Getting Our Hands Dirty

November 13, 2025

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Dear friend,

There are times when you have to get your hands dirty. 

ACRI’s work usually takes us to the courtroom and the Knesset, but a week ago a group of us went to the West Bank to accompany and help Palestinian farmers harvest their olives.  

While much of the focus has been on Gaza, major escalations in violence have taken place in the West Bank since October 2023. Life in the West Bank, which was never particularly easy for Palestinians, has become unbearable. Movement restrictions, many of which are imposed without warning, prevent Palestinian residents from accessing work, school, medical care, and family and friends or force them to wait for hours to pass checkpoints. Settlers encroach on their homes and communities and prevent farmers from reaching their lands via roadblocks, threats, and physical violence. They are subject to verbal and physical abuse; even their homes are not safe. Entire communities have been uprooted, and at least 19 Palestinian communities in Area C (the area in the West Bank under full Israeli control) have been forcibly displaced.  

ACRI is pursuing a number of legal avenues to try to compel the Civil Administration, the army, and the police to adhere to their obligations under international law to protect the occupied population. We have pending appeals to ease movement restrictions and traffic chokeholds and checkpoints and to make the roads in the West Bank safer. We have a hearing scheduled for a restraining order against an especially violent settler brought on behalf of 12 Palestinian farmers. We are working to ensure that agricultural Palestinian communities have access to water and other essential resources. 

But sometimes the situation calls for rolling up your sleeves. Participating in an olive harvest is not an empty gesture. It is a way to push back against violence committed by settlers, ostensibly in the name of Jews and Jewish Israelis. Moreover, the presence of Jews and Jewish Israelis often acts as a deterrence for violence—or at least for more extreme violence.  

The presence of activists generates attention. From the moment we arrived, a drone (operated by local settlers or the army) followed us. Days earlier, a colleague from another Israeli human rights organization, Rabbis for Human Rights, who was participating in an olive harvest was injured by a similar drone and needed stitches; we were lucky and the drone did not attack, but minutes after we began harvesting olives masked soldiers arrived and ejected us. We then moved to another area and spent a number of uninterrupted hours harvesting olives. For a group of city folk we did an excellent job, if I do say so myself.  

But the extent to which we were able to help was negligible in the face of what Palestinians need to contend with when trying to live their lives. When it comes to receiving protection and help from those actually responsible for their security, Palestinians reporting settler attacks are met with, at best, a weak response from the army and police. Most complaints are ignored, with no investigation or follow-up. At worst, the attacks are carried out with the assistance and support of the army and police. In more than one case, the person reporting the attack and/or attempting to stop it was arrested, while the perpetrators walked free.  

You can read more about specific incidents here. This is a major and growing issue, and we are devoting considerable time and resources to gathering information to identify trends and document incidents and to use as evidence in court. We are committed to mitigating the violence as much as possible, and working with local residents to serve as a resource for legal help; as a tool to handle issues and official stonewalling; and as a means of amplifying their voices in the face of indifferent or hostile authorities and the public at large.  

We will be in the courtrooms, olive groves, and wherever else we are needed. Donate Now.