Six people were injured when Israeli settlers attacked volunteers accompanying Palestinian olive harvesters near Qusra in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, according to the organisation Rabbis for Human Rights.
Israeli police said they had opened an investigation into the incident. They said they had received reports that two people had sustained light injuries and had been taken to hospital, without identifying whether they were activists or settlers.
The rights organisation said the six injured included four of its activists, a journalist and a Palestinian resident. Its figure is not a police-confirmed total, and the police account did not establish that its two reported cases represented everyone injured.
Attack during harvest
The volunteers were helping Palestinian farmers with the olive harvest outside the northern West Bank village on 10 November. Rabbis for Human Rights said they had been working for about an hour and a half when they noticed a group gathering on a nearby hill and contacted police.
According to the organisation, the attackers came down from the hill after Israeli soldiers arrived and threw stones and struck people with clubs. Footage of the incident showed masked assailants throwing stones and striking people.
A staff member of the organisation said attackers took tarpaulins holding harvested olives towards a nearby hill. The staff member said soldiers retrieved the tarpaulins after volunteers asked them to intervene, although the olives had been scattered on the ground.
The organisation said soldiers used tear gas to disperse the attackers, who regrouped and approached from another direction. Its account said the volunteers left the grove and began treating injured people; when settlers gathered nearby again, the group left for the village.
Footage of the aftermath showed stones being thrown at Israeli security forces, who responded with tear gas. The Israeli military confirmed that stones were hurled at soldiers but did not say who had thrown them.
The military also said a force had been sent to the area. Police described receiving a report of a confrontation and said an investigation had been opened. The accounts available did not establish the outcome of that investigation.
Wider pressures on the harvest
The incident comes during the annual Palestinian olive harvest, which independent United Nations human rights experts have described as an important source of food and income for thousands of families, as well as part of their cultural and agricultural heritage.
In a statement on 19 October, the experts warned about violence, intimidation and restrictions on farmers’ access to their land. They urged Israel to protect Palestinian farmers from settler attacks and to refrain from interfering with access.
The experts reported that 178 attacks linked to the 2025 olive harvest had been documented across 88 Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank. More than 6,000 trees and saplings were vandalised during that earlier harvest, they said. Those figures refer to a previous season across the territory, not to the Qusra incident.
They also said that some farmers need prior coordination permits to reach their land. The experts reported a change in Israeli military policy this year preventing Palestinians from obtaining permits or harvesting on land classified by Israel as state land, including plots traditionally harvested by Palestinian farmers.
Separately, the experts raised concerns about September orders for vegetation to be removed from agricultural land in the northern and central West Bank, including areas planted with olive trees. Their statement did not say that the land involved in the Qusra incident was covered by those orders or the permit change.
