In partnership with Taawon 

Speakers: Taher Labadi, Farid Taamallah, and Ziad Anabtawi 
Wednesday 4 November 2026, 17:00–18:30 
Location: Qattan Foundation, Ramallah 
Language: Arabic 

This year’s olive harvest comes amid mounting settler attacks on Palestinian farmers and farmland across the West Bank. Between January and August 2026, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documented more than 1,600 settler attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties or property damage across 275 communities, an average of 6.7 a day, compared with five a day in 2025. During the 2025 olive harvest, OCHA recorded 185 attacks across 70 communities and damage to more than 6,000 trees and saplings. Ahead of this year’s harvest, further attacks on trees, crops, and irrigation networks have compounded the difficulties farmers face in accessing their land and protecting their crops. 
Access to land is only part of the picture. Even when farmers can reach their land and bring in the crop, they still face cultivation and labour costs, pressing and storage, prices, and difficulties accessing markets. 
The conversation looks beyond the harvest to the forces that have shaped agriculture’s role in the Palestinian economy. How is the value of produce distributed between field and market? At the end of this chain is a more immediate question: can Palestinian farmers continue cultivating their land and make a living from it?

^{Image: Yousef al-Qutob Collection, The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.}