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Palestinians in Hebron are ‘living in fear’ with the city closed, while Israeli forces arrest dozens across West Bank.

Israel has imposed a lockdown and displaced thousands of Palestinians from their homes in Hebron, as the military conducts raids in the occupied West Bank following the deaths of two Israeli soldiers.

This comes as the Palestinian Authority (PA) on Saturday called for international pressure on Israel to protect Hebron’s residents, who said soldiers announced evacuation orders over loudspeakers late at night, leaving them with no time to prepare and few places to move to.

Hebron’s mayor Yousef al-Ja’bari told Al Jazeera that 2,200 people had been forced from their homes as hundreds of Israeli raids took place since Friday’s attack by two Palestinian gunmen on an Israeli army reserve base. The two Palestinians were killed, as well as the two Israeli soldiers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then ordered a “full lockdown” of the West Bank following the attack.

Mayor al-Ja’bari said on Saturday that Hebron residents can neither enter nor leave the city.

Israeli soldiers also fired a stun grenade at Al Jazeera journalists near the Farsh al-Hawa checkpoint in Hebron, as they documented an Israeli operation to bulldoze homes and vehicles in the area.

The Israeli military carried out raids across at least 15 areas of the occupied West Bank on Saturday, Al Jazeera correspondents on the ground reported.

Those targeted include Jenin and Nablus in the north; Ramallah, Al-Bireh, Birzeit, and occupied East Jerusalem in the centre; and Bethlehem in the south.

Israeli forces have arrested about 70 Palestinians in raids across the West Bank, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said.

The PA, which governs the West Bank, called Israel’s actions “collective punishment”, citing the demolition of homes, forced displacement of entire neighbourhoods, and the “closure and siege of Palestinian cities”, and urged the international community to intervene, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Meanwhile, Hamas said in a statement that the “campaigns and escalations carried out by the occupation and its criminal settlers against our people will only fuel further outrage”.

Hundreds of thousands ‘under siege’

Around 200,000 Palestinians live in the city of Hebron itself, and a further 600,000 in Hebron governorate, making it the West Bank’s most populous governorate.

Those 800,000 Palestinians in Hebron governorate are “now under siege, with all entrances and exits closed since morning”, Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist and political analyst based in Hebron, told Al Jazeera.

“Inside the city, there is no safe place for anyone to hide … the city is really in fear,” Amro said.

Political positioning

Israeli politicians are trying to “capitalise” on the attack ahead of parliamentary elections on October 27 , Al Jazeera’s West Bank correspondent Nour Odeh said.

“Netanyahu, his Likud party, and his allies in this right-wing coalition are behind in the polls,” said Odeh, so in response they are “trying to put up a brave front, saying they’re combating Palestinians”.

Just days before Israelis are set to vote, Netanyahu avoided answering whether he planned to dismantle the PA, but said a “big surprise” awaits the organisation.

Tulkarem, occupied West Bank – Fawza Awad, a 75-year-old widow, couldn’t hold back her tears as she described the living conditions she has endured since being displaced from the Tulkarem refugee camp in January 2025 – a result of an Israeli military operation that targeted refugee camps in the northern West Bank, forcibly displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.

With little money, Fawza and her family found shelter where they could: a small, unfinished house in Tulkarem belonging to her daughter. She currently lives in a portion of the structure alongside her son, his wife, and their child.

The family previously relied on limited financial and food assistance provided by the World Food Programme (WFP), but has not received aid in the past five months.

The UN agency officially announced a 50 percent reduction in the number of food aid recipients in the occupied West Bank in September, citing “critical funding constraints”, the result of reduced funding from international funders. Food needs, conversely, have more than doubled since 2023, when Israel began its genocidal war on Gaza, and increased attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.

The WFP noted at the time that approximately 900,000 people in the West Bank are currently suffering from food insecurity.

In a statement given to Al Jazeera, the WFP confirmed that some families had stopped receiving aid before the official announcement in September.

Fawza and her family have been left to fend for themselves. There is no prospect of returning to her old home – she says that the Israeli army has completely demolished the structure, replacing it with a wide road to facilitate the movement of its military vehicles.

She added that one of her sons has been detained by Israel since 2024, while her other sons, who previously worked inside Israel, are now all unemployed.

