From palestine-info.co.uk

Daily News
Jewish settlers hack Palestinian olive groves
By
Nov 6, 2003, 13:43

Occupied Jerusalem - Religious Jewish settlers on Wednesday hacked down hundreds of old Palestinian olive trees in the Nablus region, apparently to deprive Palestinian villagers of their livelihood and main source of income.

Palestinian sources told IRNA Jewish settlers carrying gasoline-powered saws hacked down hundreds of trees at the villages of “El-Sawiya” and “Hiwwara” near Nablus Wednesday morning.

Some of the trees are reportedly a hundred-years old

A few days ago, settlers from the settlement of “Yitzhar” north of Nablus destroyed in likewise manner more than 500 olive trees at the village of Aynabos.

In both cases, the Israeli army, which keeps outposts and watchtowers in the two areas, refused to stop the settlers.

An Israeli army spokesman, when asked why the army failed to stop the settlers from hacking the groves, said “the army is not responsible for preventing these incidents.”

“According to the law, the army can’t deal with Israeli citizens and the settlers as you know are Israeli citizens.”

“This is the responsibility of the police, not the army.”

Palestinian farmers have accused the Israeli army of conniving with the settlers.

“They know what the settlers are doing. They provide them with protection, and whenever we seek to protect our trees from settler terrorism and vandalism, the army goes on alert and begin shooting at us. The judge here is our enemy,” said Ahmed Hussein, a farmer at the Aynabos village, who lost hundreds of trees to the settler.

One Israeli lawmaker, former deputy-defense minister Ephraim Sneh, described the wanton hacking as “putting every Jew to shame.”

“what I saw today puts every Jew to shame. It is shocking that the army and the government allow these crimes to continue.”
 
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These settlers who did this, as is suggested, are garden variety thugs. Israel should, by all means, prosecute them as criminals. Their actions are irrelevant to defense and security and contribute nothing to peace or security.

How can there be hundred-year-old trees there? I thought that before the Israelis stole the land it was just a big desert, with a few lazy Arabs sitting around asking pilgrams to the Holy Places for handouts. Surely these low-lifes didn't have a functioning economy, and regard Palestine as their rightful home?
Next some extremist will be claiming that the Exodus-type heroes depicted in movies and novels did not have a right to take the land away from these scumbags, killing many of them in the process with US - supplied arms. What an outrage.

For what it's worth, Jews first started arriving in Isarel and BUYING the land from these arabs well over 100 years ago....plenty of time to have planted these trees.

Right, they bought land and planted trees in areas entirely inhabited by Arabs until a few weeks ago; tell me another one. I don't suppose there is any racism in your automatic wondering if the trees must have been planted by European Jews. Certainly the incompetent natives could't have planted them.

Well, it's true that Jews bought land from the Arabs over 100 years ago, that's not even debatable. Could Jews have planted the trees? Sure they could have. And to even suggest it's racist to wonder if they did is extremely immature.

The only thing we have are the Palestinians claiming the settlers are cutting the trees to hurt them, but no documented evidence proving so. Until I hear the other side of the story, I'm not willing to pass judgement.