Israeli settlers descended on Palestinian olive harvesters and activists this week in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, beating them with clubs and sending at least one woman to hospital with serious injuries, according to video footage obtained by The Associated Press and Palestinian health officials.

The Sunday attack on the town of Turmus Ayya came as Palestinians say settler violence in the region is only worsening.

The United Nations and rights groups have raised the alarm as harvest season rolls around and Palestinian farmers flock to their fields to gather olives.

In the video obtained by AP, a masked man is seen running in an olive grove and beating several people with a club, including a woman in an embroidered dress, who lies motionless on the ground.

The masked man appears to be wearing tzitzit, a ritual fringed garment for Jews.

The woman was hospitalized with serious injuries, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry.

In a separate video from the same attack, more than a dozen more masked individuals can be seen running toward an olive grove. Another video shows smoke rising from several torched cars, flames still licking up their sides.

Israel's military and police did not respond to request for comment on the attack.

Turmus Ayya, whose population is predominantly Palestinian American, has long been a target of settler attacks but villagers say the violence worsened during the Israel-Hamas war.

It's nestled in a valley, surrounded by hilltops crowned with Israeli settlements and outposts.

Since the killing of 14-year old Palestinian-American Amer Rabee by Israeli forces in the town this April, protests against settler violence and the military's perceived failure to curb it have provoked regular clashes with settlers.

More broadly, settler violence is surging across the West Bank.

The UN says that the first half of 2025 has seen 757 settler attacks in the West Bank causing casualties or property damage — that's a 13% increase compared with the same period last year.

The first week of olive harvest season has seen more than 150 settler attacks and over 700 olive trees uprooted, broken or poisoned, according to Muayyad Shaaban, a Palestinian political activist who runs the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.

"Everywhere in Qalqilya and Salfit, the land of olives, these places are subjected daily to systematic terror by the extremist right-wing government of this occupation, which supports with all its power the armed militia of settlers spread across more than 130 outposts in the West Bank to prevent farmers and olive pickers from reaching their fields and farms," said Shaaban.

Minister of AgricultureRezq Salimiya told reporters on Tuesday that the violations were an "obstacle to achieving sustainable agricultural development, as the occupation controls more than sixty percent of the West Bank's lands."

Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for a future independent state. Settler advocates hold key Israeli Cabinet positions that grant them important say over the West Bank, giving settlers greater control over their destiny in the territory.