“I suffer from asthma and high blood pressure, requiring monthly medication that costs at least 200 shekels ($64), an expense no one covers for me. We used to receive modest food aid barely enough for two or three people, but now that has stopped completely,” Fawza told Al Jazeera.

‘Not even bread’

Not far away, in the al-Muwahhad School building in the Thannabeh suburb of Tulkarem, more than 1,000 Palestinians displaced from the Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps are sheltering, having found nowhere else to go and unable to pay rent.

Among them are Rabab Qasim, 47, her husband Talib Abu Sarriya, 72, and their three children. For the second consecutive year, they have been living in a small, 30-square-metre (320sq-foot) room on the ground floor of the school, with no source of income and totally reliant on aid.

For the past three months, the family has received no aid whatsoever following the WFP food assistance cut.

“I suffer from a herniated disc in my back, requiring monthly treatment that costs 300 shekels ($96) – an amount I cannot afford,” Rabab said. “I also need physical therapy, which I have never been able to access because I cannot pay for it. I sleep on a worn-out mattress on the floor; all I wish for is to be able to buy a bed.”

Talib told Al Jazeera that the family are often unable to find bread or a meal, and frequently go to sleep hungry. It’s a far cry from their former life in the Tulkarem refugee camp, where he once owned a small vegetable stall. It was a modest livelihood, but one that gave them enough to get by.

Alone in the struggle

The WFP has blamed increasing Israeli pogroms and forced displacements in the West Bank for devastating livelihoods, deepening hunger, and pushing families into even more severe crises. The latest quarterly food security analysis conducted by the WFP indicates that 76 percent of Palestinian households in the West Bank have experienced a significant decline in income.

According to the analysis, 12 percent of the population has poor food consumption, and one-third of households cannot afford a healthy diet due to rapidly deteriorating economic conditions. Rural areas and the governorates in the southern occupied West Bank have been the hardest hit.

Said al-Amour, 61, a resident of Khirbet al-Rakeez in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, told Al Jazeera that he and his 14-person family haven’t received any assistance from the WFP for the past seven months.

In April 2025, while confronting repeated attacks by settlers on the village, Said says he was shot by a settler. The injury resulted in the amputation of his leg and a permanent disability; he continues to face periodic assaults and beatings whenever he encounters the settlers – part of the ongoing pogrom against Palestinians in the West Bank.

“They are trying to steal our land. I refuse to let them take it, and I will continue to defend it, but I am paying a heavy price. Now, they have cut off the aid I used to receive that helped my family remain steadfast here,” he told Al Jazeera.

Due to the amputation of his leg, al-Amour requires monthly medical treatment costing at least 1,200 shekels ($385), an expense that he cannot afford. He has no source of income other than a few olive trees, which settlers frequently attempt to seize.

Collapse of livelihoods

In cooperation with its partners, the WFP still provides assistance to 200,000 Palestinians in the West Bank through cash transfers, food vouchers, direct food supplies, livelihood programmes, and nutritional services.

However, the WFP told Al Jazeera that it simply does not have the resources to cover the needs of all the families in the West Bank requiring assistance.

“The cessation of aid does not imply that a beneficiary is ineligible; rather, it is a broad decision affecting all current beneficiaries, regardless of the outcome of their individual assessment,” the WFP said. “It is possible that changes may occur, and aid could be reinstated for some beneficiaries; in such cases, they would be contacted and notified via text message.”

Economist and human rights activist Ubai Aboudi told Al Jazeera that the West Bank is facing a humanitarian crisis exacerbated by the loss of the WFP food aid, as well as a financial crisis affecting the Palestinian Authority (PA). Israel has completely withheld the customs revenues it collects on behalf of the PA since May 2025, leaving the authority unable to pay public sector salaries.

Aboudi noted other factors, such as the tens of thousands of Palestinians previously employed in Israel and illegal settlements in the West Bank who have been out of work since October 2023, when Israel stopped giving them work permits.

He also added that Israeli restrictions on Palestinian and international NGOs, including the suspension of registration for 37 international organisations and the closure of some local groups, have further limited the ability to provide humanitarian assistance.

