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Israeli settlers chop down 200 Palestinian olive trees in West Bank village

Friday, 17 August 2018 2:33 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 17 August 2018 2:36 PM ]

In this file picture, a Palestinian farmer from Qaryut village inspects olive trees that were destroyed in an overnight settler attack. (Photo by AFP)

A group of Israeli settlers have attacked an orchard in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, and chopped down hundreds of fruitful olive trees.

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official in charge of monitoring Israel's settlement expansion activities, said dozens of residents of Eli settlement broke into Wadi Ali area of al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya village, located 20 kilometers south of Nablus, early on Friday and cut down 200 trees.

Jewish extremist settlers from Yitzhar settlement torched a Palestinian bulldozer as it was traveling along a road linking Urif village to the town of Asira al-Qibliya.

Late on Thursday, Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian house, punctured and damaged dozens of vehicles in the northern West Bank city of Nablus, located approximately 49 kilometers (30 miles) north of Jerusalem al-Quds.

Daghlas said Israeli settlers damaged some 40 Palestinian vehicles by throwing rocks and empty glass bottles at them.

The developments came only a few hours after an unidentified 60-year-old Palestinian man ran over and killed an Israeli settler near Nablus.

The driver turned himself in to Palestinian officials shortly after the accident, saying that he had fled the site of the accident out of fear.

In this file picture, a Palestinian man confronts an Israeli settler, part of a group trying to prevent Palestinians from planting olive trees, near the occupied southern West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron). (Photo by AFP)

The agriculture industry, olive cultivation in particular, provides livelihood for some 80,000 Palestinian families living in the occupied West Bank.

Settlers, mostly armed, regularly attack Palestinian villages and farms and set fire to their mosques, olive groves and other properties in the West Bank under the so-called “price tag” policy.

Price tag attacks are acts of vandalism and violence against Palestinians and their property as well as Islamic holy sites by Israeli settlers.

Israel has reportedly uprooted more than 800,000 olive trees in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank in 1967. This is while much of the international community considers the settler units illegal and subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.

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