Zionist israeli forces uproot trees in West Bank

Israeli forces have cut and uprooted a large number of trees belonging to Palestinians in an attack on a village near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

According to local media reports, Israeli bulldozers on Monday leveled large tracts of Palestinian land in the village of Nahalin, uprooting olive and almond trees.

They also destroyed several grapevines in the area.

Israeli forces were said to have been sent on hilltops above the village to prevent land owners from accessing their fields.

On April 28, Israeli settlers uprooted more than 150 olive trees in the village of Huwwara, south of the West Bank city of Nablus. In a similar move a day earlier, the Israeli settlers destroyed over 60 trees.

In January, Tadamun Foundation for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization, said in an annual report that an estimated 8,000 trees, some of them hundreds of years old, were damaged and destroyed altogether by the Israelis.

“Settlers’ attacks include uprooting, burning and cutting down olive trees… Olive groves were also flooded by wastewater from the settlements,” said the rights group.

“We have been unable to count the hundreds of trees damaged in groves close to settlements due to Israeli security measures.”

Villagers living south of Nablus have said that Israeli settlers used chemicals in several cases last June to burn 1,500 trees there. In the blaze that followed nearly 50 acres of prime agricultural land was also destroyed.

The Israeli regime has uprooted more than 800,000 olive trees in the Palestinian territories since 1967.