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israeli settler violence
Palestine Is Our Pandora
James Cameron dreamed it, but Palestinians are living it. If we continue to let violence against their land and people go unchecked, we’ll all pay the price.
Oct 28, 2024
Exactly one year ago today, on October 28, 2023, Bilal Saleh was shot dead by Israeli settlers while peacefully harvesting his olive trees. It happened near the field he had tended for years, with his wife and children as witnesses. He was unarmed. The settler who killed him walked free, back to Rehelim. The world barely noticed.
Cast into the shadow of the more than 40,000 Palestinian lives lost since the war on Gaza began, Bilal’s death is barely a blip.
Farmers won’t fight with guns, but they will plant. Again and again, they will plant.
But it’s a different kind of death, being murdered in an olive grove. It’s part of a larger colonial strategy of dislocation to sever the deep connection Palestinians have to their land. Olive trees, once symbols of peace, have become battlegrounds—and settlers, soldiers in this war of erasure. This year alone, 4,000 trees have been destroyed by settlers.
What does it mean to destroy a tree? It’s not just vandalism—it’s an attack on identity, history, and survival.
The Tree of Souls: Palestine’s Living Resistance
For Palestinians, the olive tree isn’t just a crop. It’s their Tree of Souls. Remember that scene in Avatar when the Na’vi fight the colonizers to save the giant, sacred tree that holds their entire world together? The olive tree is that for Palestinians.
For thousands of years, olive trees have provided food, oil, income, spiritual roots, and cultural pride. They have withstood droughts, fires, and wars; held back the desert; and kept the soil from vanishing into dust. And here’s another feather in their leafy cap: Each tree quietly absorbs around 75 pounds of carbon a year. So when 4,000 trees are destroyed in a single season, it’s like leaving 300,000 pounds of carbon hanging around. Worse still, the Palestinian Farmers Union estimates that since the occupation began, 2.5 million trees have been destroyed. That’s the carbon equivalent of millions of transatlantic flights.
All of which makes farmers like Bilal the last line of nonviolent defense—not just against the occupation but environmental disaster. Farmers won’t fight with guns, but they will plant. Again and again, they will plant.
Colonization 101: The Settler’s Guide to Killing Trees
Olive trees don’t just die by accident. They’re methodically cut down, one by one, in a calculated sweep of colonization. For years, Israel has leveraged an Ottoman law allowing the state to claim uncultivated land. By destroying olive trees—trees that take years to mature and produce—they clear a path for more illegal settlements. That’s the game. It’s a slow deliberate erasure.
If even a fraction of the $18 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel were spent planting trees, we’d have hundreds of millions of trees helping transform a polarized holy land into a prosperous heartland.
Each felled tree isn’t just about clearing the land or fouling the air. Passed down like heirlooms, the trees hold a different kind of currency: history, survival, pride. Destroy them, and you don’t just take away a crop, you sever a people’s claim to the soil and connection to their past.
Without their olive trees, Palestinian farmers lose their autonomy, becoming increasingly dependent on external aid and less able to resist the encroachment of settlements. The landscape changes—slowly at first, then all at once.
Planting is the New Protest
But here’s the thing—Palestinians refuse to disappear. When Bilal was killed, we at Treedom for Palestine worked with the Palestinian Farmers Union to plant a new “Freedom Farm” for his widow, Ikhlas. She’s now a caretaker, a breadwinner, and the steward of a new olive grove—one that will nourish her family and keep Bilal’s memory alive. The grove is surrounded by steel fencing, protecting both farmer and trees.
Today there are 70 Freedom Farms across the West Bank: 17,500 more thriving olive trees, each a source of income and prosperity in a region hungry for both. But the need for more is great. In plain numbers: $30 plants, irrigates, and protects an olive tree. If even a fraction of the $18 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel were spent planting trees, we’d have hundreds of millions of trees helping transform a polarized holy land into a prosperous heartland.