“Around half a million Palestinian families need food assistance, while the actual need may be greater,” Aboudi said. “With aid declining from the World Food Programme and other sources, many families are unable to secure food.”

Israeli pogroms on Palestinian farmers and their lands during the olive harvest season intensify.

Israeli forces have arrested 36 Palestinians during raids across the occupied West Bank, as attacks on Palestinian farmers and their lands during the olive harvest season ramp up.

In Jenin governorate, Israeli forces raided towns and villages on Thursday, arresting 10 Palestinians, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported, citing data from the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.

Israeli forces also raided the town of Tuqu in the Hebron governorate on Thursday and arrested former prisoner Shorok al-Badan, along with five others from other parts of Hebron, according to Wafa.

The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said on Thursday that Israeli forces arrested 14 people in Khirbet Jawaya village of Masafer Yatta in Hebron, while Wafa reported that three other Palestinians were arrested across the Hebron governorate, citing a security source.

In Nablus and Jerusalem, three more Palestinians were arrested during Israeli raids in the village of Burin, the town of Awarta, and the Qalandiya refugee camp.

Attack pattern

The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said it documented 17 pogroms by Israeli forces and settlers on Thursday against Palestinian farmers and their land during the olive harvest.

The incidents were recorded across occupied West Bank governorates, including Hebron, Qalqilya, Nablus, Ramallah and el-Bireh, Jenin and Salfit.

According to the Commission, the attacks included assaults on farmers, preventing them from reaching their land, theft of crops and agricultural equipment, damage and burning of olive trees, as well as arrests, threats at gunpoint and live fire.

The Commission says the pattern represents an escalation in attacks targeting the olive harvest and undermines Palestinians’ ability to access and cultivate their land and maintain their livelihoods.

Israeli attacks on Palestinian farmers garnered international attention and condemnation. US Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander was briefly detained on Wednesday by the Israeli military with a warning while volunteering to help Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli court releases nine settler suspects over West Bank attacks as investigations into recent assaults continue.

Israel has released nine of the 10 Israeli settler suspects arrested over attacks on a US journalist and European diplomats in the occupied West Bank, placing them under house arrest.

An Israeli court in Jerusalem ordered the release late on Wednesday, according to Honenu, a law firm that represents Israeli settlers.

Israeli police said one suspect remained in custody and that the investigation into the violent incidents was continuing.

Masked settlers were filmed last week assaulting Heidi Levine, a Washington Post photojournalist covering a Palestinian olive harvest who was taken to hospital and underwent surgery on a finger.

In a separate attack earlier this week, masked settlers assaulted French, Belgian and Polish diplomats and a French mayor in another part of the West Bank.

The suspects had been detained after the United States called for a crackdown on settler violence. France, Belgium and Poland also urged Israel to act.

“In the vast majority of attacks against Palestinians, no arrests are made at all,” said Yonatan Kanonich, head of research at the Israeli rights group Yesh Din. “In cases that receive media coverage … the police arrest several settlers and release most of them shortly afterward.”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a post on X Thursday that the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory was “out of control”, with Palestinians continuing “to suffer daily attacks by Israeli settlers” and journalists and diplomats also being attacked.

Guterres called for “a credible political path towards lasting peace”.

Separately, the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission on Thursday said it documented 17 West Bank pogroms by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinian farmers and their land during the olive harvest.

The commission recorded 409 attacks in October, 317 of which were by settlers and 92 by Israeli forces.

Nablus recorded the most attacks, 166, followed by Salfit with 91.

The commission said the attacks included assaults on farmers, preventing them from reaching their land, theft of crops and agricultural equipment, damage and burning of olive trees, as well as arrests, threats at gunpoint and live fire.

Ali Hassan Bazzari from Burqa died of wounds from settler gunfire while picking olives on October 7, the commission reported.

On Thursday, settlers set fire to olive trees near Imatin, east of Qalqilya, while Israeli forces forced farmers to leave and detained a farmer and several of his workers, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Near Yabad, west of Jenin, settlers stole 17 bags of harvested olives and equipment, local sources said.

Citing a local Palestinian official, Wafa reported that around Jenin, Israeli forces closed transport roads and most village gates, preventing farmers from reaching land in Barta’a.

