Covering Israeli settler attacks on the Palestinian olive harvest, Mondoweiss’ Palestine Staff Writer asks how to tell a story when you and the subject are one and the same.

Israeli settlers are blocking, assaulting, and robbing Palestinian olive harvesters. For some 100,000 families in the West Bank who rely on the harvest for income, this season may decide whether the olive harvest survives at all.

Since August, Israeli settlers have blocked Palestinians from Umm Safa from reaching the village’s only cemetery. Residents say it’s the latest in a series of escalations by settlers — backed by the Israeli army — who are trying to expel them.

Settler attacks in the West Bank are ongoing with the enthusiastic approval of the Israeli army, as Palestinians are barred from accessing their own land, and their olive groves, for the fourth year in a row.

Israel is preparing to give settlers access to a main Palestinian thoroughfare in Ramallah, a move that would bring checkpoints and gates to one of the West Bank’s last spaces of free Palestinian movement and affordable urban growth.

In Masafer Yatta in the southern occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers are accelerating their attacks on Palestinian farmers and herders in the area by cutting off their water supply.

For months, Palestinian farmers in the northern West Bank have watched their water lines cut and their wells marked for demolition in Israel’s slow strangulation of Palestinian agriculture, as farmers tell Mondoweiss “there is no tomorrow” for them.

After being forced out of their homes by violent Israeli settlers, the Bedouin community of Maghayer al-Deir joins a growing list of Palestinian Bedouins whose villages have been taken over by settlers since October 7, 2023.

I met Louis Theroux to share my story as a Palestinian under the constant threat of displacement. While the film is an important look into the Israeli settlers trying to erase us, there is one crucial part of our story that was left out.

Israeli settlers are taking over Palestinian land by creating “farming outposts” with the goal of ethnically cleansing Palestinians. This strategy complements the Israeli state’s broader plans for annexing the West Bank.