Masked settlers attack olive harvesters near Sa'ir, Palestinian car taken

Dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians picking olives on Saturday close to the village of Sa'ir in the southern West Bank, according to the Israeli military and to video of the incident. The Times of Israel reported that the attackers came from an illegal outpost and arrived riding in the back of a pickup truck and in a second car. The Palestinian news agency WAFA said at least five Palestinians were hurt, according to the same report.

Soldiers were sent to the harvest near Hebron after settlers showed up and began confronting the Palestinian pickers, Ynet reported. The army declared the area a closed military zone, but the attackers later came back in vehicles. Ynet said troops fired into the air and that the group escaped to an outpost with a Palestinian car in their possession. No one was arrested, according to Ynet.

What the army says happened

According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), soldiers and Border Police officers were dispatched after reports of "confrontations" between Israelis and Palestinians during the harvest. The army said the troops moved to disperse the Israeli rioters and then issued a closed military zone order, an instruction that bars civilians from entering a defined area, while letting the Palestinian families carry on picking.

Some time afterwards, the military said, it received reports and footage of "dozens of masked Israeli rioters" driving back into the same area. Troops were sent again, but the settlers had already left by the time they got there, the army said, as relayed by The Times of Israel and its military correspondent, Emanuel Fabian.

A stolen car or a vandalised one

The reports differ on what happened to the Palestinian vehicle. Ynet described the car as stolen and said the attackers drove off with it to an outpost. The Times of Israel, citing the military, said a Palestinian car in the area had been vandalised. The available reports do not reconcile the two accounts, and it is not clear whether they refer to the same vehicle.

Where this happened

Sa'ir is a Palestinian village in the Hebron area of the southern West Bank, the territory Israel has held since the Six Day War and where Palestinian towns sit alongside Israeli settlements. Ynet placed the harvest near Hebron, the largest Palestinian city in the area.

Outposts are small Israeli settlement sites built without formal government authorisation. They are illegal under Israeli law as well as being considered illegal by much of the international community, which regards all settlements in the West Bank that way. The Times of Israel described the attackers as coming from one such outpost, though none of the reports named it.

The Border Police is a branch of the Israel Police that operates alongside the army in the West Bank. WAFA is the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority.

The olive harvest and settler violence

The autumn olive harvest is economically and culturally central for Palestinian farming families in the West Bank, and it is a recurring flashpoint. Groves often lie near settlements or outposts, and attacks on pickers by settlers, as well as the army's use of closed military zones to separate the sides, are regular features of the season. Israeli coverage of this incident used the Hebrew term commonly rendered as "rioters" for Jewish attackers, the same word the IDF used in its statement.

The attack was one of several violent incidents in the southern West Bank reported in the same period. The Jerusalem Post reported the olive harvest attack together with a separate incident in which Palestinians threw stones at an Israeli car near Beit Umar, north of Hebron, smashing a window.

What the reports do not say

None of the reports say whether police have opened an investigation, whether any suspects have been identified, or which outpost the attackers came from. The nature and severity of the injuries WAFA reported have not been described, and the figure has not been confirmed by the Israeli military in the material available. The conflicting accounts of whether the Palestinian car was stolen or vandalised also remain unresolved, and no Palestinian witnesses or harvesters are quoted.