Israeli forces detained U.S. Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander on Wednesday as he helped Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the occupied West Bank, releasing him hours later while dozens of other volunteers, including a group of American rabbis, remained in custody.

The incident was the latest in an annual olive harvest that has been marked by violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinian villagers attempting to gather their crops.

The Israeli military said the farmers and volunteers had failed to seek prior approval for the harvest and were detained “due to the security risk posed by conducting an uncoordinated harvest near an Israeli community.” It later added that it viewed “the arrival of dozens of activists as an act intended solely to provoke, which undermines the harvesting process.”

Lander is running in the U.S. elections on Nov. 3 to represent a heavily Democratic New York district in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“The occupation is a crime under international law,” Lander wrote on social media after he was detained. “Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.”

“These detentions by the IDF are one more attempt to undermine Palestinians’ right to harvest their olive groves, travel on their roads, and live in their homes,” he added in a post after his release.

This year, Palestinians have been required to coordinate with the Israeli military to access more of their privately owned farmland than in previous years. The anti-settlement group Peace Now said last week that the army had expanded by nearly 30% the area of farmland that Palestinians cannot enter without prior approval, to 34 square miles. The Israeli military declined to comment on the exact figures but said Palestinian farmers must coordinate access to areas under Israeli security control.

The detained volunteers were taken to a police facility. Lander was among them but “released after it became known that he was a congressional candidate,” the Israeli police said in a statement.

Israeli rights group Yesh Din and the Palestinian Farmers’ Union have said the 2026 harvest has been the most violent in recent history, with hundreds of reported thefts, clashes and arson attacks.

Much of the violence has unfolded on land outside Palestinian villages, where Palestinians have historically harvested olives and Israeli settlers have increasingly erected outposts without authorization from Israel’s government.

But there were no clashes before Israeli forces arrived Wednesday, according to Beck Strober, a spokesperson for Protect the Harvest, the advocacy group that organized the volunteers at the grove.

Jill Jacobs, one of a dozen American rabbis detained, condemned the Israeli government restricting the ability of Palestinians to harvest freely.

“The Israeli government is actively advancing the forced displacement of Palestinian communities across the West Bank, using its military to deny Palestinians access to their land and intimidate those who stand alongside them,” Jacobs, chief executive of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, said in a statement.

Lander, who was endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, defeated U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman in a primary for New York’s 10th congressional district. The race was viewed as a referendum on the Democratic party’s support for Israel. Both candidates are Jewish and have criticized Israel, but only Lander called the war in Gaza a genocide.

Lander was not the first U.S. politician detained in the West Bank this year. U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said Israeli forces detained him during a visit in July.

Lander says dozens remain in Israeli custody after being detained while helping Palestinian farmers harvest olives.

United States Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander says he has been released from Israeli military custody with a warning after being detained alongside dozens of volunteers helping Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday.

But several dozen others, including rabbis and international volunteers, remain in detention, according to Lander, who called them to be released immediately.

“I’ve been released from IDF custody with a ‘warning,’ apparently because of my public profile,” Lander wrote on X. “I told them I wasn’t even a congressmember yet, just a nominee.”

Lander, a former New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate, was among approximately 80 volunteers detained by Israeli soldiers and police near the village of Nahalin, outside Bethlehem, according to the Israeli organisation Rabbis for Human Rights.

The group, which included American, Israeli, Palestinian, British and Canadian volunteers, had been accompanying Palestinian farmers for about two hours when Israeli forces arrived and informed them that they were in a closed military zone.

The volunteers were then taken to a police station, according to Rabbis for Human Rights.

The Israeli government has not responded to a request for comment.

European diplomats and officials were attacked on Saturday amid a surge in settler pogroms across the occupied West Bank in recent weeks, coinciding with olive harvest season.

The settler pogroms have escalated just weeks before Israel heads to the polls on October 27.

The European Union (EU) on Sunday condemned settler attacks on European diplomats and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. A day earlier, a veteran American journalist working for the Washington Post was also brutally attacked.

But this is not the first time Israeli settlers have assaulted foreign officials or prominent Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Here’s a timeline of some of the recent and past attacks:

October 17, 2026

Israeli settlers assaulted European diplomats, including a French mayor, near the Palestinian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank.

