Harvesting Death: How Olive Groves Became A Battlefield In Palestine

“If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them/ Their oil would become tears,” wrote Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, speaking of the deep sorrow of the Palestinians, whose hands have planted countless trees in homes that are no longer theirs. The olive is intertwined closely with not just their livelihood but also their culture, reflected in art, poetry, and literature.  It represents the resilience of the Palestinian people in the face of adversary.  

Harvesting is a ritual where families gather beneath the groves to pick olives, press for oil, and celebrate their connection to the land. This year, that ritual has turned into a battleground. 

Olive harvest in the West Bank is from September to November. But this season, harvesting has become the flashpoint for attacks by armed Israeli settlers backed by the army to disrupt the celebrations and damage the olive harvest.  

Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian physician, activist and politician says that over 48,000 olive trees were destroyed in the West Bank by the Israeli settlers in the last two years.  Uprooting olive trees directly hits at the livelihood of the Palestinians and deprives them of their means of living. 

“While the world focused on Gaza, Israel has waged a silent war in the occupied West Bank; marked by land seizure, mass arrests, settler violence, economic strangulation, and policies aimed at making life unlivable for Palestinians,” says Abdullah Abu Shawesh, Palestine’s ambassador to India. “Over 10,000 arrested, more than 1,070 killed since October 2023, and thousands displaced under daily settler attacks. This is an undeclared war, systematic, deliberate, and designed to empty the land of its people,” he adds. 

Expanding settlements on the West Bank was always a Zionist aim, successive governments had done so. But the process has now been accelerated, and settlers emboldened by political backing from powerful members of the Benjamin Netanyahu cabinet like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. They encourage settlers to assault Palestinians and openly call for the annexation of the West Bank. The religious rightwing believes in the Biblical Promised land and think that the time has come to establish what was promised in the Holy book.  

“The West Bank is supposed to be the heart of Israel according to the Old Testament, thousands of years ago, Israel was established or founded in what is now known as the West Bank,” says Muhammad Makram Balawi, a Jordian-Palestinian academic. “In their concept the West Bank is more important than Tel Aviv, Haifa and other cities.  So, from their perspective, their project will not be completed unless they have full control of the West Bank, that will be either 100 percent or at least a majority Jewish.  Up to now 50 per cent or more are Palestinian, so what they are aiming at is to make a two-state solution impossible,” Balawi explains. Netanyahu himself has recently again reiterated that he does not believe in a two-state solution.  

Balawi  goes on to say that Israel is using various tactics to push out Palestinians. Besides extending their settlements, Israel is working on a plan to block roads to separate cities and villages and break the continuity of land held by Palestinians.   

“The situation on the ground is out of control,” Anton Goodman of Rabbis for Human Rights said on a Haaretz Podcast. “We have never seen anything like this,” Goodman emphasized, noting that in the past, “We’ve seen settler attacks, and we’ve seen unnecessary army aggression and restrictions, but we’ve never seen such a peak moment of violence affecting so many communities.” 

Having razed Gaza to the ground, making the land uninhabitable, the focus now is on the West Bank. What had once been a creeping expansion has now become a brazen land grab, pushing the West Bank to the edge of a new and volatile flashpoint. 

Israel finds new excuses to get into Palestinian towns. The military this week launched a “broad counterterrorism operation” following what they claimed are intelligence reports about “attempts to establish terrorist strongholds”. 

 Since the operations began over 32,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). 

In a shocking incident in Jenin, two young men arrested by the security forces, who had put up their hands in surrender were shot in cold blood. Neither of them were carrying arms. There is widespread outrage over this incident.  France, Germany, UK and Italy have all condemned this barbaric incident. 

 But for Palestinians condemnation is not enough, Israel and ministers like Ben- Gvir and Smotrich have to be restrained.  The only power that can do it is the U.S. President Donald Trump, is at the moment pre-occupied with Ukraine. Unless the US reins in the Israeli state these incidents will not just continue but intensify.  

So far there has been no word from him against settler violence. Trump needs to know that his Gaza peace plan cannot move forward unless Israel stops its assault on the West Bank.  Arab rulers who have stakes in a stable middle east need to weigh-in on Trump. Without meaningful international intervention, the crisis will deepen. Time is already running out.