The United Nations Office in the occupied Palestinian territories reports “severe attacks by armed settlers” by Israelis against Palestinian adults and minors and foreign aid workers since the start of the olive harvest in , as well as the increase in attacks against people and crops since 2024.
“Two weeks after the start of the 2025 harvest, we have already witnessed serious attacks by armed settlers against Palestinian men, women, children and foreign solidarity activists,” lamented the director of the Office, in a speech to the media.
Sunghay has also reported that “in the first half of 2025, there have been 757 settler attacks resulting in casualties or material damage”, which is “13% more than the number of attacks documented in the same period of 2024”. “The direct destruction of land is also increasing,” he added, before denouncing that multiple “settlers have burned groves, cut down olive trees with chainsaws and destroyed homes and agricultural infrastructure.”
He has also blamed the establishment of “new Israeli checkpoints and iron gates (that) have separated farmers from their farms, sometimes keeping them away until their crops have ruined.”
Given the attacks recorded at the beginning of the 2025 campaign, mired in “a truly alarming escalation (…) in the context of one by Israel”, the UN official in Palestine has stressed that “between 80 and 100 thousand Palestinian families depend on the olive harvest for their livelihood.”
“Regardless of the duration of the occupation, this should not be normalized,” said Sunghay, who stressed that “Israel has the power to end the occupation and reverse the annexation of the West Bank.”
“Israel has a legal obligation to end the occupation and reverse the annexation of the West Bank”
Likewise, he has denounced that “Israel’s denial of the Palestinians’ right to life, livelihood, security, protection, dignity and self-determination is illegal and unacceptable”, and has linked this position with the , which “has not only caused the death of tens of thousands of people and the displacement of all its residents, but has also set dangerous precedents of impunity and contempt for human life and the norms of international law”.
The consequences, he maintained, “resonate in the West Bank” and “will be felt throughout the world” unless measures are taken “to ensure accountability and a viable path to a just peace.”
“The legal path forward is unequivocal: the International Court of Justice concluded that the occupation must end and Israel must withdraw from the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory, both the West Bank and Gaza. This includes the immediate dismantling of all settlements and the evacuation of all settlers,” he defended. At the same time, he noted that, “in the meantime, Israel is one with broad obligations under international law: the obligation to protect Palestinians and ensure that they can fully exercise their political, economic and civil rights.”
In this regard, he has urged United Nations Member States to “exercise maximum pressure to protect civilians, halt and reverse rapidly expanding annexation policies, and ensure accountability for decades of violations of Palestinian rights.”
A “broad and systematic” policy
For its part, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry has condemned “strongly, with the utmost harshness, the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Israeli settlers” during the olive harvest in the occupied West Bank. “The actions of these armed settler militias, which are carried out under the protection and coordination of the Israeli occupation army, are part of a broad and systematic policy against our people,” he denounced in a statement posted on the social network X.
Along these lines, the diplomacy of the Palestinian Authority has framed the attacks as “a continuation of the current campaign of extermination, displacement and obstruction of the international drive aimed at ending the Israeli occupation and realizing the State of Palestine.”
Likewise, he has condemned the arrest by the Israeli authorities “of 32 foreign activists who were participating in a campaign to support Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest and to document the crimes of the settlers.” “These atrocities represent a continued attempt to conceal the magnitude of these attacks and violations of international law, as part of a comprehensive policy designed to erase all aspects of Palestinian life,” he stressed.
More than a thousand Palestinians have died in the West Bank due to violent actions attributed to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) or radical settlers since October 7, 2023, the date of the attacks carried out by , according to a United Nations count.
The figure already represents 43% of all Palestinians who died in the last two decades in the West Bank and shows a violent escalation that had already begun even before the aforementioned attacks.
