On Monday, a group of illegal Israeli paramilitary colonizers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, invaded Palestinian olive orchards in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, and destroyed more than 150 olive saplings.
Local media activist Osama Makhamra reported that the colonizers cut down the saplings in an orchard owned by Mohammad Makhamra near the village of Susiya.
The attackers reportedly breached the property by dismantling the surrounding fence, with Israeli soldiers present during the incident.
Makhamra added that colonizers also brought bulldozers and began digging on Palestinian-owned lands in the eastern part of Wadi al-Jawaya, in an apparent attempt to expand a nearby illegal colony.
In a related violation, the paramilitary colonizer dismantled a fence surrounding land owned by Sa’id al-Amour in Khirbet ar-Rakeez, also in Masafer Yatta, and released livestock to graze on cultivated plants.
The army later declared the entire area a “closed military zone,” barring Palestinians from accessing their own land.
On Monday morning, a young Palestinian man sustained injuries after being deliberately rammed by an illegal Israeli paramilitary colonizer near the town of Salfit in the central part of occupied West Bank.
On Saturday, Israeli paramilitary colonizers attacked Palestinian towns and villages throughout the West Bank – part of a trend of increasing colonizer violence against the indigenous Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
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 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.”
