NABLUS, December 11, 2020 (WAFA) – Israeli forces Friday afternoon cracked down on an olive-sapling-planting event in Beit Dajan village, east of Nablus city, causing a number of injuries, according to a local official.

The village mayor Nasser Abu Jaish said that a large Israeli military force violently dispersed the participants of the event called for to plant olive saplings in the villagers’ lands threatened with confiscation, northeast of the village.

Soldiers opened fire towards the participants, hitting two with rubber-coated steel bullets and causing 15 others to suffocate from tear gas.

The village has become the scene of weekly protests against the Israeli occupation authorities’ move to construct and expand colonial settlements at the expense of 300 donums of the villagers’ land.

Such events came in the wake of the construction of a new settlement outpost on the territories of the village. Settlers installed an animal barn, extended water pipelines to supply the new outpost with water, and built a several-kilometers road, causing damage and seizing hundreds of donums of the villagers’ land.

Located 12 kilometers to the east of Nablus city, Beit Dajan has a population of some 4,700 and occupies a total area of 44,100 dunams, including 360 donums of built-up area for the villagers. A large part of the village lands were seized for the construction of Al-Hamra and Mekhora (Mehola) colonial settlements, east and southeast of the village, in 1971 and 1973.

The village depends on grains plantation and fruitful trees, such as olive, figs and almonds.

K.F.