News Made Clear · Loading…
News Made Clear · Loading…
Farmers and Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine were injured near Abu Falah. Witness accounts and video document the assault, though the full casualty toll remains unclear.
Masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians harvesting olives near Abu Falah in the occupied West Bank on Friday, 16 October, injuring farmers and a US photographer working for The Washington Post. Reporters witnessed violence in the groves, while video showed the photographer, Heidi Levine, being beaten by masked men. [1] [5]
A BBC team first saw wounded olive pickers being driven out of the area. Later, it watched dozens of settlers come down from a hill, set olive trees alight and launch stones with slingshots towards farmers. Reuters reporters also saw settlers descend towards the harvesters and throw stones. Palestinians threw stones back; the BBC said some also set off fireworks as the confrontation intensified. [1] [4]
Video described by CBS News showed masked men pushing Levine to the ground and beating her. She was taken to hospital in Ramallah. Levine said she had been repeatedly kicked despite wearing a helmet and protective vest. The Post’s executive editor, Matt Murray, said she had been clearly identifiable as a journalist and called for a thorough investigation. [5] [1]
A local official told the BBC that 12 Palestinians had been injured in the attacks, including four with both Palestinian and American citizenship. CBS News reported that the Palestinian Red Crescent had treated three Palestinians at Abu Falah. The figures cover different reported groups and do not amount to a definitive toll. [1] [5]
Israeli forces arrived and fired tear gas towards the Palestinian fields, according to the BBC; Associated Press also documented Palestinians fleeing the gas. Gunfire was heard, but the BBC could not identify who fired the shots it heard. Reuters said one of its photographers saw an armed settler fire a gun. The Israeli military said soldiers fired warning shots and fired towards a person it said had approached them with a sharp object. AP reported that medics attended a Palestinian man shot by Israeli soldiers. These accounts do not establish that every shot or injury arose from the same exchange.
7 listed sources · explore evidence, limitations and provenance.
Sign in to give this article a thumbs up or down.
Private test discussion. Comments are readers’ views and are not yet automatically fact-checked. Editing is available for 60 seconds after posting.
Sign in with a confirmed reader account and choose a username to read comments and participate.
Sorting applies to top-level comments; replies remain oldest first. New comments and likes can change the order. Refresh for the current ranking.
Loading comments…
The Binyamin Regional Council, which represents settlements in the area, alleged that the confrontation was a planned Palestinian provocation. The reported stone-throwing and fireworks do not account for the filmed assault on Levine or the settlers’ movement towards the groves witnessed by reporters. Israeli police and the military said they had opened investigations. [6] [5]
The attack comes during a harvest already marked by violence. In a report covering 22–28 September, the UN humanitarian office recorded 53 settler attacks across the West Bank that caused Palestinian casualties, property damage or both. That figure predates Friday’s events and is not a count of attacks at Abu Falah. [7]