Jaafar Ashtiyeh, an acclaimed West Bank press photographer, has been wounded frequently in the course of his work. But nothing prepared him for what settlers did to him
Gideon
Levy & Jaafar Ashtiyeh / AFP
(photos), Haaretz,
8/11/2025
Jaafar Ashtiyeh has seen and photographed the final
expressions of innumerable people drawing their last breath. He will never
forget them. In the course of nearly 30 years of work as a photographer for the
French news agency AFP in the West Bank, he has captured thousands of images of
sadness, of human suffering, of death, of peace, of hope, of victory, even of
happiness.
It's hard for him to choose which of them best
encapsulates his life's work. But when pressed, he finally chooses choose one –
of an elderly woman hugging the trunk of an olive tree – which he took in 2006
and has since become iconic.
This veteran war photographer has documented virtually
everything that has happened in the occupied and suffocated West Bank in recent
decades. About a month ago, while documenting Palestinians harvesting their
olive crop, he was attacked by a gang of violent settlers. They set his car
afire before his eyes, and if he hadn't run for his life he's certain they
would have killed him.
We met last week in a café in the town of Huwara, near
Nablus, not far from the scene of the crime: groves owned by inhabitants of the
village of Beita. Ashtiyeh doesn't have a new car yet and he's barely gone back
to work since the assault. Signs of shock, of the consequences of the attack
and above all of helplessness he feels are still visible even on this warhorse.
Jaafar Ashtiyeh's car burns in the
village of Beita on October 10. He's "not for or against anyone," he
says. His job, he explains, has always been simply to take pictures. "Some
soldiers understood that – others called us terrorists."
He was born 57 years ago in the village of Salem, not
far from Nablus, and still lives there with his family. For a few years he
served as deputy head of the local council on a volunteer basis. Since coming
of age, he has never been arrested or gotten into trouble with the Israeli
security forces. As a photographer for an international news agency, he says,
he maintains neutrality.
Ashtiyeh never studied photography – he studied
economics in a Nablus college – but in 1996 started to work for AFP. He had
rented a camera and photographed scenes at Joseph's Tomb. The prestigious
agency published the shots and he has been employed there ever since. The BBC
once chose one of his pictures as photograph of the year.
Over the years he's been wounded lightly a number of times, by tear-gas grenades and rubber-coated bullets – three times more seriously, though not life-threateningly. He lost 50 percent of the hearing in his right ear when a tear-gas canister fired by a soldier struck his head, necessitating a 10-day hospitalization. Even though he's equipped with all the requisite, identifying signs of members of the press corps, including the distinctive vest and helmet, he's come under fire from soldiers quite a few times.
He divides his decades of work in the West Bank into
three different periods, in terms of the attitude taken by the Israeli
authorities toward Palestinian journalists. The early years were a period of
relatively good relations with the Israel Defense Forces. The photographers
respected the closed military zones delineated by the army, and there were
barely any incidents of violence against media people, he says.
Children look at a cave near Jenin
where three Palestinians were killed last month, allegedly on their way to
carry out an attack.
That was followed by the second intifada that began in
2000, with multiple military checkpoints and raids by troops, but the orders remained
clear. Occasionally officers were violent toward journalists, but they were the
exceptions.
"It was clear to the army that if you're a
Palestinian journalist you are against the soldiers," Ashtiyeh says,
adding that he frequently tried to convince the authorities that he worked for
a respectable international agency and "was not for or against
anyone." His job was always simply to take pictures, he explains, and
"if a non-Palestinian photographer had taken my place, he would have taken
the same ones. There were soldiers who understood and others who said we are
terrorists."
The third, and most difficult, period began, from
Ashtiyeh's point of view, about a year before the Hamas attack in October,
2023. In 2022, he says, the army had already launched its war against the
refugee camps in the northern West Bank "and didn't allow us to photograph
anything. They pushed us out violently and work became unpleasant and
impossible." And then came October 7, and things plummeted downhill fast.
"I'm the most active and veteran photographer in
the West Bank," he claims, "and I've never faced dangers like this.
When you go to a checkpoint you are endangering your life. Not as a
photographer – as a Palestinian. They are violent against everyone, including
against photographers."
Masked Israelis
prepare to hurl stones at Palestinians who came to harvest olives in the
village of Beita last month.
Since October 7 he and his colleagues have been afraid
to draw close to soldiers, who have stopped distinguishing between journalists
and other civilians. Everyone's attention may be focused on Gaza, he adds,
"but it's very dangerous for journalists in the West Bank, too. We feel it
every day."
