The Silent Axe: Driving Palestinian Olive Farmers Off Their Land
The daily terrorism directed against Palestinians in the West Bank is reliant on the despair Palestinians have for the Israeli justice system. A case in point: olive trees burned to the ground.
By Yesh Din, written by Yossi Gurvitz
Amira Hass last week wrote about the “quiet terror attacks,” the ones Israelis don’t hear about. They occur on an almost daily basis and they are directed at Palestinian agriculture. Time after time, Palestinians’ trees are set on fire, uprooted or cut down. Time after time, it happens in an area that is under Israeli control. Time after time, it happens within spitting distance from Israeli settlements or outposts that are surrounded by soldiers, policemen, security cameras and more. Time after time, the people responsible evade justice.
Hass noted that the attacks are quiet, because the Israeli media and the IDF are in cahoots to cover up what, at best, is military incompetence of the first rank and, at worst, is aiding and abetting agricultural terrorism. But there’s another reason that these events fade into the background. Aside from the Israeli public’s disinterest in knowing what is happening in their name and with their tax shekels; and aside from the tendency of for-profit organizations who once were proud of saying that the public needs to know but nowadays just prefer to avoid angering the buyers of the ads they envelope in text, there is another factor: the fact that Palestinians despair of reporting the incidents. Here is a case in point.
Abd Al-Razeq Mahmmoud Abd Al-Karim Amer is a farmer from Qaddum who is all too familiar with the dark side of the Israeli occupation. Every year his plot of land, situated near the settlement of Qedumim, is attacked on the eve of the olive harvest. He lodged several complaints with the Israeli police in the past, to no avail. In 2008, Amer saw the vandals who ran amok on his plot with his very own eyes; the police investigator told him that does not constitute evidence.
One night last September, Amer was asleep at home when his sons’ shouts awoke: from the house, they could see the fire and smoke arising from the plot of land. The sons and his neighbors called the fire brigade and tried to save what they could. The following morning they were able to assess the damage: 27 olive trees, estimated to be between 40 and 45 years old, were burned; 70 saplings, about three years old, were broken. Amer believes they were broken before the night of the fire.
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