TULKARM, Israeli settlers today razed agricultural land and uprooted trees in Shufa village, southeast of the northern West Bank city of Tulkarm, according to an activist.
Tahseen Hamed, a local activist, said that a group of farmers headed to their agricultural land this morning, and once they reached, they were surprised to find out that a kilometer-long tract of their farmland was leveled and over 40 olive trees were uprooted to make room for the construction of a settler-only road leading to the colonial settlement of Avni Hefetz.
The damaged olive groves belong to the Hamed family.
Settler violence against Palestinians and their property is routine in the West Bank and is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities.
Settlers‘ violence includes property and mosque arsons, stone-throwing, uprooting of crops and olive trees, attacks on vulnerable homes, among others.
There are over 700,000 Israeli settlers living in colonial settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The number of settlers has almost tripled since the Oslo Accords of 1993, when settlers’ number estimated 252,000. Illegal colonial settlements have leapt from 144 to 515 in that time.
Israel’s nation-state law that passed last July stated that building and strengthening settlements as a “national interest.”
Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency