On a warm morning earlier this month, Palestinian farmer Khaled Muammar and a group of activist-volunteers descended on a grove of olive trees in the bucolic terraced hills outside the West Bank town of Battir to harvest his family’s much-loved olives.
Clambering down the steep, emerald hillside, the volunteers made their way through the autumnal landscape surrounding the pastoral village, passing through vineyards newly denuded of their fruit, and walking alongside vegetable patches heaving with gourds and other fall produce.
For decades, Muammar and his family have been cultivating olives on the ancient agricultural terraces molded onto the hillsides near Battir, which in 2014 were designated by UNESCO as a world heritage site. But Palestinian olive growers say recent years have seen the annual harvest become not only more difficult, but increasingly perilous.
Already strained due to general Israeli security restrictions imposed on freedom of movement in the West Bank that hamper agricultural cultivation, growers are also increasingly threatened by settler violence, which campaigners say is designed specifically to disrupt the economy of rural Palestinian communities. Combined with the vagaries of agricultural production, and olive growing in particular, Palestinians are feeling pressed.
“Olive trees and fig trees are blessed, the Quran talks of them and says whoever has those will never be hungry,” said Muammar, gesturing to his olive groves and a cluster of nearby fig trees on his land.
While talking, he directed the volunteers to unharvested trees, laying out tarpaulin sheets to catch the olives that fall to the ground when the volunteers shake the tree and rake off the branches.
The volunteers were brought to Battir by Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli organization which has taken activists to the West Bank to help Palestinian olive growers harvest their crops for 20 years.
This effort is born of the reality that olive growing for Palestinians has become increasingly difficult in recent years due to harassment and violence from settlers, and specific efforts to disrupt the olive harvest since olive growing is an important component of the Palestinian economy, especially for Palestinians living in rural communities.
These difficulties in cultivating olives have become ever more acute since the outbreak of war following the Hamas October 7, 2023 massacre and atrocities that killed some 1,200 people and saw another 251 taken hostage.
In the wake of the attacks, severe restrictions on the freedom of movement in the West Bank were imposed by the army which meant that large numbers of Palestinian olive growers were unable to harvest their olives in 2023.
At the same time, violence by settlers against Palestinians living in Area C of the West Bank, where Israel has full security and civil control and where many rural Palestinian communities are located, spiked.
And ongoing restrictions during the course of the current conflict have meant that olive growers were also unable to cultivate their olive groves properly this spring.
Muammar, 56, points to the hard-baked earth of his terraced groves, saying that without being able to plow the land before the rains come the water will simply run off the terraces without actually soaking into the land to sufficiently water the trees.
In previous years he would plough the land four times a year, fertilize the trees with compost and prune them to promote olive growth and the health of the trees. This year none of that has been possible due to his inability to regularly access the land.
He was however given permission to harvest his olives this year, and was granted three days to harvest his approximately 300 trees by the IDF.
The day this correspondent visited Muammar’s olive groves was the third and final day on which he had permission to harvest, and as such had accepted the assistance of the Rabbis for Human Rights organization which sent around 20 volunteers to help him harvest his crop.
Given the extremely tight timeframe allowed by the IDF for the harvest, the help of the troop of activists was critical in bringing in all the olives, as well as providing a source of what is essentially free labor.
“It’s really important that people come here and help us, and this is how it should be. Israelis, Arabs, Palestinians all together. It should be like this all over the world,” Muammar says with a smile.
This particular day was designated by Rabbis for Human Rights as an “interfaith” day in which Christians, Jews and Muslims from an array of backgrounds came to Battir to help with the harvest, meet with one another, and engage in a communal interfaith prayer.
“We believe in values of peace, justice, human rights and equality, and these values are under threat by our brothers and sisters, Jews in this context,” says Avi Dabush, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights.
“We don’t just want to talk about this, we want to be in places which express these values and can do some kind of change on the ground, not a massive change, but some change.”
Muammar’s crop this year is not promising, however regardless of the assistance he is getting during the harvest. In good years he can harvest enough olives to fill 40 containers with olive oil, each containing 16 liters of the rich, golden liquid.
This year he says he’ll be happy to get 15 such containers.
Although olive trees typically can produce more than three liters of olive oil per tree, Muammar’s olive groves, like many those of many Palestinians growers, are not irrigated, which substantially reduces the olive crop on each tree.
Alongside the difficulties cultivating his trees, Muammar says that climate conditions were also not conducive to a good harvest this year, which he says is the major reason for the reduced crop.
The poor harvest means that he won’t have olive oil to sell this year since he gives much of the oil he produces to his five children and their families, as well as for his own use.
Due to what Muammar describes as the prodigious use of olive oil in Palestinian cuisine, there will not be much left of his 15 containers after he has provided his family with what they need for the year.
