Settlers Burn About 55 Olive Trees in Abu Dis Town

Jerusalem - Afaq News - Today, settlers burned about 55 olive trees, over 40 years old, on the land of citizen Ibrahim Ismail Abu Hilal in the Abu Dis wilderness area, southeast of Jerusalem, which spans approximately 14 dunams, while he was with his wife, children, and grandchildren picking olives from their land.

The settlers, who came from one of the colonial outposts near the area, attacked the family members and attempted to assault them, forcing them to withdraw and save themselves, before the settlers returned to the land and set fire to the olive trees, burning the harvesting tools and the olives that the family had gathered.

The lands of Abu Dis wilderness and Al-Sawahra are continuously targeted by the occupation and settlers, amid the residents' efforts to be present on their lands, cultivate, protect, and preserve them, as these assaults come in the context of escalating attempts to impose control over them and push their owners to abandon them.

The occupation authorities announced on August 27 that 370.28 dunams of Abu Dis and Arab Al-Sawahra lands were declared as "government property," in a step that is part of the procedures to complete the establishment of the "Mishmar Yehuda" settlement.

The burning of Abu Hilal's trees comes amid escalating settler attacks on farmers and their lands in the Jerusalem governorate coinciding with the olive picking season, as the Wadi Al-Rababah area in Silwan witnessed assaults and measures aimed at obstructing residents and preventing them from accessing their lands and harvesting olives, as well as seizing harvesting tools and crops.

The assaults by settlers on farmers and their lands in other areas of the Jerusalem Governorate continue, including the theft of olive fruits and attacks on farmers, at a time when these assaults coincide with the escalating colonial targeting of agricultural lands, in an attempt to impose a reality on the ground and displace their owners from it.