On Thursday, Israeli occupation forces abducted a Palestinian father and his son in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank, after illegal Israeli colonizers invaded their lands and released their livestock.
Local activist Osama Makhamra reported that several Israeli military vehicles invaded the village of Khirbet Ar-Rakeez in Masafer Yatta, following an attack by illegal paramilitary Israeli colonizers who released their livestock to graze on Palestinian land near residential shelters.
Makhamra stated that the soldiers abducted Yousef Makhamra and his son Mohammad after they attempted to remove the colonizers who had released their sheep in front of homes in the center of the community.
In a related incident, a group of colonizers released their livestock to graze in an olive orchard in Khirbet Qawawis, then forcibly expelled an elderly Palestinian man, Jibril Mousa Na’amin, preventing him from harvesting his own olive trees.
On Wednesday, illegal Israeli colonizers cut down dozens of olive trees belonging to citizens in the Nablus and Hebron governorates, in the northern and southern parts of the occupied West Bank.
Israeli colonizers also cut dozens of olive saplings and stole building equipment in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron in the southern West Bank.
Media sources quoted one of the landowners, Tariq Fakhoury, who stated that Israeli settlers stole building supplies from his under construction home, in Beit Ummar.
Fakhoury stated that the settlers cut down at least 50 olive saplings on lands belonging to his cousin, Murad Fakhoury, adding that this is the third attack by settlers against their lands.
According to the Wall & Colonization Resistance Commission, Israeli occupation forces and colonizers have carried out at least 259 documented assaults on Palestinian olive harvesters since early October.
These include 41 attacks by soldiers and 218 by colonizers, encompassing physical violence, abductions, movement restrictions, intimidation, and live fire.
The Commission also recorded 125 separate attacks on olive groves this season, including 46 cases of cutting, uprooting, or bulldozing trees—resulting in the destruction of no fewer than 1,070 olive trees. The most affected governorates are Ramallah and al-Bireh, Nablus, and Hebron.
These coordinated assaults not only undermine a cornerstone of Palestinian rural livelihood but also function as a mechanism of displacement and land seizure, reinforcing the apartheid regime’s broader strategy of erasure and annexation.
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.
