Soaring settlers’ violence has raised concerns among activists of a concerted campaign against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank a report by the UK-based newspaper The Independent has found.
This year’s harvest – which started in October – has seen a surge in attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian olive farms with dozens of incidents reportedly recorded by Israeli authorities and documented by an Israeli rights group.
During this year’s olive harvest the Israeli settlers came four times for a Palestinian farmer’s trees: first with chemical plant killer then armed with shears and saws and finally wielding shovels.
They destroyed more than 100 trees located on land in the occupied West Bank that Sulaiman al-Jaafreh’s family has farmed for over a century. Some of the trees were completely uprooted and so the family hurriedly planted more fearing that the settlers would seize the land and claim it was unoccupied.
“These attacks are unprecedented this year in terms of the frequency and the level of violence” Sulaiman tells The Independent in desperation.
“They came in the middle of the night sometimes with dogs.”
Yet instead of trying to prevent the violence activists say Israel is using it as a “tool” to drive Palestinians from farming and pasture lands in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli authorities strongly deny this and the military told The Independent it is “committed to the well-being of all residents in the area and acts to prevent violence within its area of responsibility.”
Nonetheless the recent violence has been so serious that the Israeli security forces themselves sounded the alarm last month reportedly telling Army Radio that there has been a 60 per cent rise in violent attacks by extremist settlers in comparison to 2020 which was already a bad year.
Data compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) shows that since the start of the olive harvest settlers have damaged or stolen the harvest from over 2000 trees.
