Groups of settlers moved through multiple West Bank villages on the afternoon of 16 October, with witnesses reporting that residents and members of the press were beaten while vehicles and olive trees were set alight. Families whose income rested on olive cultivation found their trees standing unpicked at the close of the annual harvest window, the attacks having disrupted the season entirely.
Incidents were recorded across several villages in the Ramallah area — among them Abu Falah, Turmus Ayya, and Burqa — at a time when residents had come out to bring in their olive harvests. Roughly 80 individuals wearing black face coverings entered an olive grove in Abu Falah, according to one broadcaster's account. Among the group, gas canisters were deployed by some, while others launched rocks toward Palestinians by way of slings.
On camera, a press photographer captured the moment at least one settler discharged a firearm. When military jeeps reached the scene, the unrest had not subsided, with troops deploying tear gas in the direction of the Palestinian crowd.
Levine, a photojournalist working for a prominent news outlet, sustained injuries alongside others in the incident. Speaking from a hospital bed in a television interview, she described how a group of settlers had knocked her to the ground and repeatedly kicked her. Colleagues who shared her workspace stepped in, after which she was brought first to a nearby clinic and then transferred for further care at a Ramallah hospital.
Two individuals — a woman aged 63 and a man aged 40 — were transported to hospital following an assault in Abu Falah, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. Accounts from Palestinian sources indicated that one individual sustained a gunshot wound to the leg.
According to a report from the Palestinian news agency WAFA, the incident near Turmus Ayya — a town situated northeast of Ramallah — left three vehicles owned by local Palestinian residents burned out, while people gathering the olive harvest in that area were also physically attacked. Among the items affected, according to reports, were olive trees and a vehicle used by Civil Defence volunteers.
According to Salah Abu Niswa, who observed the incident firsthand, the attackers moved toward a group of farmers and struck one man after he became isolated from the others. Four people of Palestinian nationality sustained injuries near the Khallet Ali area of Burqa after a group of settlers confronted olive harvesters there, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
Three agricultural workers from the Palestinian community sustained injuries when armed individuals targeted farmland in Asira al-Qibliya, a village located south of Nablus. In a separate incident north of Ramallah, a 70-year-old Palestinian man was beaten and a number of parked vehicles were vandalised by Israeli settlers in the area stretching between Birzeit and Burham.
Near the village of Deir Ballut, within Salfit governorate, a group of settlers confronted agricultural workers and took a vehicle key from them. The personnel directed the cultivators to vacate the land, adding that any attempt to come back would be met with gunfire.
WAFA reported that people gathering olives at farming plots near al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya, a village situated to the south of Nablus, were directed to leave by Israeli military personnel, who subsequently took possession of the harvested olives. Mustafa Ghazi Zaraa, a young Palestinian resident of Kafr Ni'ma on the western outskirts of Ramallah, was taken into custody by Israeli forces following a reported physical confrontation involving him and his family members, who had also been blocked from carrying out an olive harvest on their land.
Personnel from the IDF and Israel Border Police were sent to the vicinity of Khirbet Abu Falah on Friday after accounts of a violent confrontation reached authorities. A reporter sustained injuries during the event, according to a statement put out by the armed forces. The statement from the IDF noted that crowd-control methods were deployed to bring the confrontation to an end.
Troops at a second site discharged alert rounds before directing fire at an individual who, according to accounts, advanced toward them bearing an edged object and presenting a perceived threat. According to a statement from the IDF, police and forensic teams were to be deployed to review the events, gather physical evidence, and take accounts from witnesses. A pledge to cooperate with the relevant authorities on tackling such incidents accompanied a formal rejection of violence directed at civilians.
United Nations figures covering the current olive harvest showed that incidents of violence against Palestinian farmers had already surpassed the full-season count from the year before, a tally reached even as the attacks continued. Data gathered by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs put harvest-linked incidents at upwards of 200, a figure that outpaced the 185 tallied across the 2025 season, as Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, conveyed to reporters.
Haq's account put the toll at one Palestinian fatality and upwards of 120 people wounded, with tree losses across the olive groves reaching more than 2,500 plants and seedlings combined. Roughly four in every five of those cases fell within the fortnight beforehand.
In a separate disclosure, the Palestinian Authority body that monitors settlement activity and barrier construction reported having catalogued 136 incidents connected to the olive harvest in the period from early October onward. Each set of numbers originates from a distinct reporting process, meaning they cannot be added together to produce a combined figure.
Documented obstacles — spanning both physical entry barriers and accounts of violence — have left olive grove cultivation by Palestinian farmers a contested and intermittently halted undertaking. Limits on Palestinian farmers' ability to reach certain agricultural plots within Israeli-administered territory — including zones classified under the Area C designation — were documented by a broadcast outlet, while the UN noted that its humanitarian partners had deployed equipment and supplies to support those farmers, tracked constraints on reaching orchards near settlements and on the far side of the separation barrier, and extended legal support to those affected.
Around three million Palestinians and several hundred thousand Israeli settlers both reside in the West Bank, a territory under military occupation. Under international law, the housing developments Israel has established across Palestinian land are treated as violations by the UN and most of the world's governments — a legal assessment that Israeli authorities contest.
