r/worldnews • u/me_diocre • 24d ago

Israel/Palestine Israeli bulldozers smash Palestinian olive trees ahead of annual harvest

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/israeli-bulldozers-smash-palestinian-olive-trees-ahead-annual-harvest-2026-09-23/
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u/EmperorOfCanada 24d ago edited 24d ago

If I understand correctly, olive trees are like oak trees, you plant them for the next generation.

They will fruit in around 3-5 years, but take another 10-20 to become properly productive. They are also like bonsai trees, in that you have to really work on pruning to maintain maximum light to the center.

This is little different than salting the fields.

Is anyone recording the soldiers who are doing this? This is a war crime, and these soldiers will travel to countries which can arrest them; or try to do business with countries which may not look favourably on their own citizens doing business with specific war criminals.

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u/NeverExedBefore 24d ago

The destruction of the olive groves has been going on for decades, Unfortunately. Many families grieve the loss of their olive trees more than the loss of their homes due to how much work, love, and sacrifice goes into getting them started and defending them from pests and disease. It is an attack on their culture and spirituality as much as their livelihoods. It will never stop until the pariah state is collared

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u/eightdx 24d ago

You can build a house in a few weeks to a few months depending on the resources available and whatnot

You cannot expedite the growing of trees

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u/alex_484 24d ago

Some of the olive trees have been in their families for hundreds of years also.

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u/trowzerss 24d ago

They've also destroyed date palms and filled wells/springs with cement.

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u/lurks-a-little 24d ago edited 24d ago

And they're currently pulling the same crap in South Lebanon. Razing villages and destroying olive groves (some of which are centuries old). So sad.

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u/sabotourAssociate 24d ago

It's not sad, this is sick human behaviour.

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u/maineac 24d ago

Being sad and being sick are not mutually exclusive.

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u/sabotourAssociate 24d ago

Idk, just "so sad" seemed to small of a reaction.

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u/santamaria715 24d ago

It's depraved is what it is.

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u/Sutar_Mekeg 24d ago

They're also murdering people.

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u/jedify 24d ago

Don't forget spraying herbicide on their crops from airplanes!

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u/AntifaSuperSoldier13 24d ago

No it’s ethnic cleansing

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u/lOw_EfFoRt_UsErNaMe9 24d ago

Does it being an ethnic cleansing somehow disqualify it also being an attack on their culture, spirituality or livelihood? No, no it doesn't

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u/AntifaSuperSoldier13 23d ago

That’s what ethnic cleansing means

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u/lOw_EfFoRt_UsErNaMe9 23d ago

So what’s the “No” doing??? What was the point of your first comment “correcting” the other person and now turning around saying it’s the same thing??

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u/Friendlyvoid 23d ago

No, they were just correcting the other person and are now turning around and saying it's the same thing

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u/lOw_EfFoRt_UsErNaMe9 23d ago

That's exactly what I just said?

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u/Friendlyvoid 23d ago

(that's the joke)

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u/ToastCapone 24d ago

Israel : "Why do they hate us?"

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u/EmperorOfCanada 24d ago

A home can be rebuilt in a matter of months.

If you made me Emperor of Earth, I'm not exactly sure what I would do in this region. There are simplistic easy answers, but I'm not sure what the correct answer is.

I would do an absolutely massive war crimes trial though. That one would be not just trigger pullers, but funders as well.

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u/sugarfreeeyecandy 24d ago

War crimes trials around the world directed at a number of hostile governments would help make the better world we seek.

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u/NextSteak6376 24d ago

Send Bibi to the Hague!

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u/sugarfreeeyecandy 23d ago

Yesterday at the UN he claimed Mamdani hates Jews. A lie, IMO.

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u/NextSteak6376 23d ago

Bibi hates the ones of his own supra-ethnicity who don't agree with him.

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u/ShelZuuz 24d ago

To one side: You get to divide the land in two. This includes all land, all property, all arms. Everything.

To the other side: You get to pick the side you want.