The delegation was visiting Palestinian olive harvesters on Saturday when the Israeli attackers confronted the group.

In Saturday’s incident, the settlers targeted Belgium’s consul general, French and Polish diplomats, and Catholic representatives, Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Prevot said.

“A French mayor was assaulted and a Belgian vehicle damaged,” Prevot said, linking the incident to Israel’s “illegal settlement policy” and pledging to push for further EU sanctions.

Bernard Baudoux, the French mayor who was assaulted, told the AFP news agency the attack suggests that “there is a tolerance on the part of the Israeli government” towards settler violence.

Video shared by an activist at the scene, Amit Orfali, shows Baudoux leaning against a vehicle while sitting on the dusty ground. Other clips showed young masked men knocking insistently on a driver’s side window and asking for identification, while other masked men carrying sticks advanced in the distance. Orfali said the masked men “threatened to kill us”.

France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called on Israel to arrest the “extremist settlers” who “violently assaulted” Baudoux, and bring them to justice. “They must urgently halt this criminal violence and guarantee the safety of civilian populations, as they are compelled to do under international law,” he said in a post on X.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has, however, appeared to question the reports of the attack on the Europeans, saying on X that they are “alleged” and require “compelling evidence”, despite acknowledging that published footage of the incident exists.

“We take positive note of statements by several Israeli representatives who condemned the attacks,” the EU said in a statement on Sunday. “But we expect full accountability as well as effective measures to prevent continued acts of violence and violent harassment against Palestinians, including during the ongoing olive harvest season, as well as against journalists.”

October 16, 2026

Palestinian farmers harvesting olives and veteran American journalist Heidi Levine, 64, who freelances for the Washington Post, were brutally attacked by settlers.

Levine fell to the ground during the assault before she was set upon, witnesses said. “We looked and saw that there was a journalist … on the ground with people surrounding her, beating her, clubbing her, robbing her, pulling her up, beating her again and kicking her,” Jasper Nathaniel, an independent journalist who witnessed the attack, told Al Jazeera.

Levine later told reporters that her attackers “just kept kicking me and kicking me, like probably 50 times”.

Levine was wearing a protective vest marked “PRESS” on the front and back. Her cameras and phone were taken from her during the assault, the Washington Post reported.

Nathaniel said he and others managed to reach her when the settlers briefly backed away, but she struggled to stand. “She was in very, very bad shape. She couldn’t really get up off the ground,” he said.

As they helped Levine towards paramedics, settlers charged again, throwing more stones, he added. The journalist was eventually taken to a hospital in Ramallah.

Nathaniel said Israeli soldiers arrived after the settler assault and opened fire and used tear gas against Palestinians, shooting a man in the leg. “They do nothing to stop the settlers, and they speed into town and start firing their guns and tear-gassing, and they shoot a Palestinian man in the leg,” he said.

“They’re pointing their guns at the paramedics who are helping him, shoving journalists, including myself,” Nathaniel said, adding that the injured man was eventually taken away in an ambulance.

Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported that Israeli forces fired live ammunition and tear gas at Palestinians during the attack. After the soldiers left, Palestinians returned to harvesting their olives, Nathaniel added.

Netanyahu’s office has said the facts around the settler attack “remain unclear”, as it offered a conditional condemnation.

“Serious questions remain”, said a post on the official X account of the prime minister’s office, calling for an investigation to “establish the facts, including who initiated the violence”.

October 6, 2026

Israeli settlers beat Palestinian AFP news agency photographer Jaafar Ashtiyeh, 58, with rifle butts near Aqraba, south of Nablus. He suffered bruises to his head and torso and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, according to witnesses, his family and fellow journalists cited by AFP.

AFP photographer John Wessels was with Ashtiyeh when the incident occurred.

The news agency reported that a quadbike had raced towards the journalists and a man had opened live fire.

“At least six other people then rushed towards the AFP journalists, firing guns,” AFP reported. “As Ashtiyeh attempted to enter a car, which was clearly marked ‘Press’, two men jumped on him and beat him repeatedly with the butts of their rifles. ‘I could hear his screams,’ said Wessels, who was also threatened at gunpoint.”

While Ashtiyeh is now conscious in a hospital in Nablus, the assailants have taken his camera equipment, according to his colleague Wessels.

