On Saturday, Israeli settlers attacked vehicles belonging to diplomats from France, Belgium and Poland near the Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank. Witnesses and media reports said at least seven masked settlers surrounded the vehicles, demanded identification documents, smashed the window of a Belgian consulate vehicle and assaulted Bernard Baudoux, the mayor of Aulnoye-Aymeries.
Baudoux, 78, told Reuters he was “a bit shaken”. He said he wore his mayor’s sash in the blue, white and red of France in an attempt to protect people around him, but was thrown to the ground. His group then returned to their vehicles and left. He had come as a pacifist for a city-twinning visit and said the olive plantations should still be visited because of their significance for Palestinians.
Belgium’s foreign minister, Maxime Prevot, said the country’s consul general to the Palestinians, along with French and Polish diplomats and Catholic representatives, were among those attacked. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called on Israel to arrest the settlers who assaulted Baudoux and to end the violence and protect civilians. The assault prompted an Israeli police investigation. The Israeli military condemned the attack on the EU diplomats, said it had opened an investigation and said its soldiers were not present. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office described the reports as “alleged” and said they required “compelling evidence”, while acknowledging that footage of the incident had been published.
The European Union condemned settler attacks on EU diplomats and Palestinians and, in a statement on Sunday, called for full accountability and measures to stop violence and harassment against Palestinians, including during the olive harvest, and against journalists. It urged Israel to abide by international humanitarian and human rights law and to stop expanding settlements. Former EU representative Sven Kuhn von Burgsdorff said European protests were not followed by punitive measures and that EU ministers, at a Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels on 12 October, had still not decided on sanctions against violent settlers or against Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government.
The United States also responded to a separate attack on Friday near Abu Falah. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration was “very disturbed” by images of the assault on Heidi Levine, 64, a freelance photojournalist for The Washington Post. Speaking at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, he said he had not yet received an official briefing but that what he saw “didn’t look good”. He urged Israel to crack down on the violence and said President Donald Trump does not want friction or a crisis in the West Bank.
Witnesses said Levine fell and was then set upon. She later told reporters that her attackers “just kept kicking me and kicking me, like probably 50 times”. She was wearing a protective vest marked “PRESS”, was taken to a hospital northeast of Ramallah, and had her cameras and phone taken, The Washington Post reported. On 6 October, armed settlers beat AFP photographer Jaafar Ashtiyeh, 58, with rifle butts near Aqraba, south of Nablus. Witnesses, relatives and colleagues said he was hospitalised with head and torso injuries.
The diplomatic assault is the latest in weeks of attacks during the olive harvest. Israeli rights group Yesh Din documented 377 incidents of violence involving occupiers and soldiers in the two weeks through 10 October. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said nearly 200 settler attacks linked to the olive harvest have caused casualties or property damage so far this year, already more than the 185 incidents recorded in the whole of the 2025 season. The harvest is an economic lifeline for roughly 80,000 to 100,000 Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank.
Earlier on Saturday, settlers injured six Palestinians as Israeli forces arrested farmers. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said four women and a child were among the injured in Ma’in, in the Masafer Yatta area south of Hebron. In Deir Ammar, west of Ramallah, the Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli forces opened fire on farmers and forced them off their land, while settlers injured two Palestinians. In Kafr Malek, northeast of Ramallah, Mayor Najeh Rustum told Al Jazeera that settlers raided a farm at dawn and killed about 20 sheep.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah, said settlers destroyed olive trees on the Beit Furik plain, east of Nablus, while Israeli forces arrested landowners and pickers. In Deir Jarir, east of Ramallah, she said settlers under army protection fired live ammunition at farmers in the al-Hariq area. Settlers also smashed the vehicle of international activist Jonathan Budlak and threw stones at a farmer’s vehicle. On Friday, dozens of masked settlers attacked olive harvesters with stones and slingshots and set trees on fire.
Those attacks followed the killing of Ali Hassan Yasser al-Bazzari, 44, during an assault on olive pickers near Burqa, northwest of Nablus, on 7 October. Witnesses said settlers and Israeli soldiers attacked the harvesters.
Palestinian analyst Ahmed Najar told Al Jazeera that settlers target the harvest because families are gathered in exposed groves, often near settlements and outposts, and that assaults, burned or uprooted trees and stolen crops make it more dangerous for Palestinians to remain on their land. He said the violence is also meant to deter international campaigners from documenting it. Odeh said that, with elections important to right-wing parties, settlers are more emboldened this year and have received a religious edict describing theft of the harvest as permissible and the right thing to do. She added that opposition figures accuse Netanyahu of undermining Israel’s standing while still vowing to protect the settlements.