Settlers who brutally attacked Palestinian farmers were like a ‘lynch mob’ journalist says
Jasper Nathaniel, an independent journalist and writer, captured footage of settlers beating Palestinian olive farmers in the occupied West Bank village of Turmus Aya on Sunday, including 53-year-old Afaf Abu Alia, who suffered a brain haemorrhage from the assault.
Nathaniel said the settlers carrying out the attack were “a lynch mob” and that while he did not expect the Israeli authorities to take action, it was still vital to demand justice.
“A couple of months ago, a famously violent settler, Yinon Levi, shot [activist and journalist] Awdah Hathaleen to death in the [Palestinian] village of Umm al-Khair. Nineteen of the villagers were arrested, but Yinon Levi was back in the village doing illegal construction the next week,” he told Al Jazeera from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
“The impulse is to think that no one will be arrested for what happened yesterday, but I’m actually not willing to accept that, and the people that I’ve spoken to in the village today agree. So there’s not a good history of settlers being held accountable, but it should not be so hard to identify the man who clubbed that woman and I know that I and a lot of other people will not leave it alone.”
Nathaniel said he faces “constant” harassment and intimidation from settlers while trying to report. Three days ago, he was threatened when visiting the town of where Palestinian-American Sayfollah Musallet was beaten to death by settlers in July.
“It was just a few minutes before a group of Hilltop Youth settlers emerged from the hills carrying huge metal rods and surrounded our car and tried to block us from being able to get out,” he said.
The week before that he was in Umm al-Khair, where settlers walk through the village carrying machine guns.
“They are not actively menacing you the way settlers around here are, but they have a constant presence; they are constantly building [illegally],” Nathaniel said. “It’s a different form of threat – you know that they are capable of violence, and they will kill you if they want to.”
“Yesterday it was about as plain as it gets – within the first five minutes, there was a man holding a gun standing in the middle of the street and staring at us. It’s a pretty direct threat, I think.”
The danger of olive harvest season in occupied Palestine
October is olive harvest season in the occupied West Bank, but Israeli settler attacks have been increasing, scaring Palestinians off their land. Here are a few figures:
- In the past month, Israeli settlers carried out at least 71 attacks against Palestinians. At least one person was killed and 99 were injured.
- Half of the assaults targeted the olive harvest, the crucial source of income for Palestinian families, affecting 27 villages.
- Israeli settlers dug up more than 1,400 fully grown olive trees and saplings.
- In the past five harvest seasons, settler attacks have surged, with more than 200 incidents reported last year. That’s almost double the number recorded in 2023, and three times higher than 2022.
- Settlers, often protected by Israeli soldiers, have become more organised and violent.
