Palestinians in the West Bank face a double bind: Relinquish their homes to Israeli settlers, becoming either displaced within Palestine or international refugees; or remain on their land, perpetually vulnerable to surveillance, attack, and intimidation.
Disruption of the olive harvest is both a means of land dispossession and a form of regimented impoverishment. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians rely on income from olive farming, and an estimated 70 percent of their harvest was threatened in 2025.
At the end of the season, the U.N. reported 178 settler attacks.
Farmers and their families, including children, were killed by gunfire and tear gas.
Centuries-old olive trees were razed.
Thousands of acres were burned, bulldozed, or blocked off for Israeli “military use.”
Since then, the violence hasn’t died down: In February, settlers reportedly destroyed seven Palestinian villages in a single week.
At the same time, Israel continues to exert ever tighter control over the West Bank, making it more difficult for Palestinians to retain their land.
The writer Jasmine Sanders traveled to the West Bank to volunteer during the 2025 olive-harvest campaign. “My experience of the olive harvest was one of queasy liminality,” she writes.
“Not war, and yet not peace: the bracingly quotidian terror of life under threat from settlers and amid Israeli military occupation, which is now the longest such occupation in history.”
Read more about her experience: nymag.visitlink.me/e43Mea