Twice on Sunday, illegal Israeli settlers burned Palestinian-owned farmlands, first near Beita town, in the northern West Bank, according to a local official.
The mayor of Beita, Fuad Ma’ali, told the Palestinian WAFA News Agency that several Israeli colonial settlers set fire to hundreds of dunams of agricultural lands, causing damage to crops.
Some time later, another group of extremist Israeli settlers set fire to hundreds of Palestinian-owned olive trees, in the nearby villages of Burin to the southwest of Nablus, and Madama to the south, a local source said.
Local official monitoring Israel’s illegal settlement activities, Ghassan Daghlas, told WAFA that colonists from the nearby illegal Yitzhar colony, burned hundreds of olive trees, which local Palestinian farmers rely on to make a living.
These attacks by illegal settlers, on Palestinian farmlands, cause hardship for the farmers, in apparent attempts to force the existing population off their land, to allow for nearby illegal settlement expansion.
According to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Occupying Power [Israel] is forbidden from transferring parts of its own civilian population [settlers] onto the territory which it occupies [Palestine].
