NABLUS, Friday, August 2, 2024 (WAFA) – Israeli colonists today torched a grove of olives in the Zeita town, south of the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, according to local sources.
They said that the colonists barged their way to the outskirts of Jabal Sbeih (Sbeih Mount) and set an olive grove on fire.
In June, the Israeli occupation authorities legalised five colonial outposts, including the colonial outpost of Givat Eviatar, established atop Jabal Sbeih.
Palestinians across Historic Palestine have been rising up against decades of Israeli settler- colonialism, apartheid and intensified Israeli land pillage of their land.
In almost a month in 2022, some eight Palestinians from Beita town were killed and over 620 others were injured while trying to oust the colonial settler outpost built atop Mount Sabih or Sbeih.
Seizing the hilltop represents a panoptical defensive tool as they would grant the Israeli occupation a panoramic view over the Jordan Valley and the whole district of Nablus. This is why the Israeli occupation authorities have assigned them a place in its colonial expansion project.
The construction of the two colonial outposts atop Mount Sabih, south of Beita, and Mount Al-Arma, north of the town, besides a bypass road to the west, is an Israeli measure to push Palestinian villages and towns into crowded enclaves, ghettos, surrounded by walls, colonies and military installations, and disrupt their geographic contiguity with other parts of the West Bank.
Colonist violence against Palestinians and their property is routine in the West Bank and is rarely prosecuted by Israeli occupation authorities.
Colonist violence includes property and mosque arsons, stone-throwing, uprooting of crops and olive trees, and attacks on vulnerable homes, among others.
Over 700,000 Israeli colonists are living in colonies across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law.
Israel’s nation-state law, passed in July 2018, enshrines Jewish supremacy, and states that building and strengthening the colonies is a “national interest.”
K.F.