Resistance doesn’t have to be violent to be revolutionary.
The Global Cost of Colonization
Settler violence against olive trees isn’t just unsettling—it’s unsustainable. Each tree felled isn’t just a lost crop; it’s a severed connection to the past and a stolen future. For Bilal’s family, the loss is deeply personal. For the world, it’s a reminder that justice, equality, and sustainability are intertwined, like the vast mycelium network beneath the soil, linking trees together in profound ways and sustaining life. As below, so above.
Above ground, the consequences of this ecological warfare ripple outward. Climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental collapse. The destruction of olive trees in the West Bank is just one battle in a much larger war.
What’s happening in Palestine isn’t far removed from us. The violence against the land isn’t just about one place—it’s about the shared fate of people and the planet. Palestine is our Pandora. If we continue to let violence against their land and people go unchecked, we’ll all pay the price. But for now, Palestinians are teaching us an important lesson: When your roots run deep, you can withstand almost anything.
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'Disturbing Milestone': Israeli Settler Attacks in West Bank Surpass 1,000 Since October 7
"While a few individuals have been detained, no civilian or soldier has been prosecuted in connection with any of these 1,000 attacks," said a coalition of aid agencies.
Jul 05, 2024
A coalition of aid agencies on Friday implored the international community to take concrete, punitive action against the Israeli government and settlers after the number of settler attacks in the occupied West Bank since October 7 surpassed 1,000.
The Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), a group of international organizations working in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a statement that the rate of settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank has doubled since the same time last year, from an average of two per day to four.
"At least 10 people, including two children, have been killed during these attacks, and at least 234 have been injured, including 20 children. Since 7 October, 1,260 people, including 600 children, have been forcibly displaced amid settler violence and movement restrictions. The displaced households are from 20 herding and Bedouin communities throughout Area C of the West Bank. As one survivor of settler violence explained, 'No place is safe here.'"
"Settler violence is premeditated and orchestrated by organized groups from known outposts and settlements, with the support of Israel's government, including local and regional settlement councils," the group added, noting the limited sanctions that the United States and the European Union have imposed on individual settlers "have failed to reduce the frequency of attacks."
"While a few individuals have been detained, no civilian or soldier has been prosecuted in connection with any of these 1,000 attacks," AIDA said. "Reports indicate that some illegal outpost farms operated by sanctioned settlers—many of whom have been reported to be at the center of multiple violent incidents—have received hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of material support from the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Settlements, the Settlement Administration in the Ministry of Defense, and through local and regional settlement councils."
"Foreign governments must act now to stop this illegal appropriation by taking meaningful measures to hold the Israeli government and perpetrators of these attacks to account."
AIDA urged the international community to "adopt new restrictive measures which go beyond individual settlers to target identified organizations and state entities who promote violence and/or take part in attacks on Palestinian civilians and civilian infrastructure."
The group also argued that the far-right Israeli government "should be held accountable for the repeated and evidence-based allegations that the military and other state authorities are tolerating, enabling, and at times participating in settler violence."
A Human Rights Watch report published in April found that the Israeli military "either took part in or did not protect Palestinians from violent settler attacks in the West Bank that have displaced people from 20 communities and have entirely uprooted at least seven communities" since October 7.
AIDA's statement came days after the Israeli government announced the seizure of nearly five square miles of land in the West Bank—Israel's largest land grab in the occupied Palestinian territory in more than three decades.
Sally Abi Khalil, Middle East and North Africa director for Oxfam International—an AIDA member—said Friday that settler attacks in the West Bank have reached a "disturbing milestone."
"In a context where outpost legalization is being fast-tracked, and Israel is stealing more and more land," said Khalil, "foreign governments must act now to stop this illegal appropriation by taking meaningful measures to hold the Israeli government and perpetrators of these attacks to account."
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UN Condemns Israel's 'Unlawful Killings' and Settler Violence in West Bank
The U.N. high commissioner for human rights called surging settler attacks on Palestinians "very disturbing."
