Hardline Rabbi Rules Jews May Harvest Palestinian Olives to 'Demonstrate Ownership' | Israel Politics Post
Hardline Rabbi Rules Jews May Harvest Palestinian Olives to 'Demonstrate Ownership'
Rabbi Dov Lior's ruling, issued during the West Bank's tense olive harvest season, drew sharp pushback from a moderate Orthodox group that called taking the olives theft, plain and simple.
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By Israel Politics Post Staff·Published
Rabbi Dov Lior at a ceremony in Jerusalem · Source: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90, via The Times of Israel
Rabbi Dov Lior, the hardline former chief rabbi of the Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron, issued a religious ruling on Friday permitting Jews to harvest olives growing on Palestinian-owned land, The Times of Israel reported. Lior argued that Palestinians never legitimately purchased the land in question and that, in his view, "the Jewish people have never given up on the Land of Israel."
The ruling specifically sanctions harvesting in areas "far away from Jewish communities" as a way to "publicly demonstrate our ownership of the land," which Lior framed as fulfilling a religious commandment to settle it. The guidance lands squarely in the middle of the West Bank's olive harvest season, a period that has repeatedly turned violent as settlers clash with Palestinian farmers trying to bring in their crops.
The ruling drew a sharp rebuke from Tzohar, a moderate Orthodox rabbinic organization, which said plainly that "theft is forbidden from anyone, Jew or non-Jew alike." Tzohar pointed to rabbis in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc who have gone further, describing the consumption of Palestinian-grown olives as both theft and a desecration of God's name.
The dispute comes as international criticism of settler violence during the harvest has intensified, with rights groups and foreign governments accusing the Israeli government of treating a recurring pattern as a series of isolated incidents rather than a systemic problem.
