The culture of destruction thrives - this week in Palestine

Hebron

As a further move to render the ancient city of Hebron void, a group of extremist settlers opened a new settlers-only road in the old city on the 9th November. Reports from the Palestinian Information Centre indicate that the group attacked two Palestinian families, including one worker employed in building Israeli settlements.

Al-Walajeh

Residents of al-Walajeh, northwest of Bethlehem, witnessed what appeared to be a near-fatal setback when the Israeli High Court of Justice ordered a 45-day grace period in which the Israeli army may continue building the wall that will completely encircle the village.

Seen through the broken window of one family's future home, the village of al-Walajeh may soon be surrounded on all sides by the Israeli wall.

The court ruling, delivered on Monday, effectively halfs the current land area of the already winnowed village. Al-Walajeh has lost 13,000 of its original 17,000 dunums of land since 1948, or about 75% (a dunum is about a quarter of an acre). Once the wall is complete, a development many say they can expect within the mandated 45 days, villagers will be cut off from another 1,800 dunums.

Officially, the 45-day period is for the Israeli army to report back with the security reasons behind the wall’s proposed route. But al-Walajeh residents say those reasons don’t exist and must be fabricated as their village shrinks.

“The court was Israeli, the judges were Israeli, the people confiscating the land are Israeli,” said Saleh Halmi Khalifa, head of the village council. “So the court just gave the army 45 days to confiscate more and more land.”

Khalifa called the decision “purely political” and said if the wall wasn’t finished surrounding al-Walajeh in 45 days, the court might grant another two or three months. He rejected the Israeli security rationale, citing the lawyer representing the villagers, who claimed via an Israeli security expert that Israelis near al-Walajeh might actually be less safe with the wall on its proposed grounds. But with the apparent rebuke of the lawyer, Ghayat Nasir, the wall is going up regardless.

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Settlers target Palestinian olive trees

Dr Cesar Chelala /New York

During the last few years, Palestinian olive trees - a universal symbol of life and peace- have been systematically destroyed by Israeli settlers. “It has reached a crescendo. What might look like ad hoc violence is actually a tool the settlers are using to push back Palestinian farmers from their own land,” stated a spokeswoman for Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation monitoring incidents in the West Bank.

The tree and its oil have a special significance throughout the Middle East. It is an essential aspect of Palestinian culture, heritage and identity, and has been mentioned in the Bible, the Qur’an, and the Torah. Many families depend on the olive trees for their livelihood.

Olive oil is a key product of the Palestinian national economy, and olive production is the main product in terms of total agricultural production, making up 25% of the total agricultural production in the West Bank. Palestinians plant around 10,000 new olive trees in the West Bank every year. Most of the new plants are from the oil-producing variety. Olive oil is the second major export item in Palestine.

For the last forty years, over a million of olive trees and hundreds of thousands of fruit trees have been destroyed in Palestinian lands. The Israel Defence Forces have been accused of uprooting olive trees to facilitate the building of settlements, expand roads and build infrastructure.

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