Tag: Nablus

Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians farmers near Huwwara on Saturday 11th October.

More than 25 settlers from the illegal Israeli settlement of Yizhar descended upon Palestinian farmers while the farmers were undertaking their annual olive harvest. The settlers were armed with machine guns, and one fired a single shot in the air before they began to hurl rocks at the Palestinian farmers, injuring two. One of the injured, Mustafa Najah from Burin, was hit in the head and taken to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus. He is thought to have sustained eye injuries.

The attack continued for ten minutes before Israeli soldiers arrived on the scene. The soldiers, however, instead of removing the settlers from the land, started to fire into the air, insisting that the Palestinian farmers cease their harvesting and leave the lands. Farmers report that the soldiers and settlers then walked around the groves together, telling farmers to leave their own lands. The farmers were forced from their lands for over an hour, before eventually being allowed back to continue their harvest.

Settlers continued to maintain a menacing presence on the hilltop overlooking the olive groves throughout the afternoon, kept at bay only by the presence of the Israeli army, who, after their initial rampage, took on the protective duties by which they are legally bound. The farmers were also joined by Israeli and international activists, who will continue to maintain a presence with the farmers until their harvest is complete.

The farmers, however, expressed concern about the well-being of their olive trees overnight, after arriving at their lands to find more than 15 olive trees had been cut down by settlers in the preceding days. Lying in the shadow of Yizhar, the olive groves had been unattended by farmers since ploughing was done in May, as this area is considered extremely dangerous.

Settlers from Yizhar regularly terrorise the surrounding villages: burning lands; attacking houses; shooting at Palestinian villagers; and stealing livestock and farming equipment. They have destroyed more than fifty percent of the surrounding olive groves, and, according to the municipality of Huwwara, throw stones at Palestinian cars on a daily basis. “No stones, no trees, no people are safe from them.”

On Monday 6 October approximately 15 families went to their lands near Elon More settlement only to discover many of the trees have yielded little harvest and the olives had been stolen by settlers.

The village had been given 3 days from the Israeli District Co-ordination Office (DCO) where protection for farmers would be provided in the area around the settlement which is a designated ‘Area C’ despite the land belonging to the village. The gate which marks the area was due to be opened at 7am, but farmers were not permitted to pass until 7:45.

International activists accompanying farmers to the fields were barred from passing and were informed by the army that the area was a “closed military zone for internationals”. The area had been deemed a closed military zone the previous night up until 31 December. Barring access for internationals accompanying farmers is a common tactic. The area that was actually deemed a ‘closed military zone’, however, was closer to the settlement and after 2 hours internationals were able to join farmers in the fields.

During this time many farmers had begun to return from their lands after discovering very few olives on the trees. Salim farmer, Abdul Hardi Jabur has 6 dunams of land near the settlement. He returned to the village after 1 hour with a total of approximately 100 olives. Last year he was able to harvest 16, 60kg sacks of olives from the same area. Several other farmers experienced similar problems. Abdul said “they have stolen (the settlers) our olives and brought in workers from outside the settlement to do it”.

This is not an isolated problem in the Nablus region or across the West Bank. During last years harvest both Tell and Sarra also experienced problems with settlers stealing the olive crop and many villages including Salim have suffered from settlers burning large areas of land containing olive trees. This year the problem has been exacerbated with many farmers not being permitted access to their lands to enable them to tend to trees throughout the year, which is vital to ensure a maximum crop yield during the harvest. Just 4 years ago the village planted 1,000 new trees, however, due to the limited access to the land just 100 have survived. There were also obvious signs of damage to a number of the trees where branches had been cut by electric chainsaws. The farmers believe that this year will see them harvest just 20% of the yield harvested in the previous year.

While the Israeli Government has publicly declared that settlement expansion has ceased, the tactic employed by settlers of damaging trees, land and theft of crops renders the farmland useless. This combined with the use, by the Israeli army, of the illegal ‘permit’ system denying access to Palestinians to their land, effectively annexes it to the settlements, a story repeated across the West Bank.

The villages of Qusin; Deir Sharaf; Burin; Kufr Qalil; and Awarta in the Nablus district were able to harvest their olives without incident on Monday 6th October; whilst a number of villages in the Salfit region experienced difficulties and harrassment from Israeli soldiers both trying to access their lands, and whilst harvesting.

Israeli forces marked the beginning of the olive harvest season by forcing Palestinian farmers from their lands in Tell.

After the recent rain in Palestine, the 2008 Olive Harvest Campaign was launched today, ten days earlier than planned. For more information on the campaign please click here

On Sunday 5th October, approximately twenty farmers attempted to harvest olives from their lands adjacent to the notoriously violent Israeli settlement of Harvat Gilad. Whilst the Palestinian olive harvest does not officially begin until 10th October, farmers from Tell, a village near Nablus, felt compelled to start harvesting their olives early, due to the fact that settlers stole all olives from nearby lands the previous year.

