(Photo credit: Ammar Awad/Reuters)
The Cradle
OCT 16, 2026
Masked Israeli settlers violently assaulted and hospitalized Washington Post photojournalist and US citizen Heidi Levine while attacking Palestinian olive harvesters near Abu Falah in the occupied West Bank on 16 October, hurling stones at farmers and setting olive trees ablaze as they rampaged.
“I was attacked, pushed to the ground. Luckily I had my flak jacket and helmet, otherwise I probably wouldn’t even be here, because they just kept kicking me and kicking me,” Levine said from her hospital bed, where she is in stable condition.
Israeli soldiers made no attempt to rein in the attackers, witnesses said, instead pulling up alongside the still-masked settlers and firing tear gas at the Palestinian villagers.
“The army did nothing to stop the settlers,” said independent Israeli journalist Oren Ziv, who witnessed the attack.
One Reuters photographer at the scene saw at least one armed settler open fire, with Ziv reporting that one Palestinian was wounded by gunfire.
Levine was wearing a vest clearly marked as press when the settlers beat her to the ground with sticks and robbed her of her cameras and phone.
She was only pulled to safety after young men from the village drove the attackers back with stones.
Around 80 settlers, several hauling gas canisters, descended in a coordinated raid from a hilltop onto the groves northeast of Ramallah where Abu Falah families were harvesting olives, according to Reuters witnesses.
Jasper Nathaniel, a US journalist at the scene, said the assault was larger and more organized than usual, with dozens of men seen preparing beforehand.
The settlers set the groves alight in several places and slung stones at the pickers, while young men from the village threw stones back to defend themselves.
“The settlers want to attack us and force us from our homes,” said Moutaz Abdelhadi, a 42-year-old farmer.
The assault near Abu Falah fits a wider, state-backed campaign to entrench Israeli control over the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces and settlers carried out 11,074 attacks in the first half of 2026 alone, including 3,488 attacks involving assaults on villages, arson, shootings, land seizures and the establishment of outposts.
UN figures show nearly 46,000 Palestinians forcibly displaced between 2023 and the end of 2025, and a UN inquiry found Israeli authorities facilitated settler violence through financial, military, and legal support, in a campaign of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing to annex the West Bank.
