Settlers burn about 55 olive trees in the town of Abu Dis

Jerusalem - Ofoq News - Today, colonists burned about 55 olive trees, more than 40 years old, on the lands of citizen Ibrahim Ismail Abu Hilal in the Abu Dis wilderness area, southeast of Jerusalem, which extends over an area of ​​about 14 dunums, while he, along with his wife, children, and grandchildren, was picking olives from their land.

The colonists, who came from one of the colonial outposts established near the area, attacked the family members and attempted to assault them, forcing them to withdraw and escape on their own, before the colonists returned to the land and set fire to the olive trees, and burned the picking tools and olives that the family had collected.

The lands of Abu Dis and Al-Sawahra are subject to continuous targeting by the occupation and colonialists, in light of the people’s keenness to be present in their lands, cultivate, protect and preserve them, as these attacks come in the context of escalating attempts to impose control over them and push their owners to leave them.

On August 27, the occupation authorities declared 370.28 dunams of the lands of Abu Dis and Arab al-Sawahra under the name “government property,” in a step that comes within the procedures for completing the establishment of the “Mishmar Yehuda” colony.

The burning of Abu Hilal’s trees comes in light of the escalation of colonialist attacks on farmers and their lands in the Jerusalem Governorate coinciding with the olive harvest season, as the Wadi al-Rababa area in the town of Silwan witnessed, yesterday and today, attacks and measures aimed at obstructing the people and preventing them from reaching their lands and picking olive fruits, and seizing the picking tools and the crop.

Colonial attacks on farmers and their lands also continue in other areas of Jerusalem Governorate, including the theft of olive fruits and attacks on farmers, at a time when these attacks coincide with the escalation of colonial targeting of agricultural lands, in an attempt to impose a fait accompli on the land and displace its owners from it.