In recent years — and especially since 7 October 2023 — there has been a sharp increase in both the number and severity of settler attacks against Palestinians. The incidents reported on this blog do not reflect all incidents of settler violence in the West Bank, but only those that B’Tselem was able to document and investigate.
On Monday, 13 October 2025, at around 8:00 A.M., a family of farmers from the town of Deir Sharaf went to their land west of town. The settlement of Shavei Shomron was established about 200 meters west of there.
The family harvested their olives until, at around 10:30 A.M., two soldiers arrived in military vehicles, got out, and asked the family what they were doing there. The soldiers claimed that the olives belonged to settlers, threatened to arrest the family if they did not leave, and forced them out without letting them collect the olives they had already harvested and some of their harvesting equipment.
About an hour later, after contacting the local council and receiving approval through the Palestinian DCO, the family returned to retrieve the equipment and the olives left behind.
Riyad Mar‘i, 81, a father of six, said in a testimony he gave B’Tselem field researcher Salma a-Deb’i:
On Monday, 13 October 2025, at around 8:00 A.M., I arrived with my sister Firdos, 70, and my son, Ihssan, 48, at my land located west of the village in an area called a-Daqayiq. I have a three-dunam plot there (1 dunam = 0.1 hectares) with about 70 olive trees. My father and my uncle planted these trees in the 1940s. They’re large, productive trees, and we usually come to harvest the olives without any prior coordination.
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Riyad Mar‘i. Photo: Salma a-Deb’i, B’Tselem
We usually produce about 15 jerrycans of oil from this grove, but this year the yield was low.
Suddenly, a military vehicle arrived and stopped on Route 60, about 100 meters from our plot. The soldiers shouted and demanded that we leave. They asked to see my sister’s ID card, and she said she had not brought it. We usually don’t bring our papers to the groves.
One of the soldiers threatened to arrest her if she did not present an ID within a minute. He spoke in broken Arabic, and my son Ihssan addressed him in English, but the soldier insisted we speak only Hebrew. They told us the land belonged to settlers and that the olives belonged to them as well. Ihssan replied that his grandfather planted the trees and that we harvest them every year. The soldiers made us leave and only let us take our water, food, and work tools. They didn’t let us take the olives and the tarps. We left the area.
My son, Ihssan, then called the head of the local council, who contacted the Palestinian DCO. About an hour later, the DCO told him we could go back to get the olives and the tarps. We went back and took them. We haven’t gone back to harvest there ever since, and we’re waiting for the Palestinian DCO to coordinate with the military so we can continue the harvest.
We have another plot near Shavei Shomron, an area of 13 dunams with about 400 olive trees. Until the war in Gaza, we would usually go there without needing any coordination, but since 2023 we’ve been required to coordinate access. We were given only three days to harvest, so we had to hire workers to be able to harvest everything. We still don’t know how things will go this year.
