Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that the United States wants Israel to do more to deter attacks committed by settlers in the West Bank, following an assault that left a Washington Post photojournalist injured and reignited scrutiny of settler violence during the annual olive harvest. Rubio said the United States was disturbed by images of the violence and reiterated that Washington has pressed Israeli authorities on the issue before.
“We’ve asked the Israelis and continue to ask them to crack down on that stuff,” Rubio said, according to The Straits Times. The secretary said the State Department had inquired about the incident that injured photojournalist Heidi Levine and that he expected to hear back from the US Embassy in Jerusalem by Sunday, as first reported by Reuters.
Levine, 63, an American photojournalist working for the Washington Post, was among at least two people injured when Israeli settlers attacked a group of Palestinians last Friday, per the same account from the Straits Times. The Washington Post reported that masked settlers attacked Palestinian olive harvesters in the village of Abu Falah, setting groves on fire and throwing rocks, according to The Washington Post.
Scenes From Abu Falah and a Diplomat Scuffle in Taybeh
At least 80 settlers, some carrying firearms or clubs, gathered near Abu Falah to stop Palestinians from harvesting their olives, according to The Guardian. The New York Times reported that Israeli settlers beat a group of Palestinians and Levine during the attack, and that she was in moderate condition after undergoing surgery on Saturday.
The New York Times and the Jerusalem Post offered differing accounts of the extent of Levine's injuries from the assault; the New York Times described a broken rib and lacerations on her legs, rear end, and hip, while the Jerusalem Post reported fractures to her vertebrae and a posterior rib following hand surgery, according to the New York Times and the Jerusalem Post respectively.
In a separate incident in the town of Taybeh, masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and European diplomats who were taking part in the olive harvest, the New York Times reported. That attack also damaged a Belgian diplomatic vehicle and involved a scuffle with the visiting mayor of a French town, the Times reported.
Israeli Forces Say They Are Investigating
The Israeli military and police said they were investigating the violence in the West Bank involving settlers, Palestinians and an American journalist, according to the Times of Israel. Troops and Border Police who arrived at the Abu Falah scene acted to disperse the confrontation using riot dispersal measures, the military said, per the same outlet.
Police were also separately investigating another settler attack on Palestinian olive harvesters near Turmus Ayya, where three vehicles belonging to Palestinians were set on fire, the Times of Israel reported. The Guardian likewise noted that settlers burned three Palestinian-owned cars near Turmus Ayya after attacking olive harvesters there.
The US Embassy in Jerusalem said it was monitoring reports of the violence and called for accountability. “We condemn criminal violence by any party in the West Bank and call for investigations, arrests and convictions of those responsible,” the embassy said, according to Ynetnews.
A Harvest Season Marked by Rising Attacks
The Washington Post described the Abu Falah assault as fitting a pattern of accelerating settler violence across the occupied West Bank. Palestinian authorities said attacks had been recorded in eight villages with at least 20 people injured, and that at least four Palestinians had been killed and more than 100 others injured over the preceding month, according to the Guardian.
Figures on the scale of recent violence varied by source: the Straits Times reported that Yesh Din, an Israeli settlements monitoring group, said settlers had been involved in at least 170 attacks on Palestinians since September 27, around the start of the olive harvest, while the New York Times reported that Yesh Din said it had documented 82 violent incidents since late September. About 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank alongside roughly three million Palestinians, the Times reported.
Yesh Din has separately documented nearly 30 incidents of organized, mass violence in the West Bank between 2023 and November 2025, according to the group's own data sheet. The same report found that 93.6 percent of investigation files concerning ideologically motivated offenses by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank opened by Israel Police since 2005 ended without an indictment, and that police failed to properly investigate 82 percent of those cases.
Peace Now data cited by the Guardian showed the area of agricultural land from which Israeli citizens were barred to prevent settler violence had actually fallen, from about 1,070 hectares in 2025 to 680 hectares in 2026. The figure underscores the uncertain trajectory of efforts to contain the violence even as attacks during this year's harvest drew renewed attention from Washington and European capitals alike.
