Palestinian Land Annexed for Jewish Settlements

Salfit, MINA – Palestinian farmers in rural Salfit, north of the West Bank continue to experience massive attacks carried out by settlers and Israeli authorities.

Israeli authorities impose rules that are detrimental to Palestinian farmers. Their agricultural land was plundered for the sake of expanding Israeli Jewish settlements.

A Palestinian farmer named Khalil Al-Deek said the previous olive season was like a “pure feast” for Palestinians, full of excitement, joy, and pleasure. But now, the harvest season is changing to a “sad season”.

“Every olive season we are saddened by the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements, olive trees continue to decrease, even though these olive trees have been partially planted for more than decades, and some have been planted for hundreds of years,” said Al-Deek as quoted from Palestinian Information Center (Palinfo) on Monday, October 28.

“Suddenly, Jewish settlers arrived from Europe, they said that the trees were his property and took them by force. Then, they bulldozed the land and built houses on our land with the power of weapons, “he continued.

He warned Israeli bulldozers to almost never stop working and bulldoze Palestinian land around the Leshem settlement.

According to a report released by the Center for Land Research in Al-Quds, Israel has built four bypass networks for military purposes and Jewish settlements in Salfit, which caused loss of more than 4,760,000 square meters of Palestinian land.

The data shows there are about 1 billion square meters of agricultural land planted with about 12 million olive trees in Palestine, of which there are 9.5 million trees that bear fruit.

Meanwhile, there are around 40 million square meters of land planted with 5 million olive trees which are located in isolation within the apharteid walls built by Israel in the West Bank and Al-Quds. (T/Sj/P2)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)