Ravaging 20 Olive Tree Southern Burin

Violation: ravaging 20 olive trees.

Location: al Tuffah, Southern Burin.

Perpetrators: Yizhar colonists.

Victims: several farmers.

Date: November 26, 2011.

 

Olive trees are considered the spine of Palestinian Agriculture as well as its symbolic value as a symbol of peace and struggle. Yizhar colonists, on the other hand, are considered a source of disruption and daily harassment; these colonists invent new ways to aggress Palestinians and their properties.

 

 

2011 olive picking season was different from the previous seasons due to the ways and style of the colonists’ attacks. On November 27, 2011, a group of colonists attacked an area known as Khalayel  al Tuffah nearby the colony of Yizhar. The colonists ravaged 20 olive trees using saws and axes and damaging the trees badly. The 70-year-old olives were the property of Mr. Sa’ed Qadus.

 

It must be pointed that Khalayel al Tuffah has been inaccessible for years because the Israelis consider it as part of the colony ‘security buffer zone’. The Palestinians are only allowed in during the olive picking season and only under the eyes of Israeli soldiers.

 

The colonists have all year long to manipulate the area the way they like. Colonists all around the West Bank launched an ongoing and unstoppable war against the Palestinian olive. They torched hundreds of dunums, cut, uprooted, and ravaged thousands of trees, and attacked hundreds of farmers, injuring them and sometimes even murdering them.

 

In Palestine, we are witnessing an open Israeli war against not only the living but everything else. The war against olive is supposed to hit the morale of the Palestinians who consider it a symbol of their existence. The Palestinian ‘green oil’ is being consumed by the shadow of hatred blighted by the Israeli colonization.