The Israeli military has yet to respond to the AFP news agency.

July 11, 2026

United States Congressional Representative Ro Khanna said he and his tour group were detained by rifle-wielding Israeli settlers during a trip to Palestine.

In a post on X, Khanna had accused the Israeli army of supporting the settlers.

“When the [Israeli army] arrived, they sided with the settlers and continued our detention,” Khanna wrote.

Khanna, a Democrat who is considering running for US president in 2028, told the Reuters news agency that “hoodlums … with machine guns” had detained his group a day earlier. “They block off the road. And then they call the [Israeli military] and the [Israeli military] is on their side,” Khanna said.

He added that the settlers were armed with US-made assault rifles.

In an interview with DRM News, Khanna said his experience in the occupied West Bank and Israel was the “first time” he had “really been acutely aware of being brown”.

“I saw the arrogance in the eyes of those settlers. Twenty-one and 22-year-olds with guns, laughing that they had detained us. The arrogance of those young [Israeli army] soldiers that my tax dollars are funding. Having no respect for the fact that they were detaining Americans,” he added.

The Israeli military disputed Khanna’s version of the events, saying that it “dispersed” civilians who were blocking the road.

Israeli officials have, however, ruled out apologising to Khanna or holding the settlers accountable.

Three months after the incident, on Saturday, October 17, Khanna called Netanyahu a “liar” after his office released an October 16 statement on X saying that “serious questions remain” about “who initiated the violence” and other details of the attack on Washington Post journalist Heidi Levine.

“Netanyahu called me a liar when settlers detained me, along with a NYT photographer, in Zanuta this past July,” Khanna wrote. “Netanyahu, you are the liar with the blood of Palestinian children on your hands.”

November 2025

One Canadian and three Italian activists were injured by illegal Israeli settlers in the Ein ad-Duyuk village in the Jericho governorate in the central West Bank, local sources told the Anadolu news agency.

Anadolu reported that settlers had stormed into a Bedouin community where the activists were residing and then assaulted them. Three activists sustained moderate injuries, while one was critically wounded, the news agency said and added that their passports, phones, and belongings were also taken.

July 2025

Palestinian activist and English teacher Awdah Hathaleen, who contributed to the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was shot and killed on July 28, 2025, in the occupied West Bank village of Umm al-Khair in the Masafer Yatta region.

The beloved 31-year-old activist and father of three fell to the ground as people rushed over to try to help him. Then an ambulance came out of the nearby illegal settlement of Carmel and took him away.

Footage published by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem appears to show the suspect Yinon Levi opening fire on Hathaleen during a confrontation in the village.

Despite the visual evidence and prior sanctions imposed on Levi by both the EU and the United States over past attacks on Palestinians, Israeli authorities released him to house arrest.

US President Donald Trump also removed the penalties against Levi and other settlers accused of extremist violence after assuming office in January 2025.

July 2024

Israeli settlers attacked a group of foreign volunteers helping Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank.

David Hummel, an American-German in the group, told the AFP news agency that eight mainly American volunteers were working with the farmers in an olive grove near the Palestinian village of Qusra when settlers attacked them.

“They started attacking and beating us all with sticks and metal pipes, and they were throwing rocks as well at us,” he said.

“I was attacked on my legs, on my arms and here on my jaw as well and it was … very violent,” he added.

The Israeli army condemned the violence and said its troops were deployed to the scene and had fired warning shots into the air, causing the Israeli settlers to flee the area.

Trump-appointed Ambassador Mike Huckabee calls attack in occupied West Bank a ‘despicable act of terror’.

United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has demanded Israel prosecute and jail those responsible for the attack on Washington Post journalist Heidi Levine in the occupied West Bank.

“Attacking a female photographer is a despicable act of terror carried out by masked cowards,” Huckabee wrote on X on Saturday.

“Those who attacked unarmed reporter should spend YRS in prison,” he added. “We have called for a full investigation, arrest, and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law to whoever participated in this.”

Levine was covering Palestinians’ annual harvest of olives on Friday in the occupied West Bank when Israeli settlers brutally attacked her and several Palestinians.

Israeli settlers stormed the area, beat her and stole her passport, telephone, wallet and equipment, according to witnesses.

