The olive branch is a universal symbol of peace – but the West Bank’s autumn olive harvest is open season for Israeli settlers to pillage and kill

Autumn in Italy is always a special time. South of the grey, industrial northern cities, from the rolling hills of Tuscany down to the rocky heel if the Ionian sea, one is never too far from the scent trailing behind the world’s most sought after harvests: the grape, and the olive. I was visiting my family in the fields of Rome, where this year’s crop alleviated concern brought on by last year’s meagre yield. My uncle’s generous green bounty was turned to liquid gold, one that tastes of legacy and belonging. On the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean, it has also come to smell like blood. The ancient tradition, and the historic land that binds it to its sturdy tree roots, has been turned into the battleground of Israeli colonisation of the occupied West Bank. Exacerbated since 2023, the olive harvest has become the season synonymous with the most attacks by Israeli defence forces-backed illegal settlers hoping to intimidate Palestinian families out of their homes. It’s the time where residents, forced indoors in fear of the swelling conflict increasingly taking place beyond just Gaza, dare to set foot out to reap the fruits of the land that provides a living for some 100,000 families across the Palestinian territories. Beyond the major source of income many depend upon, depriving Palestine of its olive harvest denies some 5.6 million people with the social fabric that makes up the part of their national identity. Olives reaped by the harvest in the West Bank, November 2026. Source: Kiki, activist in Palestine According to UN data, the 2025 olive harvest brought 178 settler attacks to the occupied West Bank, in 88 Palestinian towns and villages. Over 6,000 trees and saplings were vandalised.