THIS is the season when I usually start my day at 7am, often piled in the trailer of a tractor or a ramshackle car with two or three members of our protective presence group, farmers and farmworkers, the latter often sitting on the bonnet or the back of the vehicle, amid a tangle of white sacks, tarpaulins, tools, bags of food, water and a ladder.

Driven by Abdullah, Rashid or whichever Palestinian farmer we are supporting that day, we head jerkily over the stony paths towards one of the family’s olive groves on Jebel [mount] Salman.
 
Jebel Salman is a long, high hill rising before the ancient villages of Burin, population about 2,990, and Madama, population about 2,300, located to the south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, villages where we stay each year during the olive harvest.

Its slopes and ridge used to be covered with olive groves, the mainstay of the village economy, interspersed with almond and fig trees and land for cultivating wheat and sesame.
 
Traditionally, the olive harvest is a joyous occasion when whole families would come to pick olives and enjoy a celebratory al-fresco picnic with freshly-made hummus and falafels, boiled eggs, cucumber, and tomato with pitta bread; all washed down with sweet wild sage tea.
 
Then, in 1983, Israel, having occupied the West Bank from Jordan in 1967, confiscated over 57 acres of Burin agricultural land on Jebel Salman and 34 acres of land from Madama to build the illegal (under international law) settlement of Yitzhar.

Later, more land was confiscated to build Yitzhar’s five outposts and yet more to build a military base and by-pass roads for settlers. The 2,000-year-old village of Burin had already lost another 154 acres to build the illegal settlement of Bracha on Jebel Gerizim behind the village.

During my first stay in Burin in 2011, the Yitzhar settlement on the ridge was a distant world with its incongruous orange sodium lights gleaming eerily against the night sky. We harvested and picnicked with families in the olive groves on Jebel Salman and never saw a settler, let alone a “ravshatz” (settlement security guard).

We were told the single bald patch of ground was where settlers had set fire to trees. Israeli soldiers appeared occasionally, seemingly harmless — owing to our presence, our Palestinian hosts informed us.

However, each year, settler violence and destruction became more evident. We saw fires in the olive groves, first at night, then also during the day. Settlers began to appear at a distance, throwing rocks towards us.
 
Our first encounter with settlers came in October 2015 when, while harvesting olives with Abdullah in his grove, we saw swarms of young masked men (the infamous “Hilltop Youth”) racing down and setting fire to the hillside with oil poured from jerry cans.

Shots rang out. Abdullah left quickly. One settler threw three rocks the size of large grapefruit at the head of the only male in our group, 66-year-old David (he was to need six stitches), then kicked him in the back, ribs and torso. We also had our first sighting of Yitzhar’s ravshatz — tall, thickset and menacing with a long red beard, holding a rifle.
 
In 2019, female and male members of the Hilltop Youth attacked harvesters with tyre levers and cudgels, including two members of our group in their seventies and an 80-year-old Israeli rabbi from Rabbis for Human Rights, later hospitalised with a broken arm and head injuries.
 
Subsequently, the arson attacks became more extensive. Yitzhar’s ravshatz, recently subject to US sanctions, who calls himself “Yacoub” but whose real name is Yitzhak Levi Filant, frequently came prowling around the hillside in his white truck, ordering farmers to leave their olive groves under threat of attack.
 
We arrived at groves where trees had been cut down or shorn of olives, stolen or left to rot on the ground. Sometimes, Israeli soldiers barred Palestinian farmers from accessing their lands, suddenly designated as “closed military zones,” and sometimes they attacked them.

We saw settlers attacking Palestinian homes with rocks protected by the Israeli army, who threw tear gas at any witnesses, including ourselves. When visiting a boys’ school in Burin, we observed soldiers terrorising young schoolchildren in the playground, while the headmistress of Madama Girls’ Secondary School showed us bullets shot into the playground.
 
During the Covid period, in the absence of international visitors, the Yitzhar settlement expanded downhill towards Madama with roadways marked out across the hillside. Settlers waylaid Palestinians travelling along the valley road between Burin and Madama.

Since October 7 2023, throughout the occupied West Bank, a territory about half the size of Northern Ireland containing over 700 checkpoints and roadblocks, there has been a sharp upsurge of arson attacks, repression and violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers.
 
Dima from Burin told us about an arson attack on September 11. “The fire broke out at 6.30am, caused by settlers. It continued to burn our olive trees until midnight, in the presence of groups of settlers, including ‘Yacoub’ and army forces.”
 
“The occupation forces [Israeli soldiers] prevented farmers from reaching their lands to put out the fire, so the trees were completely devoured.”

