Israeli Settler Attacks Disrupt Another West Bank Olive Harvest

PBS NewsHour reports that Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villages across the occupied West Bank on Friday, setting fire to cars and trees and beating residents and a Washington Post photographer. The report describes the assaults as the latest violence to disrupt the territory's annual olive harvest this month.

The harvest's regularity is part of what makes it significant. An annual season of work is a fixed point in the calendar — livelihood and ritual at once — and a fixed point is one that anyone inclined to apply pressure already knows how to find.