Illegal settlers uproot hundreds of olive trees, assault Palestinians across occupied West Bank

Illegal Israeli settlers carried out coordinated attacks across several areas of the occupied West Bank on Thursday, uprooting hundreds of olive trees, assaulting Palestinian civilians and shepherds, and storming villages under the protection of the Israeli army, Palestinian sources said.

In the northern Ramallah and al-Bireh governorate, illegal settlers uprooted around 300 olive trees in the town of Turmus Ayya. Local sources told Anadolu that the attack targeted agricultural land and the home of a Palestinian family in the town's plain area, which has been repeatedly subjected to settler assaults.

In northeastern Ramallah, groups of illegal settlers stormed the village of al-Mughayyir, where they attacked the southern part of the village and assaulted residents while they were grazing livestock, the sources said.

Further south in the Nablus governorate, illegal settlers sprayed pepper gas at a number of Palestinians and physically assaulted three young men while they were working at a house in the Wadi al-Hajj Issa area, located between the villages of Aqraba and Jurish, according to local accounts.

Official Palestinian figures show that illegal settlers have carried out 349 acts of vandalism and theft targeting Palestinian property in recent weeks, affecting large swathes of agricultural land across the occupied West Bank.

The attacks, carried out with the backing of the Israeli army, resulted in the uprooting, destruction or poisoning of 1,245 olive trees in several governorates, including 750 trees in Hebron, 245 in Ramallah and 250 in Nablus.

Israeli forces also destroyed around 151,000 tobacco seedlings belonging to Palestinian farmers in the Jenin governorate, the same sources said.

Israel has intensified its military operations in the West Bank since launching its war on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 8, 2023, including killings, arrests, forced displacement and settlement expansion, a trajectory Palestinians say is aimed at paving the way for the formal annexation of the occupied territory.

More than 1,112 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, about 11,500 wounded, and more than 21,000 detained during that period, according to Palestinian estimates.

The International Court of Justice declared Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory illegal in a landmark opinion in July 2024 and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.