Katz reportedly seeking to ban pro-Palestinian activists from West Bank during olive harvest
Settlement umbrella group says defense minister taking action at its request; IDF, police address illegal outpost farmers; NGO records 109 acts of violence during harvest season
The Yesha Council, an umbrella body for West Bank settlements, said on Thursday that Defense Minister Israel Katz has moved to issue exclusion orders against activists seeking to assist Palestinian olive growers during the harvest season, which is now underway.
Multiple spokespeople for Katz and the Defense Ministry did not respond to requests asking to confirm that such instructions had been given.
The olive harvest has in recent years seen significant spikes in extremist settler attacks against Palestinian olive growers. Israel’s security forces, meanwhile, have increasingly sought to stymie the efforts of civil rights activists from assisting Palestinians with the harvest or providing so-called “protective presence” to them from settler attacks.
Earlier this week, Yesha Council head Israel Ganz asked Katz to prevent activists “who are coming to the olive harvest area to create provocations and confrontations.”
Ganz noted that the Global Sumud Flotilla organization, an activist group that has repeatedly tried and failed to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza with large flotillas, is assisting activists who wish to come to the region during the olive harvest season, along with other groups including Go Palestine, Protect the Harvest, Faz3a and the International Solidarity Movement.
“Following the request, the defense minister directed that action be taken to issue administrative exclusion orders against activists whose activities are found to endanger public order and security in the area,” the Yesha Council said in a statement.
“We will not allow extremist activists — whether Israeli or foreign — to reach the region to instigate provocations and confrontations. The olive harvest season will not be turned into a tool for creating deliberate friction on the ground,” Ganz said.
Neither Yesha nor the spokespeople contacted by The Times of Israel for Katz and the defense ministry replied to questions regarding how they define “endangering public order and security.”
NGO records 109 acts of violence connected to harvest season
Despite Ganz’s comments, Israeli civil rights organizations have recorded significant spikes in extremist settler violence against Palestinian olive growers during the harvest season in recent years, part of an effort that threatens to deprive them of an important source of income.
Between September 27 and October 6, the Yesh Din rights group recorded 109 incidents of alleged violence and harassment by settler extremists and IDF soldiers against Palestinians connected to the current olive harvest season in 75 West Bank towns.
The organization said its field researchers documented physical violence against harvesters, incidents in which settlers or soldiers prevented Palestinians from harvesting their trees, the theft of Palestinian produce, and deliberate damage to olive trees.
It also noted that in 28 of the 109 incidents, IDF soldiers were filmed or photographed at the scene.
“The more than one hundred incidents of violence against Palestinians that we have documented even before the official start of the olive harvest season indicate that the violence perpetrated by settlers and the military is not random; rather, it is an Israeli policy with a clear objective — to prevent the olive harvest in the West Bank, inflict economic harm on Palestinians, drive them off their lands, and seize control of it,” Yesh Din said of the violence.
The organization alleged that the presence of IDF forces at at least 25 percent of these incidents demonstrated that the army was “operating in the field as an active partner in the violence and the stymieing of the harvest.”
IDF, police officials give briefing to illegal outpost residents
Earlier this week, Yesha convened an online conference together with the Farms Association umbrella organization for illegal settlement farming outposts to “prepare” for the olive harvest season and for the activities of “anarchists and left-wing activists,” their derisive name for the groups seeking to protect Palestinian olive growers and workers from extremist violence.
Some 80 illegal farming outpost owners and residents participated in the conference, during which they were briefed by senior IDF, police and government officials and “strengthened their coordination with the army and the relevant officials in the government.”
Deputy Commissioner Moshe Pinchi, commander of the police’s Judea and Samaria district, addressed the outpost owners and farmers, saying that the police force in the district would “continue to act with determination, in accordance with the policies of the minister,” far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, “and the police commissioner, to expel and prevent the arrival of foreign citizens, supporters of the enemy and of terrorism, who arrive in the country under the cover of humanitarian organizations and human rights groups, and act to delegitimize the State of Israel around the world.”
Brig. Gen. Kobi Heller, commander of the IDF Judea and Samaria Division, gave a security briefing to the conference participants, while Diaspora Affairs Ministry Director-General Avi Cohen Scali gave a briefing on the ministry’s efforts to stop the entry of pro-Palestinian activists into the country for the olive harvest season.
In the 2025 harvest season, there were multiple incidents in which the IDF declared entire Palestinian towns to be closed military zones in order to stop activists from assisting olive growers on the grounds that they would initiate “provocations” and “confrontations.”
Numerous activists were arrested by police and deported by the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority for violating the closed military zone orders in the 2025 season, some of whom were banned from returning to Israel, including some Jewish activists.
On at least one occasion, the arrests were carried out with the coordination of one of the settlement municipal authorities.
The High Court of Justice determined in January this year that such orders can only be issued when there is an “evidentiary foundation that demonstrates the near certainty of a violation of public order by the activists” and that military commanders have “concrete and tangible information, based on up-to-date intelligence information, that shows that the activists intend to disrupt public order.”