Colonists target Palestinian olive farmers
Crops have long been vandalised without any effort by regime to stop it
Palestinian farmer Mahmoud Abu Shinar surveys two rows of severed olive trees — something he says has become a sadly familiar sight. He didn’t see who took a chainsaw to them at night, but he blames residents of an Israeli colony a few hundred metres away.
“We came on Sunday and were shocked that all these trees were cut down,” Abu Shinar said. “I called the landowner. They came and the (Israeli occupation) army came too. But of course it was useless.”
Olives are perhaps the most well-known and abundant Palestinian product, with trees lining valleys and terraced hillsides throughout the occupied West Bank. In many places, farmers say they face intimidation and violence from nearby colonists and call in support from foreign and Israeli supporters, including Jewish rabbis, to protect them and their crops.
Some of the incidents are seen as attempts at revenge following Palestinian attacks on Israelis, even if the farmers targeted were not involved.
In other cases, say rights groups, there is little motivation other than just to destroy Palestinian property. More than 7,000 Palestinian-owned trees have been vandalised so far this year, according to the United Nations.
In the whole of 2017, it was less than 6,000, the year before only 1,600.
Abu Shinar said that in recent weeks around 200 trees had been destroyed in fields he works on near Ramallah in the central West Bank, costing thousands of dollars in lost earnings. “They want the land,” he said, of the colonists. “Who else would come and commit a crime like this?”
Retired British woman Caroline, who declined to give her full name, said she had been coming each year for a decade to work with Palestinian communities close to “particularly difficult colonies”. This year, she said, she went with a female farmer to her land near a colony, but the occupation army blocked their path. “When she eventually got into the groves, 100 of her trees had been chainsawed down by colonists,” she said.