – to recall how many funerals I’ve attended in the past several months, even before the start of the harvest, the hunting season of the apparatus of Israeli violence. And as though the violence isn’t enough, in recent years it’s been compounded by the climate collapse. Olive trees produce an abundant crop one year, followed by a year with a meager crop. This year is a meager one, aggravated by the paucity of rain last winter. The heat waves last spring dealt yet another blow: They dried out the trees and as a result many of the buds of the fruit fell off.
Entire groves lay almost entirely barren of fruit – and that’s even before we account for the mass uprooting of trees. For many farmers, the economic incentive to harvest has almost evaporated, while the mortal danger they face during the harvest just keeps mounting.
Nevertheless, and despite the persecution of the Palestinian activists and notwithstanding the threat of incarceration in Israeli detention pens, the Zeitoun 2025 campaign got underway. It is a broad coalition, ranging from the Palestinian far left to the various factions of Fatah, set to organize around the harvest and to support the farmers. In the past few months Palestinian activists mapped risk areas by level of danger, harvesters’ needs and vulnerabilities. Still, even the most stubborn of activists had to acknowledge the limited possibilities in light of the grim reality.
The night the harvest began, dozens of soldiers raided the home of Rabia Abu Naim, a key activist and one of the coordinators of the Zeitoun 2025 campaign, and placed him in administrative detention – a code name for incarceration without trial. Rabia is from al-Mughayyir, east of Ramallah, a hotspot of the worst of the violence of both Israeli militias and military forces. It was there that Mohammed and Saif were killed, and also where the sons of Sinjil, Deir Jarir, Kafr Malik and Silwad fell.
In al-Mughayyir the army recently uprooted 8,500 trees, and groups of Israelis who descended from the hills at night completed the work by savaging hundreds of trees on the other side of the village.
Some may be tempted to think the situation isn’t as bad as all that, that there is violence on both sides, that the army isn’t just standing idly by or taking an active part, that the police are indeed investigating the incidents, and that there are secret, justified reasons for Rabia’s administrative detention. Fine. Those readers are invited to continue to tell themselves stories about fairies and witches, and continue reading what follows.
If in the run-up to the olive harvest there was a steady trickle of assaults, on its first day, exactly two weeks ago, there were torrential rains.
In Jurish harvesters were attacked by Israelis with clubs and were prevented from getting to the groves on their lands. Harvesters from Akraba, in the same area, northeast of Nablus, were similarly attacked. In Duma, the village in which the Dawabsheh family was murdered in 2015, it was actually soldiers who prevented harvesters from accessing their lands, claiming that entry into those areas requires security coordination.
In Khirbet Yanun olives picked by the landowners were stolen, and they were expelled from their lands by a group of Israelis. In the village of Deir Istiya another group of Israelis abused Palestinians who were harvesting olives near a road, but the attempt to drive them away wasn’t successful. In the village of Kafr Thulth, Israelis attacked Palestinian harvesters and shepherds, and slaughtered a number of goats.
In addition, Israelis who arrived from the hills fired live ammunition at farmers from Far’ata who were harvesting olives on their lands; soldiers backed up the assailants and did not intervene. Moreover, soldiers and civilians alike later raided the village itself. In Kobar, the hometown of incarcerated Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, soldiers actually arrested harvesters who were working in their own groves. This is an incredibly partial list.
The peak of the scourge on that same day was in the town of Beita, south of Nablus – home to almost 20,000 people, which is known for its longtime tradition of resistance to Israeli rule. On that same Friday, October 10, about 150 harvesters set out together to harvest olives near a new settler outpost that was established in the area, whose members have since attacked the villagers in a series of incidents involving shooting, beatings, arson and the smashing of car windshields and windows.
The large concentration of harvesters apparently did not deter the assailants – and perhaps even encouraged them. A combined force of soldiers and civilians carried out a large-scale attack on the farmers and on their supporters. It began in the early morning, when a single family that arrived in the groves was attacked; three of its sons were wounded so badly they had to be taken to a hospital, leaving behind splotches of blood staining the dust.
In the hours that followed, the groves were inundated by landowners, on one hand, and by Israeli assailants, on the other. The violence of the Israeli civilians – who smashed and shattered using clubs and stones, and also opened fire – was supplemented by the soldiers who resorted to beatings, tear-gas and stun grenades. The people of Beita clung to their lands, but at a steep price: 20 wounded, including one young man who was hit by live fire.
