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.