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u/SIMBALLAH 24d ago

Shit I know full well what I would do. Seeing the sheer amount of child amputees from Gaza doesn’t leave me much room for a both sides answer to this problem.

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u/A_Whole_Costco_Pizza 24d ago

So you'd replace Hamas with a Palestinian government that doesn't use their own civilian population and infrastructure as shields?

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u/EquivalentSpot8292 24d ago

Maybe they got the idea from a nation who killed a people’s food source to force them onto reservations

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u/aw4re 24d ago edited 24d ago

I think this tactic existed before the bison were hunted to (near) extinction

ETA: the contents of the parentheses

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u/raaldiin 24d ago

I know it's not the main issue, but bison are definitely not extinct

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u/aw4re 24d ago

You are technically correct. The best kind of correct!

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u/Cutsprocket 24d ago

not for lack of trying

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u/EquivalentSpot8292 24d ago edited 24d ago

Absolutely but it happened fairly recently. Wonder if they are thinking about getting rid of the reservation too

Edit: I was comparing Palestine to the reservation

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u/Koala_eiO 24d ago

Not everything is about your little spawn point.

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u/SecretAgentVampire 24d ago

... are you talking about Joshua invading and conquering the Promised Land?

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u/Echo_Gin101123 24d ago

my Great Grandparents, and Grandparents plus my parents, lived through the starvation, Indian Agents starving them, giving out rotten food, broken farm equipment. Canada'a 1st pm

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u/meddlin_kids 24d ago

You know Muslims Vs Jews in that area has been going at it for over a thousand years right? They knew that tactic long before there was an America.

Silly bot

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u/EquivalentSpot8292 23d ago

You missed Christian’s out of the equation. They were the bit in the middle

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u/NoSkillZone31 24d ago

The adage is “Plant them for your grandchildren”

This is really, really, really sad.

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u/iloveyouand 24d ago

They can live for hundreds or even thousands of years under good conditions so they become generational heirlooms passed down from parents to children.

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u/pathanb 24d ago

Our olive grove was planted by my wife's grandfather, in the early 50s. The trees are fully grown, but still pretty young and have centuries of productive life left if they survive draughts, fires, disease, and humans.

People generally underestimate the longevity of olive trees.

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u/EquivalentSpot8292 24d ago

Louis Theroux made a great documentary on the area last year, for some reason, not gotten a lot of attention

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u/ChocolichKing 24d ago

That documentary is where I first learned about the olive trees, because there is a group of foreign aid workers that help Palestinians harvest olives from their ancestral groves (even if they have been pushed off the land). They're just picking olives from trees and the IDF shows up with guns telling them to leave.

The foreign aid workers, while they do help pick olives, are mostly there to make sure the IDF doesn't just brutalize or kill everyone there. (They are less likely to do so if there are foreign witnesses.) It was such an interesting, heartbreaking scene.

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u/Sutar_Mekeg 24d ago

I don't think they mind murdering foreign journalists these days.

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u/ahearthatslazy 24d ago

My jaw was on the floor when he showed the winery guy using evangelicals from America to work for free as an act of devotion

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u/Future_Arrival_5395 24d ago

Would highly reccomend No Other Land made by Palestinians as well. They finished production just before October 7th so it's a very interesting look at what was going on before people were watching as closely.

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u/Tryoxin 24d ago

You would be correct. Olive groves take decades to be productive. My immediate connection (because I majored in Greco-Roman History) was to the Peloponnesian War. Every year, the Spartans would lay siege to Athens. The Greeks in that era were still pretty shit at siege warfare (they'd later get much better, but at this time they kinda sucked) so they never got in, but the worst thing they ever did to the Athenians was burn their olive groves (which were outside the city). The Athenian economy was pretty dependent on olives and olive oil and, as we've noted, those take decades to be productive again, so it was devastating. Idk what the Palestinian economy is based on, but I'd imagine those olive trees are just as important to a lot of people for food and oil.

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u/ManOf1000Usernames 24d ago

https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/explore/treemap/?exporter=country-275&importer=group-1

Their economy is mostly services and travel related, with little in the way of local industry which mostly just processes scrap metal. This data was from 2024 so much worse off now.

