Jerusalem24 – Across the occupied West Bank, settler attacks have been on the rise in 2021. A fact that Israel’s own military and Shin Bet acknowledged in a report published early in October and reported on by Ha’aretz. Settler attacks only increased in recent weeks as Olive Harvest has begun.
Israeli settlers from Yitzahar in the northern part of the West Bank have attacked Palestinian farmers tending to their olive trees, and even the Israeli military clashed with Palestinian volunteers who wanted to help farmers in their harvest.
Israeli settlers wrote racist slogans and uprooted hundreds of olive trees in the northern West Bank.
Ghassan Daghlas, who is in charge of the settlement file in the northern West Bank reported that settlers uprooted hundreds of olive trees from the lands of Awarta, southeast of the city of Nablus in the northern occupied West Bank.
He added that settlers have burned 120 olive trees and cut down 130 other trees in the town of Burin east of Nablus since the beginning of the current season. In separate reports, they uprooted 900 other seedlings in the town of Sebastia, northwest of Nablus.
Israeli and Palestinian estimates indicate that there are about 650,000 settlers in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, who live in 164 settlements and 124 outposts.
In this episode of Wake Up Palestine, Sa’ad Ziyadeh, from the Union of Agricultural Workers speaks about the different challenges that Palestinian farmers face during the Olive Harvest, Israeli policies and settler attacks.
