36 Palestinians wounded in Israeli attack on olive harvesters in West Bank

Dozens of Palestinians, including journalists, were injured and six others arrested on Friday in attacks by Israeli settlers and the military in the occupied West Bank.

The assaults targeted olive harvesters in several villages around the northern city of Nablus. Three vehicles were also set ablaze.

The Palestinian health ministry said in a statement that medical teams at Rafidia Government Hospital and the Beita Emergency Centre had treated 36 injuries, including two from live gunfire.

The remaining injuries were due to physical assaults and tear gas inhalation, following the attacks in the villages of Beita, Huwara, and Deir Sharaf in the Nablus governorate.

The ministry described the injuries as ranging from moderate to mild.

Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, reported that a number of settlers attacked Palestinians harvesting olives in the Jabal Qumas area of Beita.

Settlers reportedly beat the Palestinians before setting fire to three vehicles at the site, including one belonging to Jaafar Ishtiyeh, a photographer for the French news agency AFP.

Wafa added that the Israeli army stormed the area and fired stun grenades and tear gas toward the civilians.

According to the Wafa agency, olive harvesters in the villages of Aqraba, Al-Lubban al-Sharqiya, and Amouriya south of Nablus, as well as Deir Sharaf to the west, were also targeted by settler attacks, which aimed to stop them from working on their land.

In the central West Bank’s Ramallah and Al-Bireh governorate, Israeli forces reportedly arrested six Palestinians while they were harvesting olives in the village of Kafr Ni'ma, after settlers attacked them at the site.

Attacks by extremist Jewish Israeli settlers typically increase around the olive harvest season, which coincides with late September to mid-November.

Olive trees across the West Bank are often uprooted, and groves are burnt.

Israeli military and settler attacks have spiked in the West Bank in recent years, particularly since the army began an offensive in the area in January.

More than a thousand Palestinians have been killed in military operations in two years, and over 10,000 others have been wounded.