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The video of October 4 looks like an olive harvest scene. After all, it is this season. Two young people, including at least one miner, hold a large tarpaulin. The smaller of them is holding a stick and hitting a tree, but rather than spilling the olives, the bangs break the branches of the tree.
The olive trees of the Palestinian village of Burin, located in the northern West Bank, in the West Bank, do not belong to these young men and no one has given them permission to harvest olives in this grove located in the West Bank. west of the Hawara checkpoint. They are undoubtedly Jewish. Their white caps, their sidecurls and their ritual fringes tzitzit show it well.
>> Read more: Israeli masked settlers filmed the destruction of Palestinian olive trees ■ More than 2,000 trees in Palestinian villages in the West Bank destroyed in two months
A resident of Burin who will be identified only as N. was asked to film what was happening. He managed to get to the scene about 20 minutes later. He called the police and, when they arrived, 15 to 20 minutes later, he had filmed the young men hitting three trees.
When the intruders saw a police vehicle, they escaped. The police then found three bags of olives in one of the two abandoned houses in the grove, one of which belongs to the owner of the grove. The second house belongs to a Nablus family that the Jews evicted, throwing away all their furniture and belongings at the beginning of the second intifada, some 20 years ago, said N. never came back to live there
The two houses and the hundreds of dunams of private land surrounding them are considered a dangerous area that Palestinians must coordinate with the Israeli army to enter. Permission is granted only two or three times a year. Why is it dangerous? Because the area also has a source that has been used to irrigate Burin groves for years. The Israelis have made a bath of religious ritual and a place of leisure.
It is also close to the Jewish settlement of Har Bracha and the unauthorized outpost of Givat Ronen. To avoid "friction," the Israeli authorities are barring access to Palestinian landowners.
The police eventually found the young men with ritual fringes under a large tree. N. saw them taken into the police car. When the owner of the olive grove arrived, he discovered that other trees had been affected in the same way, apparently two or three days earlier, and that a considerable portion of the olives n & # 39; There was more.
The Israeli West Bank District Police spokesman's office issued the following statement: "Due to the decisive action of the Israeli police, three juvenile suspects have been arrested for alleged theft and racially motivated offenses. The investigation is still ongoing and at the end of the investigation, the case will be sent back for examination and decision by the Public Prosecutor's Office. "
N. was invited to visit the police station of Ariel settlement in the West Bank to provide an account of the incident. "Not inside, but outside the east gate of the colony," he said, adding that the policeman had used the outside of his car as a desk to write NN's account does not recall the number of times he reported similar incidents to the police in his village. But the villagers' complaints never resulted in criminal charges or convictions that might deter others.
According to United Nations figures and information provided by N., the recent theft of olives was one of the 48 acts of violence and vandalism perpetrated by Israeli civilians in Burin alone in the last three years. There were six attacks in 2016; 18 in 2017; and 24 so far this year. The nature of the incidents varied: raids of civilians accompanied by soldiers who supplied them; throwing stones at people, including shepherds and houses; fire of fields and orchards; the theft of olives; trees felled or damaged; and attacks on farmers at work.
On Saturday, October 20, Palestinian farmers were allowed access to their lands near the Yitzhar settlement for the sole purpose of harvesting the olives, and only with prior coordination with the army. A village of farmers is in the wadi, added N. When he came to collect his olives, there was a military jeep at this place. Under the eyes of soldiers in the jeep, 12 Israelis descended from one of Yizhar's ruined outposts and threw stones at him, he said. But someone called the border police and when they arrived, the intruders dispersed. As a result of the incident, the farmer received special permission to work on his plot another day – last Tuesday.
A week earlier, on October 13, N. was present for an olive harvest on land owned by villagers of Burin and Hawara, south of Givat Ronen. It was the same story: Israelis descended from the outpost to throw stones and olive pickers fled. Then one of the Israelis approached the tarpaulins on which the olives had been picked up, threw them into the undergrowth and took the tarpaulins. "And everything was filmed," said N.
Since 2016, Israelis have organized raids in the neighboring village of Urif 16 times and 35 times in Hawara. According to United Nations figures, of the 99 documented attacks in these three neighboring villages, 13 involved arson. At least 1,700 trees and large amounts of crops have been vandalized in the three villages in the last three years.
Madama, Asira al Qibliya and Einabus are also on the list of villages that have been affected in the same territory, a distance of 25 square kilometers. This is only a small portion – half a percent – of the West Bank and is the subject of a recent report issued by the Israeli organization for the defense of human rights. Yesh Din man, who focuses on this violent epicenter. The report titled "Yizhar – Case Study: Settler Violence as a Way to Conquer Palestinian Land with State and Army Support".
Yesh Din recorded 275 attacks between 2008 and 2018 targeting six of these villages allegedly committed by Israeli citizens. There are other cases of this type in this area, but these are the ones that Yesh Din has documented. In 167 of the documented cases, Palestinian victims lodged complaints with the police. In May of this year, 152 complaints were processed. Only five (3%) resulted in an indictment, while 117 (77%) were closed as their author could not be identified. 22 other cases (14%) were closed due to lack of evidence.
