Israeli settlers attack Palestinians with impunity, halting West Bank olive harvest

Geoff Bennett:

Israel's Cabinet voted to extend legal status to 19 previously illegal settlements late last night, formalizing more control of land in the West Bank.

Attacks by Jewish settlers against Palestinian communities there have increased sharply since the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel.

As Leila Molana-Allen reports, the settlers violence continues with few apparent consequences.

A warning:

Some images in this report are disturbing.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Masked gangs of settlers marauding through the streets armed with bats and Molotov cocktails, cars and homes smashed apart and set on fire, this is now the daily reality for Palestinians across the occupied West Bank.

As the violence spreads, no one is safe, a centuries-Old olive grove in ruins, flames licking at the stones of a fifth century church.

Suleiman Khourieh, Mayor of Taybeh, West Bank (through translator): They attacked us, moved their sheep into the churchyard, and they even tried to burn the church. There's no difference between how the settlers treat Muslims or Christians.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Taybeh is one of the oldest continuously settled Christian communities in the world. It appears in both the Old and New Testaments.

Father Bashar Fawadleh, Head of the Latin Parish, Taybeh: Everything began in this land.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Usually, at this time of year, the valley would be full of olive pickers. Now locals are too afraid to venture onto their own land. The trees are dying, their fruit rotting on the branch.

Across the valley, the hills are dominated by settlements. Even as we stand here, we can see a car from a local settlement patrolling the groves. Fleeing the relentless attacks, Christian residents have started to emigrate to the United States in droves. The village has lost two dozen families already.

How is this for you personally, the responsibility?

Father Bashar Fawadleh:

Huge and over my capacity. But I have to be standing always and to raise my head up because I'm Palestinian, I'm Christian, I'm priest.

Leila Molana-Allen:

They have done what they can to replant the burned trees, but an olive tree takes nearly a decade to reach maturity. The village's livelihoods are being destroyed.

Suleiman says, when the army does turn up, it's invariably to side with the settlers.

Suleiman Khourieh (through translator):

The army and the settlers are one. They both act the same way towards people, attacking them and kicking them out of their land.

Leila Molana-Allen:

As we're speaking, Suleiman gets a call. There are settlers on his land. He's too afraid to confront them. Waiting on the road is Rabbi Arik Ascherman, one of a group of volunteers trying to pressure Israeli authorities to force settlers to abide by the law.

The settlers make their way into the valley, stopping next to the home of a Palestinian man and his child picking olives in their garden. The makeshift fence they have erected won't do much to protect them. He worries the international community, discussing a theoretical Palestinian state from afar, is ignoring the practical reality that, soon, Palestinians here will have little land left.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Founder, Torah of Justice: The international community has like no backbone.

Leila Molana-Allen:

The army has told them to leave, and then they're paying their attention.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman:

For years and years and years, they have been acting with impunity, and certainly under this government. Everything that they know says to them, we can do what we want and we're not going to pay any price for it. There's going to be no consequences.

Leila Molana-Allen:

The settlers stay until sunset. As is almost always the case, they're not threatened with arrest or physically forced to leave. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to curb the unprecedented wave of attacks.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister (through translator):

We will act against this with all our might, because we are a state of law.

Leila Molana-Allen:

But critics say it's his own government that's created this atmosphere of impunity.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir handed out weapons to settlers after the October 7 attacks. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has advocated destroying large Palestinian towns to isolate Palestinians. And this government has sanctioned the building of dozens of new settlements, which are illegal under international law.

It's peak olive picking season in the West Bank, and Palestinian farmers are out harvesting their groves. In Turmus Ayya, on the first day of the season, dozens of settlers armed with clubs, their faces hidden with black rags, descended on this grove; 53-year-old grandmother Afaf Abu Alia was chased and bludgeoned by a masked settler. She was so badly beaten she suffered bleeding on the brain and had to be rushed to hospital.

The U.N. says October was the most violent month on record since documentation of settler attacks began. More than 260 attacks were recorded, an average of eight per day. After international outrage, Israeli authorities say they have now arrested a man in connection with the attack. But locals here say there's little chance he will face justice.

We found Afaf in hospital in Ramallah, where she told us about her traumatic assault.

Afaf Abu Alia, Victim of Settler Attack (through translator): They beat me here on my shoulder, back and my arms. They beat me over the head nearly 10 times, and then they beat the rest of my body. It's really painful. Now I can't go back to collect olives because of my brain injury.

Leila Molana-Allen:

But some victims never make it home. In July, as 20-year-old Sayfollah Musallet attended his father's olives, a group of settlers armed with bats surrounded him. His family heard he'd been taken to hospital. What they found there was unimaginable.

