The West Bank version of the adage "Give a man a fish …" appears to have been remodelled along far more sinister lines of late. Instead, the prevalent attitude is to not only snatch the lion's share for the benefit of the settlers, but also to kick the Palestinians while they're down on their knees scrabbling to glean whatever morsels they can from what's left.

The olive harvest is in full swing at the moment; so too are the settlers' clubs and the soldiers' batons, as they do their level best to impede the farmers' attempts to harvest their meagre crops the length and breadth of the Occupied Territories. I went to the tiny hamlet of Izzmut this week, unhappily situated alongside the settlement of Elon Moreh, from whose borders emanate almost daily attacks by settlers hell bent on disrupting the proceedings.

"They come to attack us all the time," a landowner named Saed told me. "The other day they beat an old man who was working with his wife, resulting in his hand being broken. We have 200 olive trees on the other side of their settlement, yet we can't go near them; if we do, both the settlers and soldiers shoot at us, so we don't even try to approach any more."

He described how the situation has worsened with every passing year, and held little hope for the future of his village. "There is nothing to discuss with the settlers," he explained flatly, "since they want us out of here, full stop." He spoke of the frustration felt by the villagers and their children, whose safety was entirely at the mercy of largely-uncaring Israeli troops. "If the army do come when we call for help, they always come too late," he said; the attackers are never brought to justice, leaving the locals little option but to defend themselves as best they can "with sticks and stones".

A conservative estimate by the IDF put at 20 the number of violent clashes between settlers and farmers during the latest harvest. While the true number is reported to be far higher, one settler I met on the road to Nablus claimed that most settlers have nothing but love for their fellow man – be they Jews, Palestinians or anyone else.

"In Karnei Shomron [where I live], we have excellent relations with our Palestinian neighbours," he assured me, blaming all settler violence on a handful of extremists. He told me that, for his part, he got on famously with his Palestinian employees, though he was quick to assert that were any West Bank land to be handed over to the Palestinian Authority, "all of Israel would be in danger".

He defended his decision to live in such a contentious area by pointing to the high level of schooling his children received, and the "lack of drug problems" that apparently dog Israeli cities on the right side of the Green Line. I put it to him that his self-centred desire to give his children the best education meant effectively destroying the Palestinian society all around his settlement, thanks to the crippling network of checkpoints, Israeli-only roads and army bases that each settler community necessitated. He replied simply, and obliquely, that security measures were essential to prevent terror attacks on Jews, believing "the hate between Israelis and Arabs will never end".

Driving towards Nablus, it was clear that the measures taken by the army just to protect a handful of settlements will ensure that Palestinian resentment towards Israel continues unabated for years to come. Approaching the Huwara checkpoint, hundreds of Palestinians were crushed like battery hens into metal pens, as indifferent-looking soldiers let them through the bottleneck turnstiles at a snail's pace. Nablus, one of the economic hubs of the West Bank, has been effectively sealed off from the rest of the region, thanks to the "necklace of settlements draped around it", according to Care International's policy adviser, with whom I was travelling.

The story was no different for the scores of smaller towns we passed during our journey, including Izzmut itself, which is almost entirely encircled by settler-only roads, with earth mounds and metal gates barring Palestinians from driving up even their own dirt tracks. Compounding the ignominy of having been corralled into such prison-like surroundings, the abuse suffered during the utterly benign and inoffensive act of harvesting their olives only rubs salt into the locals' wounds.

In the circumstances, it is amazing that fewer Palestinians take up arms to resist the incessant assaults on them and their property. Bereft of adequate protection by the the IDF – the only security force allowed to operate in the area – and unable to fend off the wave after wave of settler attacks, that more Palestinians don't take the law into their own hands is down simply to good fortune as far as ordinary Israelis are concerned.

The settlers aren't stupid; they know that their relentless provocation will eventually push the Palestinians too far, and that once a retaliatory attack occurs, it will give the army carte blanche to clamp down even harder on the Palestinians, and turn even more of a blind eye to the expansion of Israeli settlements. In the meantime, on the other side of Elon Moreh, the olive branches sag under the weight of their unpicked fruit, and the longer their owners are prevented from gathering in their crops, the further recede any chances of peaceful resolution to a never-ending war.