Updated November 10, 2025 at 8:50 AM PST
AL MAZRA AS-SHARQIYA, West Bank — Olives and dates are the pride and joy of Palestinian farmers, and autumn is the time of year they're picked.
But this season, the simple act of picking olives is dangerous.
Extremist Israeli settlers have been carrying out attacks on olive harvesters at levels not seen in years. Israel has deported some U.S. volunteers trying to defend the harvesters.
Date farmers have been spared that violence but face other challenges: Israeli army searches, Palestinian thieves, drought, and a war over water with settlers.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a season of festivity is overshadowed by fear.
Israeli settlers target cars and journalists
Journalists with Reuters and Agence France Press have been attacked by Israeli settlers during this olive harvest, the Foreign Press Association in Israel and the Palestinian Territories said in a statement Monday.
On Oct. 10, settlers with sticks beat a veteran AFP photographer filming the olive harvest, pelting his car with stones and setting it on fire, with Israeli forces refusing to intervene and firing rubber bullets and tear gas at olive pickers and accompanying activists, the FPA said. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Nov. 8, dozens of settlers beat a female Reuters reporter while she was on the ground, resulting in severe injuries, the FPA said.
"The Foreign Press Association is appalled by recent attacks by Israeli settlers against journalists while reporting in the occupied West Bank and calls on Israeli authorities to halt this violence immediately," the statement said. "Journalists, both local and foreign, have proven to be a clear target as they document an unprecedented level of unchecked violence against Palestinians during this year's olive harvest."
One October afternoon, as a Palestinian harvester drove NPR journalists up a hilly village road through olive groves, two teenage Israeli settlers walked out of the open fields into the middle of the road ahead, facing the car as it drove up the road. One of them carried a long object.
Fearing the car could come under attack, the driver backed down the steep village road, finding another way out.
"We want to live in peace"
The United Nations' humanitarian affairs office says October saw the most Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians since it started tracking such incidents nearly 20 years ago, with more than half of these attacks targeted at people trying to harvest their olive trees.
It recorded more than 260 Israeli settler attacks last month that resulted in casualties, property damage or both — injuring at least 140 Palestinians and vandalizing some 4,200 trees.
In one of those attacks in a nearby village, a settler attacked a woman in her 50s who was picking olives, beating her over the head with a club, as caught on video. Israeli police on Sunday said they arrested a suspect in the incident.
"We want to live in peace. We don't want this war, and we want to be able to get to our land, and to have a better life than what we have right now," says Mohammed Hijaz, who harvests olives to make oil for sale and for his own use.
Footage shows some of the settler attacks have been in the presence of Israeli soldiers who did not step in to stop the violence.
The Israeli military told NPR it seeks to prevent friction during the olive harvest season, and in some areas only allows Palestinians to access their groves through a coordinated process.
Settlers squat in the hills
One recent morning, a large group of Palestinian farmers waited at the top of their hilly village of Al Mazra as-Sharqiya for Israeli soldiers to let them drive to their olive groves.
"He's standing over there. That's one of them," Hijaz said, pointing to a settler tending sheep across the valley.
Abdel Samed Abdelaziz, the village mayor, spoke with one of the soldiers blocking the road. "He said for us, wait, wait, wait, wait. Because settlers [are] over there," Abdelaziz said.
Israeli settlers have spread out across the hills, some squatting in small rustic homes Palestinians built alongside their olive groves.
When the soldiers give the all clear, farmers and international volunteers get in pickup trucks with buckets and rakes, and drive down the village road, through hills carpeted in olive trees. On the way, they pass an Israeli settler shepherd and his flock of sheep. The settler is squatting in the home of a Palestinian farmer.
Olives drop like rain
In their family-owned grove of 55 olive trees, gas station owners Maha and Ghaleb Hamid and their two sons got to work quickly — afraid to linger too long in the fields.
They spread tarps under an olive tree and raked the branches, the olives dropping down to the tarps like rain.
The little home they built near the grove was vandalized. They say settlers stole a water pump.
In past years, they'd bring their daughters and grandchildren, making the olive harvest a fun family affair. It's too dangerous to bring them now.
U.S. activists attacked and deported
This year, U.S., Israeli and international volunteer activists have joined Palestinian olive harvesters as a "protective presence" to defend Palestinians from Israeli settler attacks.
Israel has deported some of these activists in recent weeks, including U.S. Jewish activists with the Rabbis for Human Rights peace group, who were deported for entering an area Israel declared a closed military zone.
In a statement, Israeli police said the deportations are to prevent activists from staging "provocations" that "harm Israel's image around the world."
On Nov. 4, settlers flew a drone that struck and injured a rabbi volunteer during one olive harvest, and fired shots in the air next to the volunteers, as documented on video.
"We demand that the attackers be held accountable for their actions and that the Israeli government use its authority to end such provocations and attacks," said organizations of U.S. rabbis from the progressive Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements in a joint statement.
Fewer olives are being harvested now
At an olive press in the neighboring Turmus Ayya village, a conveyor belt processes farmers' freshly picked olives. They're washed, crushed and pressed into a bright yellow oil.
"There's a ceasefire in Gaza, but as far as we are concerned in the West Bank, we haven't seen the effects of the ceasefire," said village municipality spokesman Yaser Alkam. "The settlers' attacks increased. They have machine guns. A lot of people are intimidated, and fear going into their own land."
Palestinian-Americans flew in from the U.S. especially to pick their families' olives, but families are not harvesting all their trees this year.
"My grandpa used to sell olive oil in the States, but this year he's not taking any to the States," said Adam Gunaim, 19, visiting from Orange County, Calif. "Most of the olive trees are where the settlers are. If we go, they start shooting."
Since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, more than a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, according to the U.N.
The joys and challenges of the date harvest
From the West Bank's highest hilltops, you can drive close to the lowest point you can walk on Earth — an area of the Dead Sea, around 1,400 feet below sea level — for another harvest this season.
Next to the Dead Sea, bordering Jordan, are palm trees full of ripe Medjool dates.
It takes about a month and a half for the unripe yellow fruit to turn brown. At the Al-Qutub date farm in the village of Al-Auja, farmer Nader Maali and his workers use a forklift to pick the dates from the tops of their 2,000 trees.
There hasn't been any Israeli settler violence reported around the date harvest this year, but date farmers work in a tense, militarized environment.
Israeli air force fighter jets rumble frequently above the trees. Soldiers came to Maali's farm this season, interrogating and searching his farmhands.
Israeli settlers have tried to lay claim to a natural water spring nearby. A drought this winter has left farmers with drier dates.
Abroad, a high demand for Palestinian dates
Rift Valley Farms, a date farm and packing house run by Palestinian women in the Jordan Valley, is packing about 10 million dates this season. It uses artificial intelligence technology to scan each and every date for quality control.
The company ships organic and conventional dates grown in the area to Europe, Australia and New Zealand. It has organic certification from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with hopes for a higher yield of dates in the future to be able to expand its market to the United States.
Since the Gaza war broke out, there's been high consumer demand abroad for Palestinian dates, said Alia Khatib, deputy CEO of Rift Valley Farms.
Just like olives, they're a symbol.
Nuha Musleh contributed reporting from the West Bank.
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