ISRAELI SETTLERS UPROOT OLIVE TREES IN OCCUPIED WEST BANK

Ramallah, 23 Jumadil Akhir 1435/23 April 2014 (MINA) – A group of Israeli settlers have uprooted more than 100 olive trees in the occupied West Bank, Press TV reports.

The settlers destroyed the trees belonging to Palestinian farmers in the village of Ras Karkar, northwest of the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday.

The olive harvest is the main annual source of income for the villagers and they say the frequent settler assaults on their property have affected the livelihood of farmers.

“The olives and oil we make from these trees are our only source of income. We live off this land. The settlers contaminate our water. They prohibit us from reaching the springs, and they cut down our tress,” Ali Azmi Samhan, a Palestinian farmer, told Press TV as quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA).

Villagers say the settlers returned to Ras Karkar on Monday and attacked Palestinian farmers who were attempting to replace the destroyed trees.

On January 1, Tadamun Foundation for Human Rights, an NGO, said in an annual report that an estimated 8,000 trees, some of them hundreds of years old, had been damaged and destroyed altogether by the Israelis.

“Settlers’ attacks include uprooting, burning and cutting down olive trees… Olive groves were also flooded by wastewater from the settlements,” said the rights group.

“We have been unable to count the hundreds of trees damaged in groves close to settlements due to Israeli security measures.”

Villagers living south of the West Bank city of Nablus have said that Israeli settlers used chemicals in several cases last June to burn 1,500 trees there. In the blaze that followed, more than 49 acres of prime agricultural land was also destroyed.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since 1967. (T/P012/E01)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)