It's harvest time in vineyards atop the hills of the settlement of Shilo in Samaria. But it's not Israeli settlers picking the grapes, it's evangelical Christians.
They are volunteers for the devout American evangelical group HaYovel, which brings Christians to Israel to help farmers in settlements. Many are staunch supporters of Israel, seeing a biblical connection with the Jewish people and the Holy Land.
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Judea and Samaria hold special importance to evangelicals, who see a divine hand in the modern-day return of Jews to a biblical homeland.
The founder of HaYovel, Tommy Waller, is fond of quoting a passage from the Book of Jeremiah, which reads: "Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel. … Thou shalt yet plant vines upon the mountains of Samaria" (Jeremiah 31:3-4).
But this land also lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Video: Reuters
Judea and Samaria are home to around 2.9 million Palestinians, according to a Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics 2017 census, and to more than 400,000 Jewish settlers, according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics.
For the Tennessee-born Waller, helping Israeli settlers cultivate the land means taking part in the fulfillment of a prophecy. "As a Christian, as a person who believes in the bible, it was an amazing thing to get to a place where my faith was touchable," said Waller.
"We share a commonality between Christianity and Judaism and that's our bible, our scripture," said Waller at a vineyard in Har Bracha, another settlement where his volunteers work.
In the run-up to the Sept. 17 election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has renewed his pledge to annex parts of Judea and Samaria if he wins.
It's a position that the politically powerful US evangelicals have embraced.
"Evangelicals believe Judea and Samaria is Bible land, because it is," said Mike Evans, the Texas-based founder of Friends of Zion Museum, which sits in Jerusalem.
"Do we think giving up Judea and Samaria is going to bring peace? No way," said Evans, who is a member of Trump's Faith Initiative.
The prospect of annexation has alarmed the Palestinians, who fear that Netanyahu would likely have Trump's backing.
"We are worried about losing our lands," said Izzat Qadous, a retired school teacher from the Palestinian village Irak Burin, across the way from Har Bracha.
Evangelical support for Israel goes back decades, with political lobbying, fundraising and organized tours to the Holy Land. But some see the ties growing far stronger under both Trump and Netanyahu.
Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said the evangelical base "has been wielding unprecedented and enormous influence within the United States for the sake of the "fulfillment of the prophecy," thereby giving Israel a free hand to carry out its most hard-line and destructive policies against the Palestinian people."
Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said Netanyahu began cultivating ties with evangelicals during his first stint as prime minister in the 1990s.
"The prime minister has a keen sense of trend lines in the US," said Gold.
That effort may have paid off. "Benjamin Netanyahu among the evangelicals of the world is a rock star," said Evans.
Critics, however, say Netanyahu has alienated many liberal American Jews by embracing Christian conservatives. Even in the settlements, the evangelicals are sometimes greeted with suspicion.
Some Israelis there fear that the Christians may have a missionary agenda – seeking to convert them.
Others are nervous about some evangelical readings of the scriptures in which the Jews' return to the biblical land is instrumental in bringing about the end of the world, at which point those who do not accept Jesus Christ as their savior will not be saved.
"These people are pursuing God like we're pursuing God," said Waller. "Obviously we have our own messianic belief, but those are future things, in the kingdom to come."
On the other hand, some settlers see the evangelicals as helping them out in fulfilling their own vision.
Nir Lavi, the owner of Har Bracha winery, says HaYovel's contribution to his business has been more than financial.
"We are grateful," said Lavi. "It's a totally different phase of our own journey – the Jewish people's redemption in their land."
