Soldier blocks Palestinian harvest, says ‘Jews have prior right over Arabs to everything’

A soldier was filmed blocking a Palestinian olive harvest near Ramallah on Friday because, he said, “this is a Jewish state” and “Jews have a prior right over Arabs to everything in this country.”

The soldier documented in the central West Bank’s Birzeit area also said settlers were allowed to be there because those were his orders.

The IDF did not immediately comment on the incident.

Near the village of Yabrud, about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) east of Birzeit, separate footage on Friday showed settlers trapping a Palestinian vehicle and assaulting its occupants.

Police did not immediately comment.

Rabbis for Human Rights, which published the footage from the Birzeit-area olive grove, said the incident occurred as Israeli activists with the group were helping with the harvest on private Palestinian land in the West Bank’s Area C, which Israelis can legally enter without notifying Israel’s Civil Administration.

Nonetheless, soldiers shut down the harvest and removed the Palestinians and activists from the area, according to Rabbis for Human Rights.

The footage published by the group from the scene showed a masked soldier in full gear confronting Israeli activists, who asked why Jewish settlers could be in the area but Palestinians couldn’t.

“I don’t know if you remember, but this is a Jewish state. So Jews have a prior right over Arabs to everything in this country, whether you like it or not,” the soldier said.

״במדינה יהודית ליהודים יש זכות לפני הערבים לכל דבר״. כך מבהיר הבוקר חייל צה״ל סמוך לביר זית. המשמעות בשטח ברורה: למתנחלים מותר להישאר, והפעילים והפעילות שלנו, שהגיעו לסייע ולעמוד לצד הפלסטינים, נדרשים לעזוב. לדבריו, אלה ההוראות שקיבל ממפקדו.
מול הטרור היהודי והגיבוי הצבאי, אנחנו… pic.twitter.com/57oCrXcru1

— קול רבני לזכויות אדם (@RHRIS) October 9, 2026

When an activist told him that wasn’t the law, the soldier waved to the activists to move back while another masked soldier demanded the activists stop filming.

Asked again why settlers could be in the area, the first soldier said: “Right now, this is Area C, and the Jews can.”

“Those are the orders I got from on high,” the soldier said. “That’s what my commander told me.”

The comments came a day after the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization for West Bank settlements, said Defense Minister Israel Katz had moved to issue exclusion orders against activists seeking to assist and defend Palestinian olive growers during the nascent annual harvest season.

Multiple spokespeople for Katz and the Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the Yesha Council’s announcement.

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 Israeli and foreign civil rights activists from assisting Palestinians with the harvest or providing them with so-called “protective presence” from settler attacks.

On Friday, police claimed they had arrested two foreigners in the northern West Bank the previous day who “support the boycott movement against Israel” and sought to “create provocation, friction and disruption in the area in a bid to promote anti-Israel media ‘campaigns'” during the harvest.

The two, who allegedly expressed “support for a terrorist organization,” were interrogated and handed over to the Population Authority for a hearing before deportation, police said, without specifying the terrorist organization in question.

The arrest was part of an effort to quash “incidents that could hurt the State of Israel’s image,” police said.

Father and son said assaulted by settlers near Yabrud

Separately, Palestinian media on Friday published footage from near Yabrud that showed settlers in two vehicles surrounding a third vehicle, getting out and beating the third vehicle’s occupants with sticks.

A man could be seen fleeing, followed by a child seconds later.

حين تعجز عن حماية ابنك من المخاطر ، تفقد حق الابوة والسيطرة على ابنك !!
مشهد مخجل لاب من عين يبرود شرق رام يترك ابنه لحظة هجوم مستوطني الاحتلال على سيارته وهروبه وترك ابنه في السيارة للمستوطنين دون أدنى دفاع عنه او حمايته او حتى محاولة تخليصه منهم ؟!

مشهد مليء بسد الذرائع… pic.twitter.com/lfSUB9VmOm

— ضمير فلسطين (@damirfalsteen) October 9, 2026

The reports identified the victims as a Palestinian father and son. It was unclear how old the boy was.

Settler violence in the West Bank has risen sharply since the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza.

Critics accuse the government of condoning and even encouraging the violence, which has led to the displacement of dozens of Palestinian families.

Noam Lehmann and Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.