On Friday, 3 October 2025, at around 8:30 A.M., about 50 farmers from the village of Farkha arrived at their land northwest of the village. Given the escalation in settler violence during the olive harvest season and since the establishment of the outpost of Havat Shuval near their land, village residents decided to harvest as one group this year and move together from plot to plot.
About half an hour after the residents reached the groves and began harvesting, two settlers arrived with a flock of sheep. The settlers led the flock onto the harvesters’ ground sheets, and the animals started feeding on the olives they had harvested.
The two settlers started walking on the sheets and trampling the olives, and one of them struck the son of the grove owner in the face.
Within a short time, more settlers arrived in a car and on an ATV, and soldiers joined in a vehicle shortly after.
The soldiers ordered the farmers to leave immediately, claiming they were not allowed to access their land in this area without military permission.
The farmers had to stop the harvest and return home.
B’Tselem field researcher Abdulkarim Sadi collected the testimony of one of the farmers, Mustafa Rizqallah, 35, father of one:
Due to the increase in settler attacks in recent months and the provocations and harassment by settlers from the outpost that was established at the beginning of 2025 on Farkha land, we, the landowners, were afraid to go to our groves. Last September, the settlers also destroyed stone fences surrounding the farmers’ plots.
We all decided, together with the local council, that we’d all start the harvest on 3 October 2025. We agreed on a system this season, that we would help each other, that all of us would harvest on one farmer’s land, finish and move on to the next farmer’s land and then to the next.
On Friday morning, 3 October 2025, about 10 families, some 50 people, went out to harvest olives on the land northwest of the village. We spread out over the area, laid out plastic sheets so that the fruit would fall on them and be collected, and began the harvest at around 8:30 A.M. Shortly afterward, two young settlers arrived with about 25 sheep, led the sheep onto the sheets, began provoking us, trampling the sheets and the fruit on them, and one of them also punched the landowner in the face while he was working with an electric olive shaker.
We were all shocked and very angry, and then, within a few moments, another group of settlers arrived, in a white off-road vehicle and on an ATV, so there were seven of them, including one who is known to every farmer in the village as a shepherd who often provokes and expels farmers, and we call him “cuckoo”. The settlers must have called soldiers, and a military jeep arrived, as well as another settler vehicle. The soldiers immediately made us stop harvesting, told us we had to coordinate the harvest date in advance with the Israeli DCO, even though no such coordination was ever required in the past and even though the land is one kilometer away from the outpost. Afterwards, they expelled us from the land.
I reported what happened to the Palestinian DCO, and they told me that the Israeli DCO refuses to coordinate our access to the land, without giving any reason. About 75% of Farkha’s agricultural land, planted with olive trees, lies northwest of the village. The settler attacks continue in the meantime. Last month, they destroyed stone fences surrounding farmers’ land.