Since the war entered its second year, when "the
pogroms by settlers started," even greater caution has had to be
exercised, Ashtayeh says. In fact, in some cases today he feels "safer
when the army arrives, because the settlers are even worse than the
soldiers." In the past year, he has been vigilant about keeping his
distance: "I use telescopic lenses a lot in order to photograph from a
distance, and I don't stay in the same place for a long time. A picture or two
and I make my escape."
He also hides when he takes photographs, noting that
one of his colleagues had his cameras wrested from him by settlers "and
there is no way to get them back. We are the generation of Oslo in the West
Bank," he says, referring to the era of the peace accords signed between
Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s, "and it was never like this for
us."
Ashtiyeh has seen more than his share of killing and
bloodshed and is constantly on the lookout for happy scenes. "I don't want
to be only a photographer of war," he asserts, recalling the jubilation
when the Palestinian Authority was created and its people entered the West
Bank. "And I've photographed the joy of freed Palestinian prisoners."
He likes to take shots of farmers harvesting olives, but is "dispirited to
photograph farmers who find their olive trees axed or burned."
An Israeli throws a stone at olive pickers in the village of Beita as soldiers stand behind him last month. "I'm trying to avoid the dangers now, but I'll go back to them," Ashtiyeh says. "They are my life."
Two years ago, his son also started to work as an AFP
photographer, in the Ramallah region; one of his photos made the front page of
Haaretz last week. A powerful image by the elder Ashtiyeh had been published in
Haaretz a few days earlier: of a masked settler slinging a stone as soldiers
stand behind him, their weapons aimed forward and not lifting a finger to
restrain the masked individual.
The son goes by the name Zain Jaafar and he is a
product of the digital generation, his father says, and outdoes him in that
form of photography.
On Friday, October 10, Ashtiyeh was notified about a
joint olive harvest by Israeli peace activists and Palestinian farmers in the
village of Beita. The organizers told him that the event had been coordinated
with the army. Ashtiyeh drove to the site; things were quiet when he arrived.
The soldiers had ordered the harvesters not to cross a certain line, and they
were obeying.
Ashtiyeh parked his car at a spot that he thought was
secure, pointing toward the village so that he could make a quick getaway, if
needed. He then proceeded on foot toward the solidarity harvesters. He left the
keys with some Palestinians who were picking olives not far away, so that they
could move it in the event that he would not be able to approach.
Suddenly he heard shouts from the direction of some
hills located about 800 meters away, he recalls. In short order dozens of
masked settlers descended upon the harvesters and attacked them with clubs and
stones. A white Palestinian Jeep was torched by the attackers.
In the meantime, other settlers appeared on the scene;
they bypassed one group of harvesters and approached the place where Ashtiyeh
was standing, photographing the burning vehicle. They set upon the harvesters
and also attacked him. He decided to make a run for his car, but the settlers
pelted him with stones and tried to block his way.
Ashtiyeh decided to forgo his car – it was too
dangerous to extricate it, and "I knew that if I went any closer they
would kill me." Running toward the valley, wounded by the stones, he
stumbled and fell, injuring himself further.
He shows us a satellite image of the area in which the
attack took place. He was by himself – after the Palestinian harvesters had
fled every which way. He managed to get up and went on running, until a
Palestinian ambulance collected him.
He wanted the Palestinians with whom he had left the
keys to move his car but they had run off, so he asked the ambulance driver to
bring him closer. Trying to approach on foot, he realized that the vehicle had
already been destroyed. Meanwhile, some settlers reappeared and tried to attack
him. He beat a retreat to the ambulance and, turning his head, he saw his car
going up in flames. He says he was overcome by hopelessness and frustration:
"It was one of the worst moments ever: You see how your property is being
destroyed and you are helpless to do anything about it. Your car is burning up
and there is nothing you can do."
Fortunately, and for the first time, he hadn't left
his laptop in the car. Two camera lenses, some vests, gas masks and helmets
were lost in the blaze.
Ashtiyeh was treated for his wounds in hospital and
discharged, but his back has been hurting ever. AFP suggested that he take
leave, which he did.
About two and a half weeks after the incident in Beita in which he was wounded and his car destroyed, however, the army killed three Palestinians in a cave near Jenin, claiming they were on the way to perpetrate a terror attack. He could no longer restrain himself and drove in a rented car to photograph the scene.
"I was careful. I only photographed the cave and went home," he says now. "I'm trying to avoid the dangers now, but I'll go back to them. They are my life."
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