Farmers were able to harvest for only two hours, under the watchful eye of Gilad’s “hilltop youth”, before Israeli police arrived, questioning farmers and ordering them to cease their harvesting and leave their lands immediately. Aware of the illegality of this instruction, international activists accompanying the farmers called the Nablus District Co-ordination Office (DCO), to inform the office of the breach in law. After explaining the situation twice to the officer in the DCO, the officer refused to take any action by saying “I don’t understand and I don’t care”, before hanging up.

Israeli soldiers then arrived to the olive groves, and also ordered the farmers and internationals to leave, advising that they had implemented a “closed military zone” – a territorial closure of a specific area in response to a “threat of terror”. The use of a “closed military zone” in such a situation, where there was no apparent threat to the security of settlers or Israeli forces, constitutes a clear violation of the laws governing its implementation. To force farmers to abandon their harvest also violates the laws governing the use of a “closed military zone”, as the High Court ruling from 2006 obliges Israeli forces to allow Palestinian farmers the opportunity to complete all necessary agricultural work on their land “up to the last olive”.

The Israeli soldiers refused to show the maps that demarcated the “closed military zone” (a legal requirement of its implementation) until all farmers and activists had evacuated the area. Once on the nearby road, the unit commander produced a map with a red circle marked sloppily around the whole area – a further violation of the Israeli law that states that the area subject to closure must not exceed the minimal amount of territory that is necessary to provide effective protection to the Israeli residents.

A map of the “closed military zone” procured from the Nablus DCO by an Israeli human rights activist, however, showed the closure to be only
a small area nearby to the settlement, although farmers and activists were evicted from lands more than 500 metres from Harvat Gilad. Throughout the eviction process, Israeli soldiers referred to dates that the DCO had issued in which to offer protection to the farmers as times in which the farmers would be “allowed” to harvest on their lands. This is a reflection of the increasing trend amongst the Israeli forces to transform their legal obligation to protect Palestinian farmers into a permit system – thereby creating a practice whereby Palestinians are systematically denied free access to their lands.

There has been a noticeable surge in attacks by Israeli settlers throughout the West Bank over the past few months, with a large percentage of those attacks coming from the illegal settlements in the Nablus region. Residents of the Palestinian villages in this region have borne the brunt of the recent onslaught, with numerous assaults on people (including numerous murders); livestock; properties; and olive groves.

Burin, hedged on the south by Yitzhar settlement and on the north by Bracha, is under constant attack from settlers, who light fires; poison and shoot livestock; cut telephone and power lines; and attack houses. At least 50 percent of Burin’s olive trees have been destroyed by settler fires, which are happening with greater regularity. Ali Eid, mayor of Burin, echoes the confusion voiced by many Palestinians living in these villages. “Why they do this, we don’t know. This year women, girls, guys, they all make fire. Why? We don’t know.”

The answer, however, has become apparent. Israeli settler “activists” have recently confirmed that these attacks are not just random, but are indeed coordinated, as Palestinian villagers suspect. The attacks form the basis of the campaign known variously as “price-tag” or “mutual concern” – a coordinated effort to prevent any dismantling of illegal settlements and outposts by creating “days of chaos” so that Israeli police forces “can’t come, do the evacuation and then go,” says Itai Zer, a founder of the 20-family Havat Gilad outpost that was responsible for the fires in Sarra and Tell on 18th September – a response to the removal of the outpost Yad Yair, west of Ramallah.

Recommended methods reportedly include arson and road-blocking to force troops to abandon the evacuation and deal with the protesters’ actions, as well as demonstratively entering Palestinian villages – a tactic used repeatedly in the village of Asira al Qibliya. Activist Daniella Weiss and regional settler leader Yitzhak Shadmi in a media interview both drew the line at attacking Palestinians or their property, but said they wouldn’t dissuade others who advocate more extreme action.

These attacks are not just limited to the area where an evacuation is happening, but, like the response to the Yad Yair outpost, are encouraged to occur throughout the West Bank, so that any attempted evacuation, no matter how small, is responded to with widespread attacks on Palestinian villages.

Under international law, all Israeli settlements are illegal, but during Annapolis negotiations, Israel promised to remove just the outposts constructed since March 2001 and halt all settlement expansion. In reality, settlement expansion has continued apace, even in periods when the Israeli government publicly declared a complete halt to all settlement construction. While most settlements and outposts enjoy full support of the Israeli military, a handful of caravans and demountable buildings have been demolished in the past 10 months. This small number of demolitions, however, has sparked the campaign of reprisals primarily taking the form of attacks on Palestinians.

The campaign began in June 2008, and while attacks on Palestinians are widely under-reported, the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) indicate that reported incidents increased by 46 percent from June to July 2008, with the Israeli police recording an 11 percent spike in rioting over the past months..