Reem Musallet, Aunt of Sayfollah Musallet: Thinking that we're going to go see him, like he's hurt, he's injured. But just seeing him there, it was really hard.

Leila Molana-Allen:

And what did they tell you at the hospital?

Reem Musallet:

They told us he was beaten to death.

Leila Molana-Allen:

The family believes Sayfollah, nicknamed Sayf, might have been saved, but it took nearly three hours for a Palestinian ambulance to get permission to cross into the area to help him. He bled to death alone.

Reem Musallet:

He was like an older son to me. He was very loving. He was very loving. He'd go into a room, he will — always smiling, very full of life, very.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Sayf was an American citizen, a Florida native visiting family in the West Bank. U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee visited them after his killing, calling it a terrorist act and promising to take action. They have heard nothing since.

Reem Musallet:

He said we will get justice, Americans first. But, until this day, nothing has changed.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Meanwhile, the violence shows no sign of stopping.

Woman:

Are there are settlers on the way? We need to be sure.

Reem Musallet:

Like this morning, they were out here, they said.

Woman:

Yes. So you always kind of always have to be sure.

Woman:

Every Friday, they cross from here.

Reem Musallet:

They're like hunting for us. They're just driving. If they see any Palestinian person, that's it. They're going to attack. And we can't do anything about it.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Some are trying.

Jonathan Pollak is an Israeli activist who spent two decades working to protect Palestinian villages from settler and soldier violence. He tried to stop the violence the day Sayf was killed and found himself the target.

Jonathan Pollak, Israeli Activist:

I felt that we were at the edge of death when they attacked us. There was nothing to stop them. But at some point, Israeli soldiers came in and they literally peeled the settlers from on top of us. Of course, they did nothing. They arrested us.

Leila Molana-Allen:

He didn't know until his release from jail that the group, having assaulted him, then reached Sayf in his olive grove.

Jonathan Pollak:

Racist lynch mob killed a Palestinian, beating him to death.

People like to say that it's complicated. But, really, there's absolutely nothing complicated about a bunch of people going into other people's land, attacking them, killing them, imprisoning them, and stealing their land.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Sayf is just one of at least 21 Palestinians killed by settler violence since October 7, 2023. The U.N. reports more than 1,000 Palestinians have been injured in attacks this year, more than double the number injured last year, their homes burned, their fields and olive groves destroyed.

Seven settlers have been killed and 53 injured by Palestinians this year.

Yesh Din, an Israeli NGO working to protect the rights of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, reports that, of 1,700 police investigations into Israeli violence against Palestinians in the West Bank in the past 20 years, 97 percent did not lead to a conviction. Perpetrators of hundreds of other attacks this year remain at large.

And Jonathan says the impunity for Sayf's killing is the rule here, rather than the exception. Last year, he watched another American, volunteer Aysenur Eygi, die next to him after she was shot by an Israeli soldier during a protest in the nearby village of Beita. It was her first day in the West Bank.

The IDF said Aysenur was killed unintentionally during what it called a violent riot. Jonathan and his fellow activists say the situation was calm.

Jonathan Pollak:

You can see the soldiers up there by the black smoke. They're pointing guns at us. You don't know when they're going to pull the triggers.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Jonathan believes that, because the U.S. supplies more than two-thirds of Israel's weapons, it is complicit in the death of its own citizen.

Jonathan Pollak:

The bullet that killed Aysenur is an American bullet, and it is the bullet placed by the American government at the hands of Israel to suppress any Palestinian aspiration for liberation and self-determination.

And it is also used to send a message that it doesn't matter who you are. If you stand with a Palestinian, your blood is cheap and there will be no accountability.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Reem says her family's experience has taught her that, even as Americans, they have no protection here, so Palestinians have little chance.

Reem Musallet:

We lost Sayf. We can't get him back, but we need justice. Like every other place in the world, you commit a crime, you kill, you're behind bars. Like, why is this the only country that they don't do that? They — they murder, next day they're out in the streets.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Reem now wakes each morning wondering when the next attack will come, whether her kids will return home safely from school. All she can do is wait in fear.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Leila Molana-Allen in the occupied West Bank.

Geoff Bennett:

In a statement to the "News Hour," the Israel Defense Forces said, for acts of violence directed at Palestinians or their property; "Soldiers are required to stop the violation and, if necessary, to delay or detain the suspects."

And on the settler killing of American Sayfollah Musallet in the West Bank, the State Department told the "News Hour": "Ambassador Huckabee has called for accountability for this murder and Embassy Jerusalem continues to closely follow this case."

Separately, a State Department spokesperson told us the killing by the IDF of Aysenur Eygi was a tragedy and we urge the government of Israel to complete a thorough and transparent investigation.