SOLDIERS UPROOT OLIVE TREES NEAR BETHLEHEM
Bethlehem, 5 Safar 1435/9 Desember 2013 (MINA) – Local sources report that Israeli military occupation bulldozers have uprooted more than 40 olive trees.
They claimed that it was done to connect settler road #60 with the Cremisan Monastery in Beit Jala town, west of Bethlehem, and other areas.
Orchard owner Hisham Abu Ali stated that the army previously uprooted 15 trees in his orchard in order to expand the road, and came back today to uproot 40 more olive trees, the Palestinian News & Agency (WAFA) has reported.
Road construction and expansion is leading to massive illegal confiscation of Palestinian lands in occupied East Jerusalem, including Beit Safafa town and Bethlehem. Israel also intends to build “National Gardens” in the area.
Furthermore, soldiers have completely isolated 12 Palestinian villages near Yatta town, south of the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
Coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements in Yatta town said that the soldiers placed a number of concrete blocks there, sealing the main road linking Yatta with its eastern communities.
Soldiers also declared the area a closed military zone, stopped and searched dozens of residents and vehicles, forcing them back.
In the end of November, a group of Israeli settlers also invaded the village of Bruqin, near Salfit in the northern West Bank, early Monday morning, and uprooted a grove of 15 olive trees.
This follows a similar uprooting of over 100 trees the week before in Yatta village.
Internasional Middle Eaat Media Center (IMEMC) reported, the Israeli military and settlers have destroyed close to one million Palestinian olive trees since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began, according to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem.
These trees represent the main source of livelihood for thousands of Palestinian families.
According to the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, the trees uprooted by the settlers on Monday belong to the Sheikh Omar family, and their destruction will cause the family significant economic hardship.
The settlers who carried out the attack entered village land from the illegal outpost colony of Brukhin, constructed on illegally seized village land.
Many of the previous incidents of the destruction of olive trees by Israeli settlers that have been reported to the Israeli occupying authorities in the West Bank have gone uninvestigated by the Israeli military.
Bruqin is a Palestinian town located 13 kilometers west of Salfit in the Salfit Governorate of the northern West Bank and adjacent to the Israeli settlement of Brukhin. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population of 3,236 in 2007. Bruqin used to be on a camel-trading route. There is evidence of Roman rule in the city due to the presence of three ancient pools and a tomb.
The main families of the town are Barakat, Sabra and Samara.
The place appeared in 1596 Ottoman tax registers as Bruqin, being in the Nahiya of Jabal Qubal of the Liwa of Nablus. It had a population of 16 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid taxes on wheat, barley, summercrops, olives, and goats or beehives, and a press for olives or grapes.
Around 70% of working-age males were employed in Israel as laborers prior to the Second Intifada. Today, the unemployment rate is 80%. There is agricultural work it is seasonal. Around 150 out of 500 families are dependent on aid, from the Red Cross or the Social Affairs Ministry of the Palestinian National Authority. There are two mosques, a youth club and a gym in the town. There are also three schools in the town, including an all-girls school for grades 1 to 12, a boys primary and secondary school and a boys high school. For hospital care, residents travel to Ramallah, but for emergency treatment they go to nearby Salfit.(T/P014/P04).
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
