Settlers Cut Down 180 Olive Trees in Qusra, Fayyad Mulls Harvest Security Teams

On early Thursday morning, a group of Israeli settlers cut down a large grove of olive trees in the village of Qusra in the northern West Bank, near Nablus.

(PNN Archive)

Ghassan Douglass, the PA official in charge of filing settler attacks, told Palestinian official news wire Wafa that the number of trees cut down exceeded 180.

The mass destruction of trees comes just two weeks after a violent September 23 confrontation between settlers, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian villagers, which left 35-year-old Essam Kamal Badran dead. In violation of its own open-fire codes, the Israeli army used live ammunition to protect settlers.

Many trees were also burned in the area, which belongs to three Palestinians: Ghassan Tawfiq Hassan, Fathullah Abu Raydeh, and Abdulmajeed Hassan.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad announced a plan to include members of the Palestinian security forces in a “voluntary campaign” to protect the olive trees during the harvest season, which begins in October.

Fayyad explained, “We undertake these efforts to protect the harvest from the practices of the occupation government and the continued attacks of settlers on our farms and [olive] groves, whose goal is to terrorize our people and steal their livelihoods.”

Settlers cut down, burned, or otherwise destroyed 4200 olive trees during the past year, with most of the attacks coming in the past two months in the Salfit, Qalqiliya, and Ramallah districts of the central West Bank.

PNN - Palestine News Network