Despite the difficulties, he says that he will continue to work his land, cultivate his trees, and harvest his olives, and insists that the next generation will do the same.
“My children will continue to do this work and harvest olives, this is something we have done for generations, it is part of us, we have celebrations for this time of harvest, it is something I love,” says Muammar.
Even with the assistance of the activists however, it appeared that not all the trees would be harvested by the end of his last day of permitted harvesting. Muammar said he and his laborers would nevertheless try to finish up the work the next day, even without IDF permission.
Hard pressed – the impact of settler violence and movement restrictions
Despite the relative tranquility of Battir, with no presence of IDF soldiers or hostile settlers in sight, many Palestinian olive growers have faced severe violence and harassment this year while seeking to harvest their crop.
Last year, some 23,700 acres of Palestinian olive groves went unharvested due to the access restrictions placed on olive growers by the IDF and the Israeli authorities, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Combined with 113 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians trying to harvest olives that year, Palestinian farmers suffered an estimated total loss of more than 1,200 metric tons of olive oil OCHA found.
This year, the Yesh Din organization which tracks settler violence has documented 115 incidents of violence perpetrated by settlers or IDF soldiers during the olive harvest season in 51 different locations across the West Bank so far this year.
These attacks have led to the killing of at least one person, a 59-year-old Palestinian woman by the name of Hanan Abdel Rahman Abu Salama who was shot dead, allegedly by IDF troops, while she was harvesting olives close to her village of Faqqua in the northern West Bank. The commander of the responsible IDF force was suspended until the completion of an investigation.
Numerous other incidents have seen laborers and activists violently assaulted and threatened by settlers, olive groves set alight, trees cut down, and the theft of agricultural equipment, and of olives which had been harvested.
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אתמול בואדי סוסיא הסמוך ירדו חיילים מההתנחלות יחד עם מתנחלים רעולי פנים וחמושים באלות וסכין ואיפשרו להם לשבור לאישה צלע בחבטות אלה ולברוח חזרה בביטחה להתנחלות, בזמן שהחיילים מעכבים את כל הנוכחים בטענה שאסור להם לאסוף את הזיתים שכבר נמסקו. pic.twitter.com/1dYXCiV6Oy— מחוץ לעדר (@masafering) October 19, 2024
Yesh Din alleges that in around half of these incidents, IDF or police forces, or settlement security officers, were present and cooperated with the settler attacks.
Too close for comfort – illegal outposts cause problems for Battir
Battir, and Muammar himself, have also experienced problems with settlers. Muammar noted that in recent years several efforts had been made to establish an illegal farming outpost just east of Battir, but had been thwarted by Israeli authorities.
That outpost was reestablished shortly after the outbreak of war on October 7, just 500 meters away from Battir, and has remained in place ever since.
Muammar says that the illegal outpost now blocks his access to 30 of his olive trees which he can no longer cultivate, while other Battir farmers have faced the same problem.
The new outpost is built on land declared by Israel to be “state land” in 1982, according to the Peace Now organization which campaigns against the settlements, but the government has never approved the establishment of a settlement there, making it illegal under Israeli law.
Nevertheless, when locals from Battir try to gain access to the land the IDF is called in and they are blocked and driven away, Muammar says.
Other residents of Battir have had similar problems with an illegal outpost called Neve Ori, also known as Mahrour, established in 2019 by a settler by the name of Tal Lior a short distance east of the new outpost. Like the new wildcat settlement, Neve Ori also blocks access for the residents of Battir to land they cultivated before the arrival of Lior.
Just one day after assisting the harvest in Battir, a Rabbis for Human Rights volunteer group helping harvest olives in Dayr Jarir east of Ramallah was attacked by settlers. Several of the volunteers and one of the Palestinian farmers were lightly injured in the incident.
Yesterday in Dayr Jrir, occupied West Bank, 20+ settlers attacked Palestinian farmers and the volunteers who had come to stand in solidarity with them.
The actions of these settler terrorists are an affront to justice and a desecration of Judaism. pic.twitter.com/4vr8lHbCRo
— Rabbis for Human Rights (@rabbis4HR) November 9, 2024
Sister Mary Madeline, a Benedictine nun in a Catholic monastery in Abu Ghosh who participated in the Rabbis for Human Rights day in Battir, said that although the members of her order don’t often leave the monastery she had felt that the current conflict meant it was important to take concrete action.
“In times of war you dehumanize the other, you don’t recognize the human being in the other and that’s really sad,” said the sister.
“I have the conviction that small activities like this have a global impact, spiritually. My conviction is that God is present in all people that suffer, and in all people who help one another. In every act of love, of humanity, God is there, so this is a kind of way of maintaining the divine presence in the world.”
