Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians in multiple villages across the occupied West Bank on Friday and set trees and cars on fire, according to local officials and emergency responders with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said six people were injured in two attacks it responded to in the town of Abu Falah outside Ramallah.
A 63-year-old woman and a 40-year-old man were taken to hospital after being beaten by settlers, the Red Crescent said.
In Abu Falah settlers attacked as residents accompanied by peace activists set out early for the harvest.
Several members beat Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine, who was taken to hospital. Israel’s military condemned the violence and acknowledged that a journalist had been injured.
Israel has imposed new rules on the olive harvest this year, prohibiting Palestinians from working in what is known as Area C, which is under Israeli security control and encompasses the majority of the territory’s agricultural land.
At least four Palestinians have been killed and more than 100 injured since the harvest season began earlier this month, according to Palestinian officials.
They say thousands of trees have been damaged, costing farmers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Settler violence against Palestinians has soared this year and spiked further in the weeks leading up to Israel’s October 27 election. The far-right government that has emboldened the settlers could soon be voted out of power – or win another term.
Israel’s military said that suspects had fled the scene before troops arrived.
Roughly 110,000 Palestinian families depend on privately owned groves for income and employ tens of thousands of seasonal farmworkers, according to Abbas Milhem of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union.
In past years, hundreds of thousands of trees have been damaged by settlers and farmers have suffered financial losses that, territorywide, amount to millions of dollars, he said.
This year, Mr Milhem said, is the worst he can remember.
Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli activist who often accompanies Palestinian farmers during the harvest, was in Abu Falah on Friday morning when the settlers attacked.
He said they descended from a hilltop outpost, throwing stones, burning trees and firing gunshots at the Palestinians and other activists.
The Israeli military, he said, “stood literally shoulder to shoulder with settlers as they attacked Palestinians” and later drove into Abu Falah, where they shot a village council member.
“There was absolutely no motive except one simple thing: to send a message that people cannot go to their land,” Mr Pollak said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly framed settler violence in the West Bank as the work of a few dozen fringe youths and said its scale has been exaggerated.
He condemned the violence in Abu Falah on Friday but questioned whether Palestinians and activists were to blame.
Without mentioning accounts of how the attacking settlers descended on the groves, he framed the violence as a clash between outnumbered Israeli youths against Palestinians and activists.
“We will not allow disputed incidents to be exploited to demonize the hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria,” his office said in a statement, referring to the West Bank by the biblical name preferred by Israeli settlers.
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