Israeli Settler Attack During West Bank Olive Harvest Leads to Death of a Boy

Palestinians see the violence, and its tolerance by right-wing Israeli officialdom, as part of a broader campaign to harass them and make life so unbearable that they will abandon their villages.

Ayssam Ma’ala, a happy-go-lucky eighth grader, had just laid down tarps to gather ripe olives in the West Bank town of Beita. It was Oct. 11, the first Saturday of the harvest, traditionally a high point of the year.

The day before, his family had been driven from another grove by extremist settlers who attacked them, witnesses said, in what has become a common occurrence in the West Bank. So on Saturday, they chose what seemed a safer spot. No settlers were in sight. Ayssam, 13, told his mother to rest in the shade, that “he’d take care of everything.”

Israeli soldiers soon emerged from an army vehicle a few hundred yards away and began firing tear gas, witnesses said. Caught in a cloud of gas from three canisters, and unable to breathe, Ayssam collapsed.

After four weeks in a coma, Ayssam died on Tuesday. He became the first fatality in what has been a particularly violent olive harvest. Palestinians and activists — Palestinian, Israeli and Western — say bands of masked settlers have routinely assailed Palestinian villagers, activists lending their support and journalists there to bear witness. The attackers, they say, are emboldened by permissive law enforcement and by troops who seldom intervene to stop Jewish extremists.

The olive harvest has been central to the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians for generations. A good crop can keep a family afloat financially for a year, and bringing it in once meant picnics, togetherness and cookouts among the trees.

The Israeli military insists that its soldiers are under orders to allow the harvest, but activists say that the military often sides with the settlers or even tries to disrupt the harvest itself. Israeli military leaders have come under heightened pressure to crack down on settler violence, with some commanders saying they need the government to authorize harsher measures.

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