The perpetrators, armed with bottles and slingshots, “were kicking me for like 10 minutes, and I was trying to hold onto my cameras and my bag”, Levine said.

Jasper Nathaniel, an independent journalist who witnessed the attack, told Al Jazeera that Levine “was in very, very bad shape. She couldn’t really get up off the ground.”

Levine, 64, was taken to hospital after the assault in Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah.

The American photojournalist underwent surgery on her finger, which was nearly detached from her hand, and was left with a broken rib and multiple broken vertebrae, as well as lacerations, her daughter told The Associated Press news agency.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who wants to shore up his pro-settlement right-wing base ahead of closely fought October 27 elections, claimed on Friday that Palestinians or “far-left” activists may have been responsible for the attack on Levine and other Palestinians.

Huckabee, a staunch ally of Israel who has sharply criticised Israeli settler attacks against Americans, did not identify the culprits as settlers after Netanyahu tried to sow doubt as to their identity.

The ambassador, appointed by US President Donald Trump, met Palestinian-Americans in the occupied West Bank town of Turmus Aya in September to hear locals’ testimony about their experiences with pogroms. In August, Huckabee called a days-long Israeli settler siege an “act of terror”.

The US State Department criticised Friday’s attack using a cautious tone on Levine’s beating, stating condemnation of “criminal violence by any party”.

Several Palestinians have been injured by Israeli settlers, and farmers have been arrested by Israeli forces during Israeli pogroms across the occupied West Bank.

Four women and a child were among six people injured on Saturday when Israeli settlers attacked residents in Ma’in village in the Masafer Yatta area, south of Hebron, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS).

In the town of Deir Ammar, west of Ramallah, Israeli forces opened fire on farmers picking olives, forcing them to leave their land, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

In the same area, Israeli settlers shot and injured two Palestinians. In the village of Tuqu, southeast of Bethlehem, Israeli forces fired on a Palestinian civilian vehicle.

‘Part of campaign’

In the village of Kafr Malek, northeast of Ramallah, settlers raided a farm at dawn and killed about 20 sheep, Mayor Najeh Rustum told Al Jazeera.

He added that Israeli forces had raided the village the previous night as well, firing tear gas canisters that ignited a fire in a house and caused material damage.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah, said settlers destroyed olive trees across the Beit Furik plain, east of Nablus, in the northern West Bank while Israeli forces arrested landowners and olive pickers.

In the village of Deir Jarir, east of Ramallah, she said, settlers under army protection fired live ammunition at farmers in the al-Hariq area to prevent them from completing the harvest and forced them off their land. Settlers also smashed the vehicle of international activist Jonathan Budlak in the village and threw stones at a farmer’s vehicle.

In the village of Burqa near Ramallah, Israeli forces and settlers prevented farmers from picking olives, Odeh said, adding that settlers attacked farmers in the Wadi al-Sha’er area, southeast of Salfit.

“What we see, whether it’s in Beit Furik, Kafr Malek, Deir Jarir or elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, is part of a campaign,” Odeh said.

She said settlers have become increasingly emboldened, publicly advertising attack campaigns on social media platforms.

“There have been 300 documented attacks since the beginning of October, and that has had a devastating impact on a very important season for Palestinian farmers,” she said, adding that danger comes from soldiers and settlers alike as military forces routinely intervene to protect settlers and attack Palestinians defending their land.

Prominent rabbi justifies attacks

The attacks follow a religious edict issued by Rabbi Dov Lior, a prominent rabbi for National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party and a leading authority among the Hilltop Youth, which is a religious Zionist group devoted to seizing Palestinian land in the West Bank.

In the edict, Lior stated that harvesting olives in the Holy Land is entirely permitted and carries an added virtue, given security dangers.

He wrote that Jews are permitted to harvest olives even in areas far from Jewish communities to publicly display ownership of the land and fulfil God’s commandment of conquering it. He claimed the land belongs to the Jewish people and Palestinians did not buy or rent it.

Odeh said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu downplays pogroms and no concrete action is taken to stop them.

“It is a matter of debate among politicians, but no one is stopping these settlers, whose names, locations and homes are known,” she said, adding that politicians permit the violence to continue because “it is politically expedient” and secures votes before elections on October 27.