Jerusalem’s church leaders urged Israeli authorities to bring those responsible for an Oct. 17 attack on olive harvesters and foreign visitors in the occupied West Bank to justice, citing repeated violence against farmers.
In a statement dated Oct. 19, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem said masked settlers attacked Palestinians gathering olives in Taybeh and guests visiting the village. The leaders argued that repeated attacks reflect a failure to hold perpetrators accountable. They asked the international community to do more to protect West Bank residents and visitors.
Israeli police said they arrested 10 suspects in an investigation into weekend violence that included the Taybeh incident. The arrests were part of the broader investigation; police did not establish that all 10 suspects took part in the attack in Taybeh. The church leaders welcomed the arrests and Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s condemnation of the attack, and expressed hope that enforcement would continue seriously and consistently.
The attack came during a harvest that supports an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Palestinian families, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The agency recorded 199 settler attacks linked to olive harvesting from Sept. 1 through Oct. 12. That count ended before the Taybeh incident.
France’s Foreign Ministry described the assault on Aulnoye-Aymeries Mayor Bernard Baudoux and the targeting of three consuls general. The diplomats were the French, Belgian and Polish consuls general in Jerusalem. The ministry said they were targeted; it did not say they were physically assaulted.
The church leaders also objected to a religious ruling that they said permitted Jews to take olives from Palestinian land. They welcomed criticism of the ruling from rabbis and other Jewish voices. Their call for protection covered Taybeh, other communities across the West Bank and people visiting from abroad.
