For Palestinian communities across the West Bank, the annual olive harvest stands at the heart of local social, economic, and cultural heritage. For thousands of families, these trees provide essential income and food security, helping them remain self-sufficient. Beyond the financial impact, the harvest is woven into the very fabric of Palestinian identity, bringing families, neighbors, and volunteers together every year to preserve their shared heritage.
Every year, Palestinian farmers face recurring Israeli restrictions and threats during olive harvest season. This season, on 18th September 2026, the Israeli authorities issued a decision and implemented restrictions that officially prevent Palestinian families and farmers from reaching their lands and fields in order to harvest olives in Area C, which constitutes 60% of the occupied West Bank.
Institutionalized Denial of Access: Systematic Disconnection of Palestinian Communities in Area C
Olive harvest is central to Palestinian villages in Area C, as their only means of staying connected to the agricultural land surrounding them, but access restrictions that are applied systematically on the basis of classifying this land as “state land” cut off this important link, thereby separating the communities from the geographical borders of their land and establishing a new situation on the ground. Access restrictions are not limited to classifying lands as “state land”, but extend to multiple legal and administrative tools and classifications that lead to the same result of land confiscation and displacement. These include declaring the areas closed for “public needs” and “firing zones”, confiscating land for military and security purposes, then reclassifying it later or seizing control of agricultural sites and nature reserves.
By preventing farmers from accessing lands near Israeli settlements, the occupation creates forcibly displaced buffer zones. After denying Palestinian access for years, these lands are declared “state land” under an Ottoman-era law (the Land Law 1858), which states that continued cultivation is a prerequisite for ownership. This enforced exclusion gives a legal basis for reclassifying the land without the necessity of an official confiscation order. Ultimately, the restricted areas function as exclusive spheres of influence for the neighbouring settlement outposts, turning isolated outposts into connected blocs while at the same time fragmenting and isolating the Palestinian villages.
The danger of this mechanism is currently manifested in the shift from ‘traditional expansion’ to what is known as “creeping annexation”. The Israeli government has lifted the freeze that has been in place since 1967 and launched a plan to register lands in the occupied West Bank as “Israeli public property”, aiming to register 15% of Area C as “state land” within five years. Since October 7th, 2023, Israel has made a record number of “state land” declarations, including over 24000 dunams in 2024 alone, depriving thousands of Palestinian families of access to their agricultural lands during the olive harvest season and preventing them from registering the land in their names, thus legitimizing and expanding settlement outposts.
State-Backed Settler Violence: Territorial Expansion through Agricultural Sabotage
Settler attacks during the olive harvest season constitute a systematic pattern that transcends isolated incidents, serving instead as a tool to consolidate control on the ground. These attacks range from direct physical assaults and the terrorizing of families with weapons to the deliberate burning of fields, theft of crops and agricultural equipment, and the uprooting of ancient trees.
The data over the past few years are reflective of the deliberate deterioration: Settler attacks against farmers increased from 136 in 2022 to 333 in the 2023 season, reaching 407 in 2024. Statistics from the 2025 harvest season show that during the first few weeks only, from October 1 to 28, 259 attacks were carried out, including 63 cases of restricting movement and intimidation, 44 physical assaults by beating, in addition to 125 attacks on land that destroyed 1070 olive trees through cutting and bulldozing. Additionally, recent documentation shows that approximately 49000 olive trees were targeted, cut down, or damaged in just eight months of 2026. During August, 682 settler attacks on agricultural land and property across the West Bank were documented by the United Nations Office for the Coordination and Humanitatiran Affairs (OCHA). The damage left more than 21000 trees harmed; approximately 19000 of those trees were olive trees.
Settler groups have not only prevented Palestinian farmers from accessing their lands, but have also resorted to storming fields and openly stealing olives under the protection of the occupation military. Settler families were documented wearing traditional Palestinian clothing while looting olives, representing a lifestyle that attempts to steal even local traditions. These organized operations have spread to most governorates, from Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Tulkarm, and Jerusalem, all the way to Bethlehem and Hebron, thwarting Palestinian attempts to access their lands near the settlement outposts.
Coinciding with Israeli media campaigns directed through social media platforms urging settlers and their families to go directly to the Palestinian lands adjacent to their settlements to harvest them under the pretext of “connecting with the land” and “strengthening Jewish ties,” which turns stealing Palestinian olive harvest into a family activity and a cover for establishing complete settler control over the land.
This destruction is further compounded by direct Israeli military removal orders. On September 24, 2026, Israeli forces executed a military removal order in Beit Rima in Ramallah Governorate, resulting in the uprooting of 400 olive trees across 31 dunams of land. This incident is part of a broader pattern of 51 similar removal orders targeting 2093 dunams across the West Bank throughout 2026.
