[Israel Decides that] Olive Picking in al-Haram al-Sharif Is Now a Crime for Palestinians... There are nearly 600 olive trees on the grounds of al-Aqsa Mosque, some of which are thousands of years old. The Islamic Waqf Department in Jerusalem, through the Zakat Committee, collects the olives from the trees, presses them, and distributes the oil to the poor in Jerusalem. No quantity of olives or the pressed oil from them is sold, despite a high demand for these olives from al-Aqsa Mosque, which the community considers blessed.

Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

 November 1, 2026

Khalil Assali

“The olive tree is a symbol of steadfastness and is the identity of Jerusalem and Palestine,” said Saadi Mahmoud,1 a resident of Haret al-Sa‘diyya near al-Aqsa Mosque. Saadi used to help pick olives from the trees on the mosque grounds every year, and was even able to keep some of those olives, which he cherished as blessed.

Speaking to Jerusalem Story, he said that a police officer warned him not to approach the olive trees on the grounds of al-Aqsa Mosque or he would be arrested. He adds, “I am astonished by this Israeli audacity that has completely changed the reality in al-Aqsa Mosque over the past years to the point where the police have complete control over the entire compound!”

The Old City of Jerusalem and its walls were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981, and the organization’s List of World Heritage in Danger in 1982. These designations cover all religious sites within the Old City, including al-Aqsa Mosque. They also cover the nature within and around these spaces, including the olive trees on the spacious mosque grounds. There are nearly 600 olive trees on the grounds of al-Aqsa Mosque, some of which are thousands of years old.2 The Islamic Waqf Department in Jerusalem, through the Zakat Committee, collects the olives from the trees, presses them, and distributes the oil to the poor in Jerusalem.3 No quantity of olives or the pressed oil from them is sold, despite a high demand for these olives from al-Aqsa Mosque, which the community considers blessed.

Picking Olives at al-Aqsa Mosque Is Now a Crime

These trees are an Islamic waqf, and no one can sell or buy them or their oil, says Sheikh Mazen Ahram, a former employee of the Waqf Department who has a Sufi corner on the mosque grounds.4 He added that many Palestinian Jerusalemite families used to come to participate in the olive harvest and would be able to take some home for their personal use; however, this stopped, because Israeli authorities forbid it.

According to Waqf Department figures made available to Jerusalem Story, more than 500 families used to register to receive three liters of olive oil from al-Aqsa Mosque after the olive harvest.

More than 500 families used to register to receive three liters of olive oil from al-Aqsa Mosque.

But this year, the situation was completely different, even dire, as experienced by Hajj Saeed Abdulrahman from the Palestinian village of Tamra in the Galilee. Every year, he visits al-Aqsa Mosque and picks a small amount of olives from its trees to take back to his village, considering them blessed.

Hajj Saeed was shocked recently when more than 10 Israeli police officers attacked and arrested him, while he was picking olives on the mosque grounds, confiscated his bag of olives, and took him to a police station near Bab al-Silsila. There he was issued a fine of NIS 5,000 for allegedly picking olives from a public area without prior permission from the authorities. Furthermore, he says, he has been banned from the grounds simply for picking olives, something he has done for years.... READ MORE  https://www.jerusalemstory.com/en/blog/olive-picking-al-haram-al-sharif-now-crime-palestinians

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Israeli settlers attack [PALESTINIAN] olive farmers and Washington Post journalist in West Bank: Settlers hurl rocks at Palestinians and beat photographer Heidi Levine as part of yearly attacks to disrupt harvest

 Palestine 

William Christou

Fri 16 Oct 2026 10.06 EDT

Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in a coordinated movement to disrupt the annual olive harvest, burning cars and trees and injuring Palestinians and a Washington Post photographer.

Masked settlers wielding clubs and other weapons attacked Palestinians attempting to harvest their olives in towns across the West Bank on Friday. At least six people had been injured in the town of Abu Falah near Ramallah, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said.

At least 80 settlers, some of whom were carrying firearms or clubs, gathered to stop Palestinians from harvesting their olives in Abu Falah, using slingshots to hurl rocks at the farmers in view of Israeli military jeeps. When some of the Palestinians then picked up rocks to defend themselves, the Israeli military fired teargas in their direction.

The Israeli foreign press association said in a statement: “This is the latest in a long line of violent attacks by Israeli settlers against journalists and other civilians in the occupied West Bank. Yet our repeated calls for action to confront this lawlessness have been ignored by Israeli authorities.”

Among those injured was the Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine, who was beaten by settlers in an attack that lasted more than 10 minutes, according to witnesses. Settlers stole her passport, phone, wallet and equipment.

“I was attacked, pushed to the ground. Luckily, I had my flak jacket and helmet, otherwise I probably wouldn’t even be here, because they just kept kicking and kicking me,” Levine said from a hospital bed in Ramallah. She said the attack had ended when her Palestinian colleagues intervened to save her.

In a statement, the Washington Post said that Levine had been wearing visible markings clearly identifying her as a journalist.

