Settler Attacks Hit Harvesters, Diplomats Before Israeli Vote

Heidi Levine, an American photojournalist for the Washington Post, suffered a severe hand injury on Friday after masked Israeli settlers beat her badly enough to require surgery. She wore clearly marked press gear. At least one other person was injured when settlers attacked Palestinian olive harvesters near Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah.

The next day, masked Israelis reportedly attacked a delegation visiting olive groves near the Palestinian Christian village of Taiba. Diplomats from Belgium, France and Poland were there. Settlers damaged a Belgian consular vehicle and reportedly assaulted French Mayor Bernard Baudoux. Police opened an investigation, while the IDF condemned the attack.

A Harvest Under Attack

Yesh Din, an Israeli settlements monitoring group, said settlers had taken part in at least 170 attacks on Palestinians since September 27, around the start of the annual olive harvest. That's several attacks a day on average, aimed at people picking fruit from their own groves.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke Saturday, October 17, after video circulated showing multiple people attacking Levine. "We're very disturbed by those images and what we're seeing," he said. "We've asked the Israelis and continue to ask them to crack down on that stuff." Rubio said the State Department had asked about the incident involving Levine and that he expected a response from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem by Sunday. Belgium's foreign minister said European diplomats and a French mayor had also been attacked in the occupied West Bank.

U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee condemned a separate West Bank incident in August, calling violent intruders "Israeli terrorists" and saying there was "no excuse for such thuggish behavior."

Warnings, Directives and Questions

A Jerusalem Post editorial said Israeli authorities expected unrest during the harvest. The newspaper reported that the IDF had prepared for nationalist violence, clashes and terrorist attacks, and planned to reinforce its West Bank presence. It said officials should establish which forces were available, when warnings arrived and how units responded.

On October 8, Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed officials to pursue administrative removal orders against activists considered threats to public order during the harvest. The Yesha Council, which represents Israeli settlements, had requested action, citing fears of provocations and confrontations. The directive focused on left-wing and foreign activists accompanying Palestinian farmers. In other words, it targeted people accompanying harvesters, not the masked men attacking them.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar condemned Saturday's assault and said coordinating with the IDF in advance could have helped protect the delegation. The IDF said an alert during the Taiba incident reached a brigade operations room meant for security personnel, not civilians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on X/Twitter: "Any violence against diplomats is unacceptable." It also said: "The more serious the accusation, the greater the demand for compelling evidence," citing the ongoing police investigation and arguing that video footage didn't establish the full sequence of events. The statement described Baudoux as "a French Communist Party mayor who previously raised the Palestinian flag over his municipal building, prompting French authorities to order its removal," and suggested reports reflected a campaign to smear Israel and Jewish residents of the West Bank.

President Isaac Herzog struck a different tone. He called Levine on Saturday and told her: "I was morally tormented during Shabbat when I thought about it, and I express deep sorrow and apologize for what you went through." He urged law enforcement to investigate and prosecute those responsible. The Jerusalem Post editorial said extremists didn't represent the vast majority of Jewish residents in Judea and Samaria.

An Election Over the Country's Direction

Israelis head to the polls on October 27 as the attacks draw attention to the election. Political scientist Gideon Rahat of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Israel Democracy Institute called it a decision on "the future of the state in a literal sense." Three years after the October 7, 2023 attack, the trauma remains raw. Faded stickers bearing the faces of young people killed by Hamas still cling to station walls and lampposts.

Netanyahu's government has expanded settlements in the occupied West Bank, where settlers, described as acting with the blessing of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, have attacked Palestinians on their land, with authorities occasionally pushing back. "The state without a monopoly on the use of force is a failed state," Rahat said.

Israel's war after October 7 reduced Gaza to rubble and left Israel with pariah status in many once-friendly Western countries. Netanyahu faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. Yet many Israelis see the aftermath as stability: fire from Gaza has stopped even as Israel continues striking the territory, and the economy has boomed.

Neriah Yarchi, 19, a barber from Bat Yam, said he'd vote for far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who wants the "voluntary" removal of Gaza's two million Palestinians. "If Gaza had been ours, they wouldn't have had a place to infiltrate from and there wouldn't have been a massacre," Yarchi said.

Former military chief Gadi Eisenkot is polling as Netanyahu's strongest rival. "Netanyahu may have his perfect English, but even with perfect English he got us October 7," he said. But opposition leaders haven't criticized the decision to wage war, and a recent survey found 21 percent of the population identified as anywhere left of center. Eisenkot, military chief during the 2006 Lebanon war, promoted using massive force, including against civilian infrastructure. Instead, the opposition has leaned on social issues, such as ultra-Orthodox military exemptions. Naftali Bennett, prime minister in the short-lived 2021-22 government, vowed to end them, warning that social divisions put Israel on a "slow-motion suicide mission."

Uriel Reichman, a former lawmaker, warned that a Netanyahu victory could permanently entrench Israel's right-wing turn. "Experience shows that once such a system is put in place, it would be extremely difficult to dismantle it," he said.

Why This Matters: Yesh Din's record of attacks on Palestinian farmers during harvest time points to a pattern, not an isolated flare-up. When settlers can assault an American journalist in press gear and European diplomats in daylight, the danger facing ordinary Palestinian families on their own land is clear. The Israeli government's response—an order aimed at activists accompanying harvesters—sits uneasily beside warnings that the state is losing its monopoly on force. Washington is publicly pressing for a crackdown, and the election is days away, yet the opposition is largely silent on the occupation. There's little sign in this reporting that incentives to restrain settler violence, or revive a political path toward two states, are growing stronger.