By Ali Salam
Imemc, Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine: Illegal Israeli settlers, on Saturday, cut 40 olive trees belonging to Palestinians in al-Mughayyir village near Ramallah, local sources said.
Sources told Palestinian WAFA News Agency that the cut trees were the property of two Palestinian villagers from al-Mughayyir, in the central occupied West Bank.
Israeli soldiers reportedly prevented the two villagers from entering their farm land to inspect the damage to their crops.
Earlier on Thursday, illegal settlers in the city of Bethlehem, reportedly uprooted hundreds of newly-planted grapevines, south of the city.
Head of the Palestinian Office for Fighting Israeli Settlements and Israel’s Apartheid wall in Bethlehem, Hassan Breega, told media outlets that Israeli settlers from the nearby colonial illegal Israeli settlement of Ephrat, uprooted around 450 newly-planted grapevines, owned by local resident, Ibrahim Sobaih.
Breega further noted that local farmer, Sobaih, has frequently been exposed to Israeli settlers’ attacks, with Israeli troops guarding the illegal settlers.
Recently, Israeli troops, along with armed Israeli colonial settlers, have reportedly attacked a number of Palestinian-owned farm lands in the Alkhudor town, on the outskirts of the Bethlehem district.
The attacks included uprooting trees and grapevines, olive trees, as well as erecting mobile homes around the district of Bethlehem.
Israeli leaders have recently hinted at the possibility of annexing the entire Palestinian West Bank to the state of Israel.
Such a declaration comes as Israel has surrounded the West Bank with an Apartheid Wall as well as dozens of illegal colonial settlements, accommodating hundreds of thousands of Israelis.
Israeli settlement activities on Palestinian lands in the West Bank, are illegal under international law and several relevant United Nations’ resolutions, including 242 of the UN’s Security Council for 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
[Archive Photo: Illegal Israeli settlers confront Palestinian youth against illegal settlements in Hebron on 10 February 2019. Photographer: Mamoun Wazwa/-AA]