On Monday, a group of fanatic, illegal paramilitary Israeli colonizers, stole olive harvest in the Wadi al-Rababa neighborhood of Silwan, south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in the occupied Palestinian capital, Jerusalem, in the West Bank.
Local sources reported that the colonizers invaded the orchards and stole the olive harvest under the protection of Israeli police officers, who prevented the Palestinian landowners from accessing their lands.
With the escalation of Israeli measures and colonizers’ attacks, the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture expects that farmers will be unable to access 80,000 dunams of olive orchards, potentially resulting in a loss of about 15% of the production.
The productivity of trees behind the Annexation Wall is already low due to the inability of their owners to tend to them throughout the year.
It is worth mentioning that the Israeli colonizers constantly escalate their violations and assaults, including the uprooting and cutting of trees, every year during the Olive harvest season in the occupied West Bank, including in and around the occupied capital, Jerusalem.
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.”