Settler Impunity and Territorial Acquisition
This reality on the ground coincided with a dangerous Israeli decision to transfer the supervision responsibility of the 2026 olive harvest season from the military to the Israeli police. In practice, this shift provides legal cover and impunity for systematic settler attacks, field burnings, and olive theft carried out under full protection from the Israeli state. By legalizing settler presence while restricting Palestinian land access, further entrenched by military removal orders. Israel systematically converts physical displacement into full territorial acquisition
This effectively determines the fate of the surrounding lands and stifles the urban and agricultural expansion of Palestinian villages. Transferring supervision responsibility to the police represents a practical step toward de facto annexation.
The Economic and Agricultural Impact of Restrictions on Palestinian Farmers
Systemic access restrictions, legal changes, and settler violence severely harm the local Palestinian economy. Since olive trees are a major source of income and contribute to food security, the Palestinian agricultural communities suffer significant economic losses as a result of systematic road blockages, military checkpoints, and the expansion of settlements. In the 2025 harvest season, farmers were prevented from accessing hundreds of dunams despite prior coordination, and thousands of dunams remained unharvested due to settlement expansion and settler attack. While this season was expected to produce around 21000 tons of olive oil (compared to an estimated local need of 15000 tons), the restrictions on land access deprive the local economy of the opportunity to export and benefit from the surplus.
The repercussions of these attacks extend beyond severe economic losses, a drop in production to about a quarter of its previous level, and the deprivation of more than 100000 families of their livelihoods, to include the imposition of buffer zones that undermine access to more than 200000 dunams near settlements and the apartheid wall.
Farmers need year-round access to their land for plowing, pruning, fertilizing, and pest control. Denying access also reduces tree productivity and contributes to long-term soil degradation. The result is not only lost income and reduced agricultural production, but the gradual erosion of Palestinian communities’ ability to remain economically and physically connected to their land.
Intentional Erasure of Social and Cultural Heritage
The Israeli occupation’s hostility towards olive trees is aimed at what these trees essentially stand for: a concrete symbol of historical ownership, an identity handed down from one generation to the next, and a permanent presence on the land. By attacking the harvest season, there is a deliberate intention to destroy the social structure that supports rural Palestinian communities. The yearly harvest brings families together and helps strengthen their connection to the land. State-backed settler violence, military harassment, and restrictions on access are used as means of dismantling centuries-old cultural heritage practices. By transforming a deeply rooted socio-economic tradition into a high-risk activity, this strategy aims to sever the inherited bond between farming communities and their ancestral lands, further oppressing the Palestinian community and forcing its displacement.
Applicable Legal Framework
The administrative restrictions and state-backed settler violence surrounding the olive harvest season are not merely operational obstacles; they represent the deliberate implementation of policies that violate fundamental principles of international law. In its 2024 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice affirmed that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) since 1967 is unlawful. The Court highlighted that Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank serve to alter the region’s demographic and territorial composition, effectively amounting to de facto annexation while entrenching a discriminatory system that denies the Palestinian people their right to self-determination.
Building upon this foundational ruling, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), specifically the 1907 Hague Regulations and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, applies directly to the security and administrative restrictions placed on Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest. Restricting agricultural access while facilitating the expansion of settlement outposts violates Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilian population into occupied territory. Furthermore, the systemic destruction of agricultural assets, including the uprooting and burning of tens of thousands of olive trees and the destruction of olive presses, breaches Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids the destruction of private or public property without absolute military necessity.
This IHL framework extends directly to issues of property ownership and land reclassification. Legal procedures such as declaring territory “state land” or invoking the 1858 Ottoman Land Law to seize land uncultivated over extended periods violate Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, which protects private property from confiscation. Forcibly blocking farmers from cultivating their land and subsequently citing that inactivity as a justification for land seizure constitutes an unlawful, indirect confiscation. Under Article 55 of the Hague Regulations, an occupying power acts merely as an administrator and usufructuary of public property. Consequently, it must manage these lands for the benefit of the local occupied population rather than reallocating them to its own citizens for settlement expansion.
Parallel to these humanitarian violations, these state actions also breach International Human Rights Law (IHRL), notably the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Article 1(2) of ICESCR explicitly guarantees that no population shall be deprived of its means of subsistence; depriving more than 100000 Palestinian families of their olive harvest income severely undermines local trade and food security.
Additionally, the resulting agricultural decline, community impoverishment, and soil degradation form a forced neglect that breaches the right to an adequate standard of living and food under Article 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which mandates equality before the law and non-discriminatory rights to property and movement.
Taken together, these administrative and geographic restrictions, coupled with induced economic pressures, demonstrate that the challenges surrounding the olive harvest are structural outcomes of an unlawful prolonged occupation that must end.