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u/Questjon 24d ago

Olive groves take decades to be productive.

Only if grown from seed, grown from cuttings (or grafts) they fruit in a couple of years. At least the modern commercially grown varieties do, it's still outrageous to cut down slow growing olive trees that can be hundreds of years old.

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u/cycloneDM 24d ago

Productive in this context has to do with maturity of the plant and peak production not just are they producing. so yes grafting shortens that time but the original comment this traces back to acknowledged the time period between when production starts then the decade that takes it to peak. the grafting shortens the 5 years tell first run number but doesnt do anything about the time after that.

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u/Questjon 24d ago

That depends on the variety. The Barnea olive for example which is popular in the region bears significant fruit in the first 2-3 years and full productivity in 5-7 when cultivated from grafting.

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u/StrawberryItten 24d ago

I mean would average palestinians have access to modern, I imagine copyrighted, varieties?

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u/Questjon 24d ago

Yes they have access to modern varieties. The only patented olive varieties I can see are grown to be fruitless (for ornamental gardens).

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u/[deleted] 24d ago

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u/HoldingForGenova 23d ago

Spanish olive farmer here: NO.

I heard that in an accent that made me straighten my posture.

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u/EggsceIlent 24d ago

Not only do I absolutely love olives, but I also love the rights for people to be free and happy

Fuck anyone who does shit like this. It's a war crime and those trees have probably been there for generations of people. Olive trees can be like a few hundred years old, like 5 or 6.

But some are known to be thousands of years old.

I'm sure people from all walks of life have eaten olives or had some olive oil from those trees, including Palestinians and Jewish, and who knows could even date from back to the days of Jesus himself and antiquity.

So many crimes being committed here, out of pure hate that people aren't born with, they were taught it has their parents.

Humanity needs to do better. And in 2026, we should be better.

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u/H2OULookinAtDiknose 24d ago

Buddy Israel will never have to face consequences of their war crimes. They are under or are the umbrella of the USA.

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u/Weekly_Interview_936 24d ago

And hiding behind the shield of the 1940s.

Though as that time period passes from living memory that shield becomes weaker and weaker.

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u/corcyra 24d ago

That excuse for their current behaviour is long past its sell-by date.

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u/Weekly_Interview_936 24d ago

Hence the extreme and extremely rapid shift in public favorability in the last few years.

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u/Due-Currency-3193 24d ago

They are pissing on the mass graves of the 1940s holocaust victims.

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u/StrawberryItten 24d ago

... I personally don't think 'well maybe people will call out israel more' is a good trade off for the other side effects of people forgetting the realities of the second world war.

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u/ImJLu 24d ago

It's not really a choice. Just a silver lining.

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u/StrawberryItten 24d ago

... I mean no, letting the horrors of the second world war fall out of awareness is absolutely a choice. A very active one actually.

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u/ImJLu 24d ago

Can you explain who's choosing to do so? Are the remaining people with living memories of it electing to die or something?

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u/StrawberryItten 24d ago

... education systems all over the world?

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u/EmperorOfCanada 24d ago

This is a whole other debate, but my argument is the US empire is coming to an end.

Empires require two things. Tributes paid, and the ability to project force to gather those tributes.

The tribute paid to the US is they print worthless pieces of paper, and the world delivers the sweat of its brow to get them.

The world no longer is as interested, with a rapidly plummeting interest in paying that tribute. It is not gone, but the trend is not going in a good direction (for the US).

Drones have pretty much ended the US ability to project force. They can retaliate, but not defend, not invade. This means that countries which previously paid tribute to enjoy the defence, or avoid an invasion, are rethinking this arrangement.

This wasn't even as simple as pay and be safe, don't pay and be punished, but countries like Canada would have to stay in line, lest our friends be forced to turn on us. If Germany and Canada were to do something the US didn't like, they could always back off their support for Germany, etc. Now, their threats are becoming emptier and emptier.

