RAMALLAH, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- For the third consecutive year, Palestinian farmer Marzouq Abu Naim is preparing to watch the olive harvest from a distance.
From his home in Al-Mughayyir, a village east of Ramallah in the central West Bank, Abu Naim can see the land he owns. But he has been unable to reach five dunams (1 dunam is equal to 1,000 square meters) of it since Oct. 7, 2023, the onset of the latest round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, amid access restrictions and an increasing presence of Israeli settlers and soldiers.
Before the war, the tradition of olive harvest brought his family together.
"We used to eagerly await the olive season," said Abu Naim, who is also a member of the village council. "We would take time off work, head to the land together and spend entire days among the trees. The season brought the whole family together."
That tradition has been disrupted.
"Today, we cannot even reach the land," he said. "Everything has changed since the war. We look at our trees from afar, unsure if we will ever be able to harvest their fruit."
For Palestinians, olive harvesting has long been more than an agricultural activity. It is an annual family and social occasion tied closely to the land, with several generations often working together. Olive trees are also passed from one generation to the next, making the loss of an old tree a loss of years of cultivation as well as a source of income.
The Palestinian Agriculture Ministry has scheduled the harvest of local olive varieties in the West Bank to begin on Oct. 15. Olive presses are scheduled to begin preparation, maintenance, inspection and technical testing on Oct. 11, with processing to start according to the designated harvest dates, the ministry said.
For Abu Naim, however, the official opening of the season offers no guarantee that he will be able to enter his fields.
In addition to the five dunams that he cannot access, he owns four dunams south of the village. He said he can reach the latter only with extreme caution and at certain times because of fears of attacks by settlers and Israeli soldiers.
Abu Naim said farmers in Al-Mughayyir have faced increasing closures and restrictions, while settlement expansion has reduced the land available to residents.
In the northern West Bank, some farmers in Arraba, southwest of Jenin, did not have to wait for the harvest to see what would happen to their trees.
Osama Deeb, a local farmer, told Xinhua that Israeli bulldozers uprooted ancient, fruit-bearing olive trees on his land only days before the expected harvest.
"They destroyed the olive season before it even started," Deeb said. "These were fruit-bearing trees, and we were preparing to harvest them, but they uprooted them and deprived the families of their crop."
Ahmed Al-Ardah, mayor of Arraba, said bulldozing operations had targeted more than 223 dunams of olive groves containing approximately 4,000 trees.
East of Jenin, Israeli bulldozers have also cleared areas belonging to Deir Abu Da'if, according to local residents.
Hatem Rawajbeh, a municipal council member in Deir Abu Da'if, said that farmers near settlement outposts and hills threatened with confiscation were facing increasingly severe restrictions.
One targeted hill covers approximately 180 dunams, he said, adding that its olive trees had been uprooted by bulldozers and heavy machinery.
"The damage is not limited to uprooting trees. It also prevents landowners from accessing their land, cultivating it and making a living from it," he said.
For farmers, the consequences can extend far beyond a single harvest.
Fayyad Fayyad, director of the Palestinian Olive and Olive Oil Council, told Xinhua that damage to the West Bank's olive sector had intensified this year.
More than 8,400 ancient olive trees have been uprooted or cut down since the beginning of 2026, Fayyad said, citing council data. Between 2010 and 2025, approximately 250,000 olive trees were uprooted or destroyed, he added.
As the Oct. 15 harvest date approaches, farmers like Abu Naim face uncertainty not only over how much fruit they will collect, but also over whether they will be able to continue cultivating trees that have remained in their families for generations. ■
