In the latest violence across the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers attacked the village of Ma'in in the Masafer Yatta area south of Hebron, the Palestine Red Crescent Society told Al Jazeera. In 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, settlers shot and injured two Palestinians, and in Tuqu, southeast of Bethlehem, Israeli forces fired on a civilian vehicle.
In Kafr Malek, northeast of Ramallah, settlers raided a farm at dawn and killed about 20 sheep, Mayor Najeh Rustum said. Israeli forces had raided the village the previous night, firing tear gas canisters that ignited a house fire. Al Jazeera correspondent Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah, said settlers destroyed olive trees across the Beit Furik plain east of Nablus while Israeli forces arrested landowners and olive pickers. In Deir Jarir, settlers under army protection fired live ammunition at farmers to prevent them from completing the harvest, Odeh said, and smashed an international activist's vehicle.
Odeh described the coordinated nature of the attacks: "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." She noted settlers have become increasingly emboldened, publicly advertising attack campaigns on social media. There have been 300 documented attacks since the beginning of October, she said, devastating the crucial olive harvest season. Israeli forces routinely intervene to protect settlers and attack Palestinians defending their land, she added.
The attacks follow a religious edict issued by Rabbi Dov Lior, a prominent rabbi in National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's Jewish Power party and a leading authority among the Hilltop Youth, a religious Zionist group devoted to establishing settlements in the West Bank.