The coordinated assault came amid a surge of settler violence against Palestinians over the past month. Settlers have carried out at least 170 attacks since 27 September, around the start of the annual olive harvest, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group.

Every year, settlers attack Palestinians trying to harvest their olives, but this year’s harvest has seen an uptick in violence as Israel’s... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/16/israeli-settlers-attack-olive-farmers-west-bank-washington-post-journalist-heidi-levine

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Israel imposed new rules on the olive harvest this year, barring Palestinians from harvesting their trees located in Area C – an area under the Israeli military’s control, which comprises most of the West Bank’s agricultural land. 

Israel uproots 400 olive trees in occupied West Bank as harvest season approaches... The trees are hundreds of years old- uprooting them not only destroys the trees, but also affects the livelihoods of Palestinian families that depend on them.

 September 24, 2026

Israeli forces uproot 400 olive trees belonging to Palestinians and destroy 31 dunams of land with heavy machinery in the town of Beit Rima, northwest of Ramallah, in the West Bank, Palestine on September 24, 2026. [Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]

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https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260924-israel-uproots-400-olive-trees-in-occupied-west-bank-as-harvest-season-approaches/ 

 ... Since the beginning of 2026 through Sept. 22, Israel has issued 51 orders to remove trees and vegetation in the occupied West Bank, targeting 2,093 dunams of land, according to data from the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission.

The uprooting operation comes as the olive harvest season approaches. Olive trees are a major source of income for thousands of Palestinian families. Bulldozing and uprooting operations cause losses to farmers and threaten their ability to access and cultivate their land.

Afrah Qadura, 65, from Beit Rima, told Anadolu Agency that residents learned of the military order two days ago and saw a map at the municipality building showing the areas targeted for the removal of olive trees.

He said landowners were given 12 hours to remove trees before the Israeli army would implement the order. “How can we remove trees planted by our fathers and uproot them with our own hands?” he asked rhetorically.

Qadura said the olive trees had been planted over decades, beginning in the late 1960s and continuing through the 1970s and 1980s, as well as trees planted in the 1990s.

He said some of the trees uprooted Thursday had become highly productive for years, adding that olive trees are a primary source of livelihood for residents.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are preparing for the olive harvest season, which usually begins in October.

Thousands of Palestinians rely on olive trees and their crops as a source of income, alongside their connection to the land and agricultural heritage passed down through generations.

“We are proud of those trees like our children,” said Qadura, noting the years he and his father spent cultivating the land, caring for the trees and watering them.

He added that he used to bring water from a well to water the saplings and follow their growth during the years. “My father worked hard planting the trees, and we also worked hard caring for them.”

He said his family continued to tend, clean and care for the trees until they became part of their lives. Losing them in this way was, for him, like losing one of his children.

Qadura said uprooting the trees would not force his family to abandon their land, stressing that he and his family intend to replant the trees uprooted by the Israeli army.

“We will continue planting trees like my father did, and our children will continue after us,” he said, citing his family’s connection to the land and its cultivation across generations.

Abdul Rahman al-Rimawi, mayor of Bani Zeid al-Gharbia, which includes Beit Rima and other towns, told Anadolu Agency that everybody was surprised Thursday when Israeli army bulldozers began uprooting mature olive trees in the town in an area of 31 dunams.

Rimawi said the trees “are hundreds of years old,” and that uprooting them not only destroys the trees, but also affects the livelihoods of Palestinian families that depend on them.

​​​​​​​He said the operation comes as the olive harvest season approaches, describing it as part of “arbitrary Israeli practices against people, trees and stones.”

Rimawi said the residents of Beit Rima “are not isolated from this people” and what Palestinians are subjected to in terms of harassment, killings, displacement and the uprooting of olive trees.

He implored international institutions and relevant parties to work to halt the decision to uproot the trees, noting that there is ongoing communication with the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission to that end.

Rimawi said Israeli authorities had not, according to him, explained the grounds for implementing the decision, and that what is happening represents “Israeli practices against all members of the Palestinian people” in the occupied West Bank.

 WATCH: Gaza and the dystopian future of AI-powered war | Palestine This Week

‘They uprooted it all’: Israel bulldozes Palestinian-owned olive groves. Israeli bulldozers uprooted olive groves near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank weeks before the annual harvest.

PalestinianAbd Alfattah Tamimi gestures after Israeli military machinery uprooted his olive trees near the Palestinian village of Deir Nidham near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, September 23, 2026 [Mohammed Torokman/Reuters]

Israeli army bulldozers have ploughed through rows of olive trees in a village near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, just as Palestinian farmers were preparing to begin their annual harvest, residents told the Reuters news agency.

Palestinian farmer and landowner Abd Alfattah Tamimi said the army had destroyed the olive trees planted on his family’s land as well as his neighbours’.

The demolition in the village of Deir Nidham started on Monday and continued on Tuesday, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

“They don’t care about anyone, but God is up there, and we are steadfast here with our souls,” he said. “They are uprooting, and we will plant again with the help of God,” he said.

Another farmer, Nather Tamimi, told Reuters the timing of the demolition was designed to inflict maximum damage ahead of harvest season, which traditionally begins in October.

He said that his family produced about 120 drums of olive oil from the land each year.

The Israeli army also “uprooted all kinds of trees even from between the houses”, Nather Tamimi said.... READ MORE  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/24/they-uprooted-it-all-israel-bulldozes-palestinian-owned-olive-groves

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From 400 hives to 35: the Gaza beekeeper refusing to let war end his life’s work - Ibrahim al-Dabba continues to care for his colonies despite losing his home and most of his hives and equipment. Story by Lina Abu Zayed, photographs by Omar Ashtawy

Ibrahim Naji al-Dabba, 49, (in green) working with his sons. He was displaced from the Shuja’iyya area, east of Gaza City to Tel al- to the south

    "Beekeeping... is our life, our livelihood, and our future."  

The Guardian picture essay 

Each morning, Ibrahim Naji al-Dabba climbs to the roof of a damaged residential tower in Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood, where rows of beehives sit surrounded by shattered concrete and the scars of war. The rooftop is far from an ideal place for beekeeping, but for the 49-year-old father of seven, it is the only place where he can continue the profession that has sustained his family for decades.

Before the war, al-Dabba owned more than 400 beehives spread across eastern Gaza. His apiaries, equipment, storage facilities, and four-wheel-drive vehicle allowed him to manage a thriving beekeeping business that supported his family. Today, almost everything he built over years of work has disappeared.

“Beekeeping is not just a business,” he says. “It is my family’s only source of income. It is our life, our livelihood, and our future.”

Al-Dabba, who also serves as president of the Gaza Beekeepers’ cooperative society, says beekeeping became a passion long before it became a profession. Over the years, he specialised in producing honey, breeding queen bees, and developing bee strains adapted to Gaza’s climate. Before the war, Gaza’s beekeeping sector had continued to grow despite years of blockade, with hundreds of beekeepers producing honey and supporting local agriculture through pollination.

That changed after the war erupted.

Unable to reach his apiaries because of bombardment and displacement, al-Dabba watched his life’s work vanish. He lost his home, more than 400 beehives, honey-processing equipment, storage facilities, and nearly all the tools required for his trade... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/jul/29/gaza-beekeeper-refusing-to-let-war-end-lifes-work

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Harvesting Olives in the West Bank, in Photos For 7,000 years, the tradition has been a lifeline for Palestinians. Now, it’s under siege [by Israeli Settlers]...

New York Magazine

@NYMag

 

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: https://nymag.visitlink.me/e43Mea

 

                           Jasmine Sanders, is a writer from the South Side of Chicago.

 

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‘Olives are everything for us’: West Bank farmers prevented from harvesting by settler violence... About 70% of town’s olives are inaccessible without risking a potentially fatal clash with Israeli settlers

Mahmud Hassan, the mayor of As-Sawiya, pointing to inaccessible olive groves. Photograph: Jason Burke/The Guardian

Jason Burke and Sufian Taha in As-Sawiya

Mon 3 Nov 2025 05.53 EST

Around As-Sawiya, rolling hills covered in fields and orchards rise to a horizon sharp against a pristine blue sky. It is a stunning view. But look closer and it becomes clear why the few thousand residents of this small town in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank say they are under siege – and why the olives are still heavy on the trees two weeks after the official date of the beginning of the annual harvest.

From the highest point in As-Sawiya, Mahmud Hassan, the mayor, points out the olive orchards on the other side of the highway below the town. They lie on land owned by local families but are now impossible to reach without risking a potentially fatal clash with Israeli settlers who live in settlements around the town, or with Israeli security forces, he says. In all, about 70% of the town’s olives are currently inaccessible.

“Our olives are everything for us: the backbone of our economy, in our homes, on our tables, in our culture. These last years have brought nothing but misery to us,” says Hassan, 68.

The situation is the same across much of the West Bank. Since the beginning of October, the Palestinian Farmers’ Union (PFU) has logged more than 50 incidents of violence or destruction.

The UN has recorded more: 86 olive harvest-related settler attacks resulting in casualties, property damage or both, including several incidents reported in the days before the official start of the season on 9 October. More than 3,000 trees and saplings have been damaged and 112 Palestinians injured, including 50 by settlers.

“Incidents entailed attacks on farmers inside or on their way to olive groves, theft of crops and harvesting equipment, and vandalism of olive trees,” the UN said. “In total, 50 villages and towns have been affected,” an increase on last year’s harvest when there were 80 incidents in 48 villages and towns that led to the injury of 50 Palestinians.

Records kept by the PFU show incidents of violence have soared fourfold, from three or four daily before the war in Gaza. The most recent attacks are “not random, but deliberate efforts to undermine Palestinian rural life”, the PFU said in a statement.

 The Israeli settlers in the West Bank are supported by far-right ministers, part of the country’s ruling coalition, the most rightwing in Israel’s history. Last month, a bill introduced by far-right lawmakers applying Israeli law to the West Bank, a move tantamount to annexation... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/03/olives-settler-violence-west-bank-farmers

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