The Architecture of Displacement: How Israel Systematically Strips Palestinians of Their Livelihood

According to a 2021 census from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) and the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), over eight million olive trees grow in the West Bank, sustaining three million Palestinians, with 85% of the total horticultural area cultivated with olive trees. But for many farmers, harvest season has become a time of fear. Israeli settlers routinely steal olives and destroy trees, while Israeli forces uproot them with bulldozers or poison them outright. Recent footage shows settlers blocking roads and violently preventing farmers from reaching their fields or getting their produce to market, a deliberate effort to cripple the local economy and force Palestinians from their land.

Today, about 500,000 Israeli settlers live in roughly 140 settlements across the West Bank, with another 200,000 in East Jerusalem. Most of these settlements are considered illegal under international law, yet Israeli governments have allowed them to expand. The current right-wing administration is going further. In May, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved over 20 new settlements, and just last week, the Knesset voted to move closer to full annexation of the West Bank.

Despite the danger, Palestinian farmers continue to harvest their olives, often joined by international activists. Armed settlers regularly attack them, burning trees and assaulting people, usually with Israeli forces looking the other way. For these families, it’s not just about olives, it’s about refusing to abandon the land that has sustained them for generations.

VIDEO: Israeli settlers burn trees, assault Palestinians in occupied West Bank olive harvest attacks (Source: Al Jazeera English)

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While diplomats debate Palestinian statehood in conference rooms across the globe, a very different game is unfolding on the ground in the West Bank. Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Hassan reveals in a recent post on X how Israel’s strategy for the West Bank mirrors an ancient art of war perfected thousands of years ago in China: the game of Go. The parallels are striking. In Go, you don’t win by charging forward; instead, you win by surrounding your opponent, cutting off their territory piece by piece, until they have nowhere left to move. Hassan argues this is precisely what’s happening in the occupied West Bank: a calculated strategy of encirclement and division, designed to fragment Palestinian land into isolated pockets, making a contiguous state not just difficult, but impossible.

VIDEO: Control, encircle, annex – Piece by piece, Israel is playing out strategies first perfected in the ancient Chinese game of Go. (Source: Al Jazeera Pinch Point)

While the world talks of a Palestinian state, Israel is playing a different game to surround, slice up and claim the occupied West Bank.
Piece by piece, Israel is playing out strategies first perfected in ancient China. For Pinch Point, Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Hassan explains pic.twitter.com/9vA9Kh3cZQ

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 26, 2025

Israel’s apartheid regime operates through a bureaucratic stranglehold. Palestinian farmers in the West Bank must obtain special permits just to reach their own olive groves, and even with permits in hand, a maze of checkpoints and closed roads often blocks their way. They can’t harvest their olives, can’t transport them to presses, can’t export the oil.

For families whose survival depends on the annual olive harvest, these restrictions don’t just limit movement; they eliminate livelihoods and ultimately promote forced displacement, in line with Israel’s evil plan for the West Bank…

Alwaght News and Analysis reports…

War on Olive: Roots of Palestine Targeted by Occupation

Having reduced Gaza to ruins with its devastating attacks over the past two years, the Israeli regime is now waging a new war in another part of Palestine, as the clashes relatively ease in the coastal enclave.

Meanwhile, as the olive harvest season arrives in the West Bank, the Israeli settlers once again raid the Palestinian farms in a bid to plunder this precious product or obstruct harvest by the Palestinians. Reports indicate that the West Bank has recently witnessed an unprecedented wave of organized violence by settlers, leading to the death and injury of dozens of Palestinians, as well as the destruction of thousands of olive trees.

Recently published videos show Israeli settlers assaulting farmers and preventing them from accessing their fields. In one such video, a settler, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, attacked a Palestinian farmer harvesting olives in the town of Nahalin, west of Bethlehem, beating him in front of his wife.

The settlers not only plunder the Palestinians’ olive harvest but also cut down the trees themselves to ensure nothing is left for their owners. Simultaneously, the occupation army directly attacks the trees by uprooting them with bulldozers, poisoning them, or submerging them in wastewater.

Although the Israelis are determined on the destruction of the olive trees, and despite the destruction of over 2 million trees in the past 77 years, this sturdy and resilient tree remains standing. UNESCO has stated that the age of olive trees in Palestine reaches 5,500 years, and for this reason, in 2019, it designated November 26 of each year as International Olive Day.

Today, over 11 million olive trees are still alive in Palestine. The oldest Palestinian olive tree is in the village of Al-Walaja, near Bethlehem, and is over 5,000 years old. This historic tree has a circumference of over 13 meters.

People in the West Bank and Gaza hold olive festivals during the harvest season. Participants in these festivals say that the olive tree is a living testimony to the long-standing, continuous presence of Palestinians in their land. They and the olive trees are rooted in the land of Palestine, and it is Israel that will come to an end.