Among the wounded was also a solidarity activist, who was attacked with sticks and stones, and was evacuated suffering from arm and rib fractures – and also three journalists: Jaafar Ashtiya, whose car was set ablaze and was wounded; Wahaj Bani Moufleh, whose leg was broken when a tear-gas projectile was shot at him; and Sajah al-Alami. Ashtiya’s car wasn’t the only one torched in the groves. Eight vehicles were set on fire that day, and an ambulance owned by the town of Beita was turned on its side; fortunately, a few young residents were able to get to it before the mob could torch it.
The flood of attacks continued on the days that followed, with dozens of incidents, one after another. In Burqa, near Ramallah, olive harvesters were attacked by soldiers and civilians who descended from the direction of the outpost of Givat Asaf, fired live ammunition, stole equipment and fruit that had been picked and prevented the landowners from accessing their lands without a permit.
In al-Mughayyir 150 trees were felled by a gang that descended from the hill under the cover of night and of the military siege of that community. In Khirbet Yanun locals discovered stumps of trees, and in Lubban al-Sharqiya, outside Nablus, and Turmus Ayya, near Ramallah, harvested olives were stolen from their owners. Again, in Burqa, some 300 trees were cut down and 12 dunams (3 acres) of farmland were rendered unfit for use.
In Burin, Israelis who descended from the Givat Ronen outpost attacked the harvesters and activists who accompanied them – in plain sight of soldiers deployed in the vicinity. In Duma, Israelis shot at workers building a dirt access road to groves in coordination with the military government’s Civil Administration. In the village of Naama, armed Israelis attacked the farmers and made off with the fruit they had picked.
For its part, the IDF is participating in the struggle being waged against the harvesters in a variety of ways. Sometimes troops accompany the assailants, sometimes the army turns a blind eye to incidents, and sometimes it attacks. Its soldiers also find creative ways to degrade the farmers’ staying power. For example, on October 16 the army determined that the village of Burin would become a “closed military zone.” This would seem to be standard practice: preventing access to villages’ lands on the pretext of averting “friction.”
This time, however, the military didn’t even bother with the deception. The area declared closed did not encompass farmland, but the entire built-up area of Burin. And just like that, 32 pro-Palestinian activists who had come to support the harvesters were arrested and expelled for the simple reason that they were sat in someone’s living room at his invitation.
Last Friday, October 17, groups of Israelis attacked harvesters at several sites and over several hours in the town of Silwad, east of Ramallah. The invaders also vandalized an ambulance. Nearby in the same area, a family was attacked and their tractor and car were stolen. Another group of harvesters who ascended a hill in Silwad in order to pick olives on their lands, near an Israeli outpost farm, discovered that ancient trees had been chopped down. An Israeli shepherd who encountered them called reinforcements, and again a telltale gray pickup appeared, from which an armed Israeli and some youth descended, declaring that the area was a closed military zone. A little later a military force showed up at the site and expelled the landowners and their guests – but not the interlopers, who in the meantime tried to steal sacks of olives and attacked people physically. I was there.
Shortly afterward a car of young Israelis suddenly appeared, in hot pursuit of the car I was riding in, speeding along a narrow, winding road on the edge of a cliff. Our driver sped up as well, and images of the pogrom in Jabal al-Baten ran through my mind. Fortunately, we succeeded in safely reaching the village without allowing the pursuers to overtake us.
So there you have it: Scores, indeed hundreds of incidents, big and small, one after the other. As these words are being written, masked men armed with clubs bludgeoned an elderly woman on the head in Turmus Ayya; she is suffering from intracranial bleeding and is hospitalized in Ramallah. Two activists were also pummeled; one of them needed stitches in his head. Five cars were torched in the attack; others were vandalized and smashed.
This is still only the beginning of the olive harvest, not even half of it has passed. The attacks will no doubt continue until it ends, and will not wind down afterward as well. But this is not only a story of violence and dispossession. It’s also a story of the Palestinian steadfastness, their clinging to their land and their refusal to give in or give up. Rabia, the coordinator of the Zeitoun 2025 campaign who was placed in administrative detention, had monitored many incidents involving the uprooting of trees before the harvest season began, warning that at this rate there would be nothing left to pick. “But if the olive trees in the village become extinct,” he declared, “we will harvest the oak trees. And if no acorns are left on them, we will harvest the leaves.”