RAMALLAH, Wednesday, September 09, 2020 (WAFA) – Israeli military bulldozers today uprooted 22 olive trees Ras Karkar village, west of Ramallah city, according to local sources.

Nu‘man Nofal, a farmer from the village, told WAFA that Israeli occupation forces uprooted trees from his 50-donum land located in Ras Abu Zeitoun area, northeast of the village, to make room for the construction of a settler-only road.

He added that he is denied access to his land, which the military has fenced off with barbed wire and installed a metal gate at its entrance,  unsless he has an Israeli permit.

Nofal said that he was able to reclaim his land by planting it with trees the last year, before it was razed.

The “Civil Administration” is the name Israel gives to the body administering its military occupation of the West Bank.

Soldiers in the oxymoronically named Civil Administration determine where Palestinians may live, where and when they may travel (including to other parts of the occupied territories like Gaza and East Jerusalem), whether they can build or expand homes on their own land, whether they own that land at all, whether an Israeli settler can takeover that land among others.

There are almost 834,000 Israeli settlers living in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The number of settlers has almost tripled since the Oslo Accords of 1993, when settlers’ number estimated 252,000. Illegal colonial settlements have leapt from 144 to 515 in that time.

Israel’s nation-state law that passed last July stated that building and strengthening the colonial settlements is a “national interest.”

K.T./ K.F.