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Ramallah, OThe occupied West Bank– In the past week, Israeli settlers have launched violent attacks on Palestinian villages and olive tree-harvesting residents every day.
These attacks include beatings of farmers and destroying trees. These attacks occurred on October 12 before the official start of the olive harvest in the occupied West Bank, but have intensified in the past week.
According to local observers, the most attacked areas are the occupied West Bank in the north, around the city of Nablus and villages south of Salfit.
Gassan Dagras, who monitors the violence of settlers in the northern West Bank of the Jordan River, told Al Jazeera that 58 attacks have been recorded since the start of the season, of which 9 occurred in the village of Brin, south of Nablus. The attack.
“It is clear that there has been an increase in attacks. We have entered 30% of the olive harvest season and we have suffered 58 attacks in the north. [of the West Bank],” Dagras said, describing the attacks as “planned rather than spontaneous.”
Settler attacks are a frequent occurrence in Palestinian villages, almost every day, but during the olive harvest season (which lasts until November), the number of attacks increases because settlers target families working on their land.
On October 12, settlers uprooted 900 olive trees and apricot saplings in the village of Sebastia, north of Nablus, and stole olive crops, and at the same time uprooted 70 olive trees in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron .
On October 13, settlers cut down dozens of olive trees and sprayed chemicals on them in Awarta, east of Nablus, destroying about 70 olive and fruit trees in al-Tuwani, south of Hebron And vegetable trees, where tires were chopped off, and cars and walls were damaged. Marda village near Salfit.
A Palestinian man inspects olive trees felled by Israelis near Tubas in the occupied West Bank [File: Raneen Sawafta/Reuters]“The attack started very early”
On October 14, settlers fell more than 80 olive trees in the village of al-Mughayyer, north of Ramallah. The next day, the settlers attacked the Hammoudeh family in Yasuf village near Salfit with stones, injuring four people.
On October 16, the settlers attacked the village of Yasuf and residents of Burin near Nablus for the second day in a row, and used their truncheons to light the olive grove, injuring at least 12 Palestinians.
Dagras said that although in previous years “the attack will begin a week after the olive harvest began,” this year “the attack started early”, which forced the Palestinians to take care of their trees faster than expected.
Since the end of August 2021, settlers have injured at least 22 Palestinians and destroyed at least 1,800 Palestinian-owned trees, including 900 Sebastia (Nablus) trees and 650 Jamma’in (Nablus) and al-Taybe (Hebron).
Dagras pointed out that in addition to burning and felling trees, the attacks also included stealing olive crops, chasing farmers and driving them out of their land, and threatening them and flooding part of their land with sewage.
“The settlers and the army are chasing our livelihood, income, bread and food,” Dagras said.
The Palestinians say that Israeli settlers are often protected by the military and carry weapons many times, as human rights groups have documented.Sometimes the settlers and the army work together.
The strategic construction of settlements on the hilltops of the West Bank made it easy for settlers to descend into Palestinian villages and the land below them.In addition, settlers enjoy the Call “Institutional and systematic impunity”, which allows them to continue their attacks.
The United Nations described these attacks as “ideologically motivated, mainly to occupy the land, but also to intimidate and intimidate the Palestinians.”
According to the latest update from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), settlers carried out 20 attacks between September 21 and October 4—a number that increased significantly as the olive harvest began.
From September 7th to 20th, 11 attacks, although six Recorded between August 24 and September 6.
The largest recent attack occurred on September 28. A large group of masked settlers came to the village of al-Mufagara in southern Hebron and attacked residents with stones, injuring 29 Palestinians, including a three-year-old boy with a skull fracture and hospitalization.
According to OCHA, the settlers also damaged 10 houses, 14 cars, several solar panels and water tanks, and killed 5 sheep.
in a statement On October 12, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stated that its data showed that more than 9,300 trees were destroyed in the West Bank from August 2021 to 2021, calling for the protection of Palestinians. Farmers.
The ICRC also stated that it “observed a seasonal peak in violence against Palestinian farmers and their property by Israeli settlers living in certain settlements and outposts in the West Bank before and during the olive harvest season. itself”.
Els Debuf, head of the ICRC mission in Jerusalem, said: “Farmers also suffer from harassment and violence aimed at preventing a good harvest, let alone destroying agricultural equipment, uprooting and burning olive trees. .”
(Al Jazeera)‘Not an army’
Mohammad al-Khatib is the activist and founder of Faz’a, a union of volunteers established last year to protect and assist Palestinian farmers. There are now at least 500 volunteers gathered together.
The alliance and other activities, Trying to protect the Palestinians working in their field, let the volunteer group help and appear on this land, hoping to stop the settlers.
Khatib was attacked and arrested in villages near Nablus and Salfit a few days ago.
“We are not an army or a security team. We work under difficult security conditions and you cannot use any means of protection,” Khatib told Al Jazeera.
“For example, we are not allowed to use pepper spray or any tools for self-defense, while the settlers attack us with weapons under the protection of the army, using knives, sticks, pepper spray, and throwing stones at us,” Khatib continued.
He described the settlers as “terrorists supported by the state and the army”, “with the purpose of preventing Palestinians from remaining on their land and eventually displacing them.”
Khatib said that he believes that settler attacks “have systematically increased every year.”
Expansion of settlements
Nafez Hammoudeh and his family from Yasuf village near Salfit were attacked for two consecutive days and were unable to harvest their olives.
“Friday is the settlers and Saturday is the army,” Hammoud said.
He told Al Jazeera on Friday that the settlers stoned his relatives on the head, as well as her son and her husband. They also stole sacks, ladders and mobile phones full of olives. On Saturday, the army and the settlers came to attack the Palestinians while trying to drive them out of the land.
Hammoud said: “Before we were kicked out, we only stayed for an hour in two days.” “They didn’t give us any reason-we told them that we were the owners of the land, but to no avail. It was just a kind of A display of power.”
In the video shared On social media, Hammoud’s relatives and other housewives said that settlers beat them with stones, sprayed pepper spray on their faces, and stole their olive crops, mobile phones and ID cards.
By 2021, OCHA record 101 settler attacks caused Palestinian casualties, and 264 attacks caused property damage. This number has exceeded last year, when there were 274 property attacks and 84 casualties.
Dagras attributed the increase in settler attacks to the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the occupation of Palestinian villages.
For example, he said that in the past, the settlement of Izar, south of Nablus, faced the village of Brin. The settlement has now expanded to the nearby villages of Madama, Urif, Einabus and Huwara.
He said that in the same way, the settlement of Itamar was once opposed to the village of Awarta south of Nablus, but now it has expanded to Beit Furik and Aqraba.
“In the past, we focused on villages near settlements, but now the entire West Bank is near settlements,” Dagras said, explaining that “the more settlements grow, the more threats the land is.”
He said that although he saw the Palestinian people “persist in” “confrontation [the army and settlers] And stay on their land”, the settler’s attack is “a kind of pressure”.
“The number of settlers will only increase, and this terrorism will only increase. One day the people will explode and the world will take responsibility,” Dagras said.
“If the Palestinian people lose hope, they will stand up. There is no force in the world that can stop them.”
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