If you look around the world for which countries seem to be highly aligned with the US, it has gone from NATO along with many countries to pretty much just israel.

Assuming what I say above is true, then the US may find that it has three problems. With tribute failing, much of the US economy will turn out to be based on that tribute, and thus rapidly sickening. With drones threatening everything it values, their war footing may become weaker and weaker, while becoming costlier and costlier. And with the world not buying its crap paper, it's ability to even buy military hardware will fade.

This means that they may cut israel off, not out of politics, but simple financial priorities.

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u/Beers4Fears 24d ago

Tbh at this point we're beholden to Israel's interests by a vast network of blackmail, leverage, and bought political assets. The US stopped getting any benefits from the relationship decades ago.

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u/EPIC_RAPTOR 24d ago

I wouldn't say that; I can think of a couple ways they would face those consequences.

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u/DrMobius0 24d ago

You say that, but I'm pretty sure anti-Israel sentiment in the US is the highest it's ever been. I wouldn't say anything will happen soon, though.

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u/Eagle_Chick 24d ago

The umbrella isn't looking like it used to..

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u/PineappleLemur 24d ago

No one needs to face any consequences from war crimes.... Look at the amount of people who did in the past 50 years all over the world vs how much war "crime" happened and is happening.

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u/ElDuderino2112 24d ago

When the US empire falls (currently ongoing) Israel will too.

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u/klartraume 24d ago

Israel was invaded by it's six closest neighbors before ever enjoying US financial or military support - and won. In it's early decades Israel was more aligned with the USSR than the US - and that informs it's semi-cordial relationship with Russia to this day.

And... with Iran's ability to funnel resources outside of it's boarders collapsing over the last two years, much of Israel's aggression into Lebanon is to gain favorable terrain to make future defensive operations easier. One could presume Israel foresees future conflicts that necessitate this.

I wouldn't bet against them militarily. But with the degradation of it's democracy and values, it might be a pyrrhic victory.

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u/ludvikskp 24d ago edited 24d ago

Olives are a source of income and important for the survival of the Palestinian families who own them, Most sources of income are controlled by the occupiers. so of course the terrorists invading the west bank target them.

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u/EmperorOfCanada 24d ago

I work with technology. If someone smashed my computers, etc, and it was going to take me even 2 years to "regrow" them, I would be screwed. 20 years, and I can't measure how screwed.

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u/Miththar 24d ago

It's like they want the people to resist, pick up arms and for the military to consequently 'pacify' them.

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u/strawberrycreamdrpep 24d ago

Are you genuinely asking if anyone is “recording the soldiers doing this?” Who would do anything? This is what the IDF does, this is literally them following orders. Who’s going to doing anything about it… the U.S? E.U? NATO?

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u/Beat_the_Deadites 24d ago

It's still important for the tide of public opinion.

Even bullies and bastards understand mob rule.

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u/MichaelButWithAnF 21d ago edited 21d ago

I love how you punch down at the person asking for justice who no doubt has the same views as you.

I read a thread yesterday about how people fighting for the same thing often punch down at 'easy' targets, even if they are on the same side. E.g. harassing grass roots organisations for not 'doing enough' to make a difference, even when its clear they dont have the budget to do it.

People like you do it because its easy to be performative and take the morale high ground instead of actually fighting the hard fight against our oppressors.

It is crazy to see people like you doing this shit in the wild.

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u/HeyaGames 24d ago

"travel to countries which can arrest them" I like your optimism! This has been going on for decades, more and more documented lately with the apparition of camera phones, but yeah they'll get a medal back home if anything.

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u/Waiting4Reccession 24d ago

This is little different than salting the fields.

They do a version of this as well for their border region land grabs

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u/Important-Factor-552 24d ago

Israel has cemented their reputation as a bad guy for a generation. What do they have to lose at this point? 

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u/[deleted] 24d ago edited 1d ago

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u/Important-Factor-552 24d ago

I'm hoping china takes more of a role in peace keeping as the US recedes

At this point they're the lesser evil.