According to Palestinians, the bond between the olive tree and the cause of Palestine is that it gives meaning to their ancestors and their heritage, even though the Israeli occupiers are trying hard to erase this legacy.

Systematic action for destruction of the Palestinian farming 

Over the past 77 years of the occupation of Palestine, targeting the olive trees has been one of the systematic strategies of the Israeli regime. The radical settlers, every year with their attacks on the olive farms, which is a source of income of tens of thousands of Palestinians, weaken the local economy and agriculture.

Wadi Abu Awaad, a landowner in the village of Al-Turmus’ayya, said: “The settler raids are carried out with the support and protection of the occupying forces, particularly in the villages of Al-Turmus’ayya, Al-Mughayyir, and Abu Falah. These villages are targeted by settlement campaigns aimed at seizing land and preventing Palestinian citizens from earning an income, including by blocking them from harvesting their crops. In reality, farmers face immense difficulties during this season because thirty percent of the land is inaccessible due to the actions of the Zionists.”

Abdullah Abu Rahmah, the director of the Popular Committee Against the Separation Wall, said: “It is clear that the Zionist settlers are operating within a specific, coordinated framework. There is communication and coordination among them, resulting in an organized movement to target farmers and prevent them from reaching their lands, all because they face no punishment or legal consequences.”

The settler attacks on Palestinian olive groves have also drawn a response from the United Nations. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that in the last week alone, at least 71 attacks by settlers against Palestinians and their property were recorded in the West Bank. The office emphasized that half of these attacks occurred during the olive harvest season, affecting residents in 27 different villages across the region.

Over 1,430 trees and saplings, predominantly olive trees, have been cut down or destroyed as a result of these attacks, and approximately forty vehicles have been damaged or set on fire, the report added. International reports hold that since 1967, Israel has destroyed over one million Palestinian olive trees. Through cutting down trees, burning orchards, and restricting farmers’ access, settlers and soldiers are pursuing the expansion of settlements and the expulsion of Palestinians.

Violence of the settlers is so horrific that even Israeli media outlets cannot stay silent to them. Haaretz in a report said that the Israeli raids at the olive farms are carried out within a coordinated model. The newspaper further reported that groups of armed and veiled settlers overnight attack the farmers and their property from the hills. It added that in many cases official military forces cover them or block defense of the Palestinians, or by issuing closed military zone declarations block entry of volunteers to help their fellows.

Olive, the source of income of Palestinians

The olive harvest is the largest agricultural sector for Palestinians, covering 45 percent of all cultivated land. However, Palestinian citizens are systematically denied the right to harvest their own olives.

This is particularly acute in Area C of the West Bank, which contains 60 percent of Palestinian olive orchards, where the Israeli regime imposes severe restrictions on farmers.

Olives account for roughly 70 percent of Palestine’s agricultural production and 14 percent of its overall economy. Olive oil and its by-products form the bedrock of the Palestinian agricultural economy, with families having tended to these trees for generations.

In a productive year, the entire olive sector generates between $160 and $191 million in revenue for Palestinians, constituting about 20 to 25 percent of the agricultural sector’s income. Consequently, if West Bank residents were granted full access to this vital financial resource, a significant portion of the Palestinian economic crisis could be resolved.

Scenarios of forced relocation of the Palestinians

Through destruction and massive looting of olive products in the West Bank, the Israeli regime is working to eradicate the sources of income of the Palestinians. In addition to this, the Israeli regime, through tight restrictions on crop exports, especially olive, practically paralyses the sales of the Palestinian agricultural products.

The occupation forces are actively undermining the local economy by blocking roads, preventing farmers from accessing markets, and obstructing the export of olives. This systematic campaign aims to deprive Palestinians of their most vital livelihood and create the conditions for their forced displacement.

By destroying economic resources and severing farmers’ incomes, the policy is designed to pressure Palestinians into leaving their land. This objective aligns with a stated plan by Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet to gradually depopulate the West Bank of its native inhabitants and expand the settlement project.

Within this policy, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich play key roles in directing the occupation policies that are coordinated with settler attacks on olive farms. Simultaneously, as these attacks intensify, the Knesset has taken a major step to formalize the occupation by passing a law to annex the West Bank, seeking to legally entrench the elimination of the Palestinians from their homeland.

So, the savage attacks by the Israeli forces are part of a systematic apartheid policy against the Palestinians.

In general, for the Palestinians, the olive tree is beyond income or a food product. This tree is a symbol of deep-rootedness, resistance, and bonds with their land. In their eyes, when the occupation force cuts or burns an olive tree, they actually attack the historical and identity roots of the Palestinian nation.

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