Individuals identified as settlers attacked a delegation that included European diplomats, a French mayor, and the Archbishop of Cambrai in the West Bank community of Taybeh, leaving three people injured and one vehicle damaged during what witnesses described as a Palestinian olive harvest on privately held land.
Wearing the tricolour mayoral sash that marked his office, Bernard Baudoux — the elected head of Aulnoye-Aymeries — had just extended his hand toward the door of a vehicle bearing diplomatic plates when a person approached and knocked him to the ground. Among the seven individuals present — some carrying clubs, others bearing weapons — threats were directed at both Baudoux's wife and Vincent Dollmann, who served as Archbishop of Cambrai.
Alongside the French consul general in Jerusalem, his wife, a number of other diplomats, and the Belgian and Polish consuls, the group took part in the olive harvest on land belonging to Taybeh, a Christian town. Baudoux, a visitor from northern France, had come to Taybeh to take part in a twinning ceremony formally connecting his home town with the local community.
A group carrying out work on the lower hillside terrain near Taybeh also came under attack from settlers. Alongside taking olives from the property, the group physically attacked a Palestinian woman in her seventies and left a man requiring six stitches to close a head wound. During the attack, individuals breached a window of the armoured vehicle allocated to the Belgian diplomatic mission.
Maxime Prévot, serving as Belgium's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, spoke out against the violence directed at Palestinians, visiting diplomats, and members of the press, adding that Belgium would continue pressing for EU-level sanctions targeting settlers. In a statement, Prévot said that harvesting olives, practising journalism, or performing diplomatic work ought to carry no risk of physical harm, and that the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territory, tied in his view to what he described as an unlawful settlement policy, needed to come to an end.
Father Bashar Fawadleh, the parish priest in Taybeh, observed that while residents there had endured a pattern of intensifying attacks from settler groups over many years, foreign diplomats had not previously been among the targets, and that the day's events were not an aberration. Fawadleh described the incident as an intensification of violence carried out by settlers.
Reports of confrontations between Israeli settlers and Palestinian farmers have surfaced throughout the annual olive harvest period, which typically gets under way in late September, with growers describing interference that has left families unable to bring in a crop their communities depend on for both income and livelihood. According to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation, people living in settlements carried out upwards of 170 documented incidents of violence in the period following 27 September. Palestinian authorities reported four people dead, more than 100 others injured, and thousands of trees damaged.
New regulations put in place during the current season barred Palestinians from accessing olive trees situated within Area C — the portion of the West Bank, covering most of its farmland, that falls under Israeli military administration — a development that curtailed what farmers could bring in from the harvest.
Fawadleh noted that acts of violence had taken place in front of international observers — including activists, diplomats, clergy, and journalists from Israel — and questioned what protection remained for local families and farmers once those witnesses were absent, adding that no one should face physical harm simply for harvesting olives on their own land. Separately, on Friday, Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine sustained injuries while covering the harvest in Abu Falah. A hospital spokesperson at Beilinson confirmed that Levine underwent an operation that morning and was listed in a moderate condition as of the latest update.
A formal denunciation of the attacks came from foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar, who also noted that police had launched an inquiry into the matter. A statement from Sa'ar noted that foreign diplomats venturing into the occupied West Bank without prior military coordination faced a potential threat of assault from Israeli civilians.
A diplomatic source speaking on condition of anonymity stated that requiring advance notification of travel from diplomats runs counter to established diplomatic conventions and applicable international law, adding that because Israel holds security responsibility across Areas B and C — which together encompass the bulk of the West Bank — it carries an obligation to ensure the safety of all those present in those territories.
Ehud Barak, a former prime minister, called on the International Criminal Court to step in, pointing to what he described as a pattern of largely unchecked violence by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Eisenkot, an opposition figure and retired military commander with ambitions to replace Benjamin Netanyahu at the upcoming election, characterised the incident as state-sanctioned violence carried out by Jewish actors operating under the cover of government authority. Eisenkot has expressed support for Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank while also calling for a halt to violence carried out by settlers, arguing in a quoted statement that such attacks undermine both the settlement project and national security.