Israeli settlers and soldiers have done all they can to jeopardise the 2024 Palestinian olive harvest in the occupied West Bank. During October alone, settlers carried out 270 attacks (for which they are virtually never prosecuted), destroying over 1,000 mainly olive trees, of which over 33 per cent were in the olive growing areas around Nablus, where olives are the mainstay of the local economy.
 
On October 9, soon after the start of the harvest, the Israeli authorities issued land confiscation orders on four acres of agricultural land with olive groves belonging to farmers in Burin, Madama and a third village, Assyra.
 
The first of October signalled the start of the olive harvest, which the UN was to describe as “the most dangerous olive season ever.” On that first day, in both Madama and Burin, within a short time of reaching the olive groves, Palestinian farmers were ordered by Israeli soldiers to leave.

This pattern repeated itself throughout the harvest period. Sometimes, the soldiers were accompanied by settlers (including Filant), who themselves were often dressed in army fatigues.
 
Ayman described the farmers’ experiences: “The settlers sometimes steal the sacks full of olives and our tools. The army many times orders the farmers to leave the fields immediately. At one time, they tore the wheels of a farmer’s car and threw his harvest to the ground … But the farmers will return tomorrow …”
 
From Burin, Dima told us how, on October 10, she went to harvest olives at 7am with her son and two young workers. Two hours later, Filant arrived accompanied by soldiers, beat the young workers with his rifle and threatened to shoot them. By 10am, they returned home.
 
On October 26, Dima tried returning to the groves in the afternoon. Filant, accompanied by soldiers, arrived, kicked over the sacks of olives, telling the farmers to leave immediately and threatening to shoot them all.

She added that now only the older farmers went to pick olives, the younger workers being far more likely to be beaten and detained by the soldiers.
 
As well as the obstructions to the olive harvest, the regular military raids and settler attacks on villages throughout the occupied West Bank continued to take place. In Burin, from October 7-9 this year, Israeli soldiers raided the village 11 times.
 
On October 20, Ayman told us how unbearable life had become in Madama. As he spoke, we could hear in the background stun grenades and gunshots as Israeli soldiers imposed an atmosphere of terror and repression.

He described how the army, sometimes accompanied by settlers, entered the village two or three times daily for about three hours at a time, closed the entrances, raided houses, often leaving them vandalised, and detained individuals. Soldiers also used tear gas and sometimes threw canisters at pupils as they were leaving school.
 
The following day, while soldiers, again in the village, were assembling, detaining, interrogating and assaulting young men as they inspected their ID cards, they shot a 15-year-old boy in the thigh. He joined the shameful statistic of over 1,400 Palestinian children injured by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 7 2023.
 
On November 5, over 100 soldiers, 10 or more jeeps and a bulldozer entered Madama in the early morning, sealing off the village by blocking the road with earth mounds or by gates installed previously.

Stationing soldiers at some of the family homes, they flew the Israeli flag from the roofs. Groups of soldiers moved around the village, raiding homes, checking IDs and stationing themselves on the roofs of houses. They remained until late evening.
 
In Burin, a similar raid started at about midnight. The army left during the afternoon, only to return about two hours later. Schools in both villages were closed, children were traumatised, and residents were too fearful to venture out.
 
Two children from Burin have been killed by soldiers, part of the tragic statistic of 165 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers since October 7 2023: 14-year-old Motaz Anas Subhi Mansour, shot in the chest in November 2023 and 10-year-old Amr Muhammed Najjar shot in the head on March 4 when he was returning from the shops in the car with his father and younger brother. Soldiers also shot two bystanders who ran to help.
 
The effect of these frequent army and settler attacks and raids on the lives of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is disastrous. In addition to losing an essential source of income during the olive harvest, villagers are living in a state of constant fear.

Children are unable to function normally. With long waits at checkpoints and village closures, travel to and from work, school or higher education has become a major problem for most. Most villagers have no money or greatly reduced incomes, and there is serious food poverty.
 
In the same way that Israel is destroying all means of existence for the Gazan population, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank believe that Israel aims to drive them away by depriving them of their lands, living space and livelihoods.
 
At the end of one of our conversations, Ayman asked if people in Britain really knew what was happening in Palestine. We assured him many did.

None of us had the heart to tell him that our government, despite knowing, give precedence to trade agreements, military, hi-tech and political alliances with Israel over the lives and human rights of Palestinians suffering decades of violence, destitution, theft and discrimination. Little has changed since Balfour’s 1917 Declaration!

All Palestinian’s names have been changed for security reasons. Jenny Kassman is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Jewish Voice for Labour. She has visited Burin and Madama in the occupied West Bank on over 10 occasions.