Illegal paramilitary Israeli colonizers cut down hundreds of Palestinian olive trees, Sunday, in the agricultural lands of Turmus Ayya, northeast of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank’s central region.
Local residents said a group of colonizers from the colonial outpost “Adi Ad,” built illegally on the town’s lands, invaded the area after midnight, and destroyed nearly 400 olive trees in the fertile plain east of the community. The groves belong to families who have endured repeated attacks over the past years.
Only days earlier, the same colonizer groups set fire to a Palestinian home and a vehicle in the town, in what residents described as a deliberate effort to push families off their land.
|Israeli Colonizers Escalate Attacks Across West Bank|
The Wall & Colonization Resistance Commission reported 1,819 attacks by Israeli soldiers and illegal paramilitary colonizers across the occupied West Bank during March.
The Commission documented 1,322 army attacks and 497 colonizer attacks, noting that the pattern reflects a coordinated strategy to expand colonial control over Palestinian land.
|Israeli Authorities Advance New Colonial Plan in Jerusalem|
According to the Commission, the highest number of attacks occurred in Hebron (321), followed by Nablus (315), Ramallah and al‑Bireh (292), and Jerusalem (203)—a distribution it says demonstrates systematic targeting of Palestinian communities, farmland, and property.
Farmers in Turmus Ayya said the destruction of hundreds of olive trees—many of them decades old—inflicts deep economic and cultural harm, as olive cultivation remains central to the town’s livelihood and heritage.
All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention, in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International Law.
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and acts of terror against civilian populations.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”.
Articles 53 and 147, prohibit the destruction of civilian property and classify pillage as a war crime.
