Israeli soldiers and a settler assault an elderly Palestinian in the southern West Bank.

Israeli soldiers and a settler assaulted an elderly Palestinian farmer on Friday, beating him before arresting him while he was picking olives in the town of Nahalin, west of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

A video circulated by Palestinian media platforms showed several Israeli soldiers along with a settler attacking the Palestinian farmer, throwing him to the ground, while a woman accompanying him tried in vain to defend him.

This coincides with a noticeable increase in settler assaults in the West Bank against Palestinians as the olive-picking season begins, which typically starts in the second third of October each year.

Nahalin Mayor Jamal Najajra stated that the Palestinian farmer Ahmad Shakarneh, in his sixties, was assaulted while picking olives on his land in the Ain al-Balad area north of Nahalin.

He explained that the Israeli soldiers confiscated the olives that the Palestinian farmer had harvested and took him to an unknown location, forcing the woman who was assisting him in the picking to leave the area.

Najajra pointed out the existence of a "fierce attack" by the Israeli army and settlers against olive pickers in the town, which includes assaults and preventing them from accessing their lands, in addition to stealing the fruits.

According to the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, settlers carried out more than 7,000 assaults against Palestinians and their properties in the West Bank during the two years of the genocide war on Gaza, including 158 attacks targeting olive pickers since the beginning of October.

Commission head Muayad Shaaban clarified that the assaults have resulted in the destruction of about 795 olive trees since the beginning of the season.

Shaaban described the current season as "the hardest in decades" amid the expansion of the policy of "closed military zones" on agricultural lands in the West Bank.

These attacks are part of a wide Israeli escalation in the West Bank that has resulted in the deaths of more than a thousand Palestinians and injuries to about 10,000 others, as well as the arrest of over 20,000 people, including 1,600 children, since the beginning of the genocide war.