The War of the Olive Harvest: Palestinians vs. Settlers
It is a ritual of autumn not unlike homecoming or leaf peeping in more decorous parts of the world. Come fall, Palestinians go out to harvest their olives. And Israeli settlers go down from the hilltops to stop them.
"There! There! All these olive trees were burned," says Bureen Mayor Ali Eid, with an angry gesture that takes in a hillside once colored with the dusty green of ancient trees and now charred after the settlers had gone through. "We have lost more than 16,000 olive trees by cutting or burning since 2005. Every year is worse than the year before."
The Israeli military concurs. The current harvest is the most violent in years, with attacks by settlers on Palestinian property largely to blame. A senior officer in the command responsible for the West Bank told TIME more than 50% of Israeli forces there are patrolling the groves. The deployment comes on order of the Israeli supreme court, which six years ago instructed the military to safeguard Palestinians as they harvest the berries that have been the mainstay of the West Bank economy for generations. (See pictures of what life is like in the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.)
Palestinians, Israeli Settlers Clash over Olive Harvests - TIME
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