On Wednesday, 19 November 2025, at around 7:00 A.M., farmers from Deir Ballut arrived at their grove to harvest olives after having received a permit to do so by the Israeli DCO.
Upon their arrival, they found a settler herding cattle on their land; his cows were eating their trees’ branches and damaging the grove.
The farmers distanced the cows from the trees and began harvesting the olives.
After about half an hour, four settlers arrived on ATVs, one of whom was an adult armed with a rifle and three who were likely minors armed with knives and pepper spray.
The settlers immediately began attacking the family with stones, hit them, broke their agricultural machinery and sprayed them with pepper spray when they attempted to confront them.
The one armed with a rifle ordered the family to return to the village immediately and forbade them from taking their olives and farming tools with them.
When they neared the village, the family called the Palestinian DCO and asked that they facilitate their return to the grove, but after waiting a few hours and not receiving any help, they returned home.
The next day, one of the farmers climbed a hill that overlooks their lands and saw that the cattle was again being herded there. The family members decided not to endanger themselves by going because they were afraid they’d be attacked again, and had to abandon this year’s harvest.
B’Tselem field researcher Abdulkarim Sadi collected testimony from Sami Yousef, 55, a father of eight:
My brother and I have 90 dunam [~22 acres] of agricultural land with fruit-producing olive trees in an area called Wadi al-‘Ein, in the southern part of Deir Ballut. Last week, the Israeli DCO approved owners of the southern plots two harvest days: Wednesday and Thursday, 19-20 November 2025.
Early Wednesday morning, my wife S.Y., my brother, his wife and son, and I went to our land. We got there at around 7:00 A.M. The plot is about two kilometers [~1.25 miles] from the center of town. When we arrived, we were surprised to find a settler’s cows from the outpost that was built in the area between Deir Ballut and a-Lubban al-Gharbiyah. A settler was herding about 50 cows. The cows were eating the branches of our olive trees, so we chased them away and started harvesting. We didn’t confront him because we knew that if we complained about him bringing the herd into the grove, he would call other settlers or soldiers, and they would force us off our land. So we limited ourselves to keeping the herd away from the trees.
We continued harvesting to take advantage of the limited time we were given permission for. It’s been this way since the war in the Gaza Strip. Before the war we could work our lands whenever we wanted to, without coordinating or facing obstacles. After half-an-hour of work, an ATV appeared between the trees and on it, four settlers: one adult armed with an M-16 rifle, and another three that seemed like minors. Without warning, the settlers who we recognize as residents of the “Avichai Farm” outpost started attacking my brother, sister-in-law and nephew, broke our farming machines and slashed the tarps we use to collect the olives. I was only a few meters away, and when I tried to come closer to protect my brother and his family, one of the minors sprayed pepper spray directly into my sister-in-law’s face. I also saw that the three of them were holding sharp knives.
I tried to calm things down and spoke to the adult settler, who was armed. I explained that we had come to our land after receiving approval from the Israeli DCO, but he said he didn’t care what the army or the DCO said. What mattered to him was that we leave the land and go back to home. Meanwhile, the minors kept pushing and verbally abusing the women.
The settlers insisted that we leave our land and wouldn’t even let us take the equipment or belongings we had brought with us: four electric olive shakers, an electric trimmer for pruning olive branches, ten plastic sheets, as well as our food and water. They drove us off the plot without giving us a chance to collect our things, and forced us to walk more than a kilometer until we reached the edge of the village.
We called the Deir Ballut municipality and the Palestinian DCO so that they would send the army or the Israeli DCO officer that’s responsible for the area.
We waited more than five hours, but no one came. We returned home angry. That evening someone from the Palestinian DCO called us and said that the army had arrived after we left, “assessed the situation,” and concluded that there was no reason for us not to return the following day to continue harvesting.
On Thursday morning, 20 November 2025, I climbed a hill that overlooks our land and saw that the settler’s cows were still there, so we decided not to go. We were scared that what had happened the previous day would repeat itself and that the settlers would attack us again.
This year we were not allowed to harvest our olives and the settlers stole our harvesting equipment, pushed us with their hands, and sprayed my sister-in-law with pepper spray, which caused her a lot of pain. Our loss is very serious: in previous years we produced approximately 170 jerrycans of oil from this grove, which we split between my brother and I.