In Olive Groves of the West Bank, a Harvest of Fear
Fear kept the olive pickers off the terraced hillsides today in this village set among the groves and stony hills of the northern West Bank.

On an olive-clad slope facing a ridge studded with outposts stretching from the Jewish settlement of Itamar, a few Palestinian villagers hesitantly ventured out to the spot where their neighbor, Hani Bani Minyeh, 24, was shot and killed on Sunday.

Settlers who had arrived in the valley below opened fire to disperse Palestinians harvesting from their olive trees nearby, killing Mr. Bani Minyeh as he tried to scramble up a stone terrace, the villagers said. Another man was wounded.

As settlers drove up the valley in a small tractor today, villagers quickly moved back, out of sight.

October marks the start of the olive-picking season in the West Bank. But the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is casting a shadow over the harvest, which sustains many villagers. This year the yield of the olive trees, which varies annually, is high, but the conflict between the Jewish settlers and Palestinians is making it harder in many places to collect the fruit.

A few miles away from Aqraba today, in the village of Yasuf, Muhammad Obeid, 49, gazed from a distance at his olive trees dotting a hillside under a cluster of trailers, an extension of the Jewish settlement of Tapuah. On three days last week, he said, armed settlers from Tapuah picked olives from dozens of his trees as he watched helplessly from the village.

"This is theft," he said, adding that similar incidents were reported in two other villages in the area.

The fatal shooting on Sunday, villagers in Aqraba said, came after settlers from the Itamar outposts came down to the valley with two tractors and other vehicles to plow a plot of village land more than a mile from the outposts above.

Ghaleb Mayadmeh, Aqraba's mayor, said it was the first time settlers had fired on villagers picking olives in the area, apparently in an effort to put the groves off limits.

On Saturday, another group of olive pickers here was assaulted, villagers said. Atef Bani Jaber, 40, who had a black eye and a bandage on his forehead, said settlers had attacked him and other men, hitting him with a rifle and beating the others before making off with the day's harvest.

Rabbi Avi Ronsky, who is the leader of a yeshiva in Itamar, said the settlers who opened fire on Sunday reported that they had been stoned by the villagers and sensed that they were in danger.

Rabbi Ronsky said today that Palestinians, including olive pickers, had to be kept a safe distance from the settlement and its residents, given the recent history of deadly attacks on Itamar, which have killed nine people. A Palestinian gunman killed a mother, three of her children and a man in an attack on the settlement in June.

Villagers said Israeli soldiers had come to Yasuf and Aqraba, but had failed to stop the settlers. An army spokesman said today that the army wanted the olive harvest to proceed, but that in order to protect both villagers and settlers, the times and locations of the work had to be coordinated with the army. A police spokesman said the recent incidents were still under investigation.

At Yasuf, villagers said groups of settlers from Tapuah had entered their lands on three days last week to pick olives from trees near the settlement — a report confirmed by the settlers. The aim of the action was "to send a message: don't come near, because there's nothing to come for," said Daniel Shukrun, the secretary of Tapuah.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/08/international/middleeast/08WEST.html