These statistics and the rate of impunity are similar to data on crimes against Palestinians for the West Bank as a whole. In October alone, Israeli organizations B'Tselem and Yesh Din documented 12 cases of attacks on olive growers or damage to trees allegedly committed by Israelis in the central West Bank.
In response to this article, the office of Israel's District Police spokesman in the West Bank said that he was unaware of the statistics and that he could not determine the reliability.
Both the army and the police are aware that the plantations that have been affected are vulnerable to such attacks by Israelis because they have already been attacked. Palestinian access to these people is usually limited. Since the beginning of the second Intifada, which began in 2000, it has generally been limited to two or three times a year. Dozens of trees are usually damaged with each attack, which means that many people are involved.
When trees are young, they can be easily uprooted, but more mature trees require an electric saw. This means that the attack requires planning, and even if there are two saws, cutting them takes time and makes a lot of noise. In other words, the attackers are probably quite confident not to be punished, even if they get caught.
The areas are dotted with army surveillance cameras. Sometimes attacks (mainly arson and badaults on fishermen) were conducted in the presence of soldiers. The material damage is considerable and the emotional damage can not be quantified.
Muhammad Awwad from the village of Turmus Ayya is 80 years old. Agriculture is his main source of income and he is considered one of the leading farmers in the region. He informed Iyad Haddad, a B'Tselem investigator, of his shock when he visited his home on 7 October, in coordination with the army. He discovered that dozens of olive trees had been destroyed, their branches cut off from the trunk of the trees. "I thought I imagined it," he said.
The trees were of high quality and were planted 40 years ago. An officer from the district administration and the Israeli District Coordination, accompanied by a police officer and a soldier, arrived, but Awwad told Haddad categorically: "I do not know what to do. I have no desire to waste my time filing a complaint that is not worth it and whose results are known in advance. "
In fact, in recent years, researchers at B'Tselem and Yesh Din have seen a clear decrease in the number of Palestinian victims who took the trouble to complain to the police about these incidents.
For its part, Abu Atta from Awarta village filed a complaint in October 2017 regarding the theft of his olives. The possibility that his complaint was under investigation and becoming an example of indictment for others was apparently high. After all, it was not less than an Israeli officer from the Israeli District Coordination and Liaison Administration who had surprised the Israeli citizen stealing olives in the Palestinian grove near the entrance to the Itamar colony. He had photographed the thief and even bothered to look for the plot owner, Abu Atta, and help him file a complaint.
An investigation completed
A team of Yesh Din and attorney Michael Sfard have attempted to follow the progress of the investigation into the theft of Abu Atta olives, but they have not received no information for six months. To their surprise, in August, they were informed that it had been decided to close the case without even questioning the suspect. Sfard wrote to Israeli lawyer and Gil Deshe officer of the Samaria district of the Israeli police to ask him why. He also asked that a representative of Yesh Din be allowed to photocopy the investigation file.
In late September, Deshe responded that the file had been closed due to lack of public interest, which is why it did not allow copying the file. Sfard has since appealed the closing of the case. As a result of questions asked by Haaretz 10 days ago about the case, Sfard was informed that the file could in fact be copied.
"This story is no different than the hundreds of cases that were closed without [questioning] suspects, without charge and even without proper investigation, "Sfard told Haaretz. "What was new this time is that the law enforcement system officially confirmed what we had known for a long time: the harm done to a Palestinian farmer did not interest him." In comments on the official response Deshe Sfard said that Deshe had "so internalized the spirit of the times" that he had forgotten to engage in a "masquerade" and that he "was simply saying the truth: the case was closed because it was not in the public interest ".
For its part, the office of the Israeli police spokesman in the West Bank said that no request for a photocopy of the file had been made to the prosecutor's office. "And to the extent that the plaintiff wishes to do so, he must submit a methodical request," but he did not explain why the case had been closed for lack of public interest.
Following Sfard 's appeal, "the prosecution reviews the record of the investigation and the existing evidence," said the spokesman' s office.
The spokesperson's office also said that during the past month, the olive harvest had taken place in the West Bank and that "security forces were deployed in the field to avoid friction between different populations, allowing thus the Palestinians to harvest the olive trees they own in their area. "
"The Israeli police consider any act of violence or brutality to be serious and, therefore, whenever a complaint is received by the police, an in-depth investigation is under way to reach the truth, regardless of the circumstances. Origin or identity of the victim or the perpetrator of the offense, place of the violation. [showing that most of the cases were closed] are not known to the police and the extent of their reliability is unclear, "said the spokesman's office.
The statement continues: "What is clear is that in recent years the police have been busy arresting and prosecuting a large number of suspects for causing damage and stealing Palestinian property. As a result, despite the relatively low number of property damage claims, the police generally act on their own initiative, conducting investigations and conducting prevention and prevention operations in collaboration with the military and the police. Israeli security forces. The Israeli police will continue to act decisively, openly and secretly, in collaboration with other security forces in the region and at the points of friction to prevent such incidents, to enforce the law. [and] investigate and prosecute those involved. "
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