Dec 28, 2023
A United Nations report released Thursday warned that conditions in the occupied West Bank have worsened rapidly since October, with Israeli settlers and soldiers ramping up violent attacks on the Palestinian population and subjecting people across the territory to frequent abuse, movement restrictions, arbitrary detention, and "unlawful killings."
The report by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights found that since October 7, settler attacks—including shootings and the burning of homes—have surged to an average of six per day, up from three per day previously. The report notes that in many cases, the settlers were "accompanied" by Israeli forces, wearing Israeli military uniforms, and carrying weapons supplied by the army.
Between October 7 and December 27, Israeli forces and settlers killed at least 300 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the U.N. Israeli soldiers arrested more than 4,700 Palestinians during that period, holding many of them in so-called administrative detention without charge or trial.
Palestinian detainees have faced grotesque abuse and torture at the hands of Israeli soldiers, who have raided West Bank homes and refugee camps with increased frequency in recent weeks. Six Palestinian men died in Israeli detention between October 7 and November 20, the U.N. found. One of the men was reportedly insulin-dependent; he, along with others detained at the same time, was physically assaulted by Israeli soldiers.
The new report notes that members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have filmed and photographed themselves "abusing, degrading, and humiliating Palestinians apprehended in the West Bank, including pictures of detainees stripped naked or half-naked, blindfolded and handcuffed, and screaming in pain while physically abused and humiliated including by being forced to pose with the Israeli flag, sing songs in Hebrew or forced to dance with soldiers."
"In one of the videos, a Palestinian man, subsequently identified through monitoring as having been arrested on 31 October, is seen kneeling, blindfolded, and with hands tied behind his back, being kicked several times in the stomach by a soldier who spits on him and insults him," the report continues. "On 1 November, IDF reportedly stated they would investigate the abuses and that one reserve soldier had been dismissed from reserve service."
"The intensity of the violence and repression is something that has not been seen in years."
Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement Thursday that "the violations documented in this report repeat the pattern and nature of violations reported in the past in the context of the longstanding Israeli occupation of the West Bank."
"However," Türk added, "the intensity of the violence and repression is something that has not been seen in years."
Since October 7—when Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel and the IDF responded with a catastrophic bombing campaign—violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank has surged. Israeli officials have tallied at least 120 hate crimes committed in the occupied West Bank, but no charges have been brought in any of the cases, the U.N. said.
The report observed that Israeli settlers—with the support of the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—are "taking advantage of a generally permissive environment to accelerate displacement of Palestinians from their land, raising concerns of forcible transfer seeking to create facts on the ground making the existence of a viable Palestinian state almost impossible."
"According to Israeli organizations monitoring settlement expansion, settlers have built at least four new outposts since 7 October and at least nine new roads leading to settlements, marking a growth in illegal construction by settlers unprecedented since the second Intifada," the U.N. report says.
Türk called settlers' "dehumanization" of Palestinians "very disturbing" and said the attacks and illegal settlement expansions "must cease immediately."
"Israeli authorities should strongly censure and prevent settler violence and prosecute both its instigators and perpetrators," said Türk.
The U.N.'s findings were published as Al Jazeera reported that Israeli forces have "launched their most intense raids yet on cities in the occupied West Bank as they pressed on with one of the largest incursions in the territory since Israel's war on Gaza began in October."
"At least one person was killed after Israeli troops launched a coordinated overnight assault on 10 cities including Hebron, Halhul, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, el-Bireh, Jericho, and notably the center of Ramallah, which is the administrative headquarters of the Palestinian Authority," the outlet reported. "Israeli forces used tear gas and stun grenades to clear a street and then blocked off the area, before using a 'controlled explosion' to enter a money exchange shop. The soldiers seized documents and arrested business owners."
An Al Jazeera correspondent said that Israeli soldiers seized around $2.5 million in the raids.
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