Palestinian farmers in Jalud village southeast of Nablus suffered huge losses after Jewish settlers razed on Wednesday morning a large area of the lands of the eastern slopes of the village.
The land is planted with wheat and located between the Ahyah and Esh Kodesh outposts in the village. The settlers also confiscated large quantities of soil and moved it to the mountainside to plant grapes over dozens of seized dunums.
Ghassan Daghlas an official monitoring the settlement activity in the northern West Bank said that the settlers destroyed vast areas of the wheat crop by driving their cars and bulldozers over it and letting their sheep graze in the eastern plains.
Daghlas added that eight families who own the 250 dunums area were waiting for the wheat harvest season which is considered a main source of livelihood for them.
The settlers’ sabotage in the farmers’ lands resulted in large financial losses for the farmers he pointed out.
The Jalud Council said that the settlers of the Ahyah and Esh Kodesh did not cease their destructive practices against the cultivated areas in eastern Jalud plains. The Palestinian owners of the land had obtained a decision from the Israeli Supreme Court to return to the land in 2014 after 13 years of deprival it added.
It confirmed that the farmers’ losses exceed 300000 shekels. Nevertheless the citizens collected the rest of the wheat crop and transferred it to the village so that the Israeli occupation authorities do not use the abandonment of work on the land as an excuse to refuse to grant them permits for next year’s farming season the Council said.
Two weeks ago the settlers set fire to the same area which resulted in destroying more than 50 dunums planted with wheat and the destruction of more than 200 olive trees in addition to destroying a 2-km-long electricity grid.
