A group of masked Israeli settlers attacked a convoy of European diplomats visiting the Palestinian town of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank during the olive harvest, according to accounts supported by photographs, video footage and witness testimony. The settlers stopped the car carrying diplomats from France, Belgium and Poland, demanded their identity documents and shattered the window of a vehicle belonging to the Belgian consulate.
Bernard Baudoux, the French Communist mayor of the northern French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, was also assaulted while travelling with the delegation. Footage circulated online shows him on the ground beside the car after apparently being struck. The incident has drawn strong condemnation from Brussels and prompted Israeli authorities to open an investigation.
Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot condemned the attack «in the strongest terms», saying it targeted Palestinians, Belgium's consul general, French and Polish diplomats and Catholic representatives. «A French mayor was assaulted and a Belgian vehicle was damaged,» he wrote on X, describing the violence as «inseparable from the illegal policy of Israeli settlements». Prévot said Belgium would keep pressing the European Union to adopt sanctions against those responsible for such violence and those who support them, adding that Israel, as an occupying power, must protect Palestinians and guarantee the safety of diplomats and journalists.
Israeli police said they had condemned «every form of violence» and opened an investigation to identify suspects and bring them to justice. The Israeli military also condemned the assault but stressed that the diplomats' visit had not been coordinated with the army. «Such coordination is essential to prevent incidents of this kind,» an IDF statement said. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar issued a similar criticism, condemning «firmly the serious acts of violence» while attributing the attack to unspecified «rioters» without naming settlers, and calling it «unfortunate that the visit was not coordinated in advance with the IDF».
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office questioned the settlers' responsibility, denouncing what it described as fears of «a coordinated campaign aimed at discrediting Israel and the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria precisely during the olive harvest period». The statement argued that footage showing masked individuals confronting a diplomatic vehicle and images of a broken window and a person on the ground did not, taken individually, clarify the exact sequence of events or individual responsibility, and said the matter was under investigation. It urged the public and responsible journalists to demand verifiable evidence and reject unconfirmed reports.
Questions were also raised about the army's failure to intervene despite what Israeli military radio journalist Doron Kadosh reported as a timely alert. An IDF spokesperson said the report to the brigade operations centre came not from a security officer but from a civilian activist accompanying the diplomats, and noted that dedicated channels exist for receiving reports from civilians.
The attack is part of a wider pattern of settler violence that has increasingly targeted not only Palestinians but also journalists, international activists and diplomats. The previous day, Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine was beaten while documenting the olive harvest with colleagues near Ramallah. She suffered four fractured vertebrae, a broken rib and wounds across her body, and settlers nearly severed a finger, according to her daughter Ashley Milner.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the assault on Levine «scandalous and shocking violence» and said he was deeply disturbed, expressing regret and apologies to the photographer. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee condemned the attack as a «vile and cowardly» act, saying anyone who assaulted an unarmed journalist should spend years in prison and that full enforcement of the law had been requested.