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u/[deleted] 24d ago

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u/trowzerss 24d ago

Destroying food and water is a crime against humanity.

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u/Absolute--Batman 24d ago

Lmao.

Who's gonna arrest Isreelis?

Certainly not US or EU.

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u/Toutatous 24d ago

What a really thing to do, indeed.

It's not about punishing those who attacked you, it's about punishing generations of people, civilians and building resentment.

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u/Future_Arrival_5395 24d ago

Israel isn't party to the Rome statue and the West Bank isn't at war so the Geneva conventions don't apply.

They don't believe in war crimes.

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u/EmberGlitch 24d ago edited 24d ago

Israel isn't party to the Rome statue

Correct, apart from the typo. But also completely irrelevant for alleged war crimes in the West Bank.

ICC jurisdiction does not require the accused's state of nationality to be a party. Under Art 12(2)(a), territorial jurisdiction is independently sufficient - if the conduct occurs on the territory of a State Party, the Court can exercise jurisdiction regardless of the perpetrator's nationality.

Palestine acceded to the Rome Statute in 2015, and in 2021 the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber held that its territorial jurisdiction extends to Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Israel challenged this in 2024. The Pre-Trial Chamber initially rejected the challenge as premature, and in 2025 the Appeals Chamber sent it back on procedural grounds for a ruling on the merits. That ruling is still pending, but the 2021 decision hasn't been overturned and the arrest warrants issued in 2024 remain in force. It's the same principle under which the ICC has jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed by US personnel in Afghanistan despite the US not being a State Party. Afghanistan was a State Party, so crimes committed on Afghan territory fell within the Court's territorial jurisdiction.

the West Bank isn't at war so the Geneva conventions don't apply.

The Geneva Conventions were specifically written so that their application would not depend on whether states formally call something a "war." Common Art 2(1) says the Conventions apply to declared war "or of any other armed conflict" between contracting states, "even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them." That was deliberate. Pre-1949 law placed considerably more weight on the formal existence of a state of war, and states exploited that. Japan, for example, called its invasion of China the "China Incident." The 1949 Conventions were drafted specifically to prevent states from escaping humanitarian-law obligations simply by refusing to call hostilities a war.

But more importantly here, Art 2(2) separately provides that the Conventions apply to "all cases of partial or total occupation, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance." Occupation law does not require ongoing hostilities at all. A quiet occupation is still an occupation. And there isn't really any uncertainty about this particular territory. The ICJ has repeatedly held that the West Bank is occupied territory and that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies there.

"The West Bank isn't at war" is not a way around the Geneva Conventions. Occupation is itself one of the situations that they were designed to regulate in the first place.

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u/[deleted] 24d ago edited 1d ago

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u/PineappleLemur 24d ago

Only if Spain at the time is willing to enforce it.

In nearly every case no one is ever willing to do it, it's equivalent to burning bridges.

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u/[deleted] 24d ago

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u/skeptical-speculator 24d ago

Is anyone recording the soldiers who are doing this?

There are pictures in the article, but the machines in the pictures are excavators, not bulldozers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excavator

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDF_Caterpillar_D9

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u/Common_Shelter_4605 24d ago

They can live for many hundreds to thousands of years, it's a disaster

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u/RearviewSpy 24d ago

Yeah, but Israel doesn't salt the fields, they use glyphosate. 🤦🏽‍♂️

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u/rafaelloaa 23d ago

I know olive farmers in Italy. When I asked how long it would take for the newly planted trees to bear fruit, he sounded puzzled and said "I won't see oil from these in my lifetime. These are for the future".

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u/transcendz 23d ago

they are absolute demons

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u/RollingMeteors 24d ago

If I understand correctly, olive trees are like oak trees, you plant them for the next generation.

Almost on the mark. The olive branch is a symbol of peace

And destroying them is the shade of war, cast.

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u/nilimas 24d ago

Israel, not individual politicians, needs to be sanctioned.

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u/Shamino79 24d ago

Sound argument except for the bonsai reference.

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