Israeli settlers today attacked Palestinian farmers harvesting their olive crops in the village of Burqa, northeast of Ramallah, according to the village’s head of local council Adnan Habas.
He told WAFA that a group of settlers attacked the Palestinian farmers as they were picking their olive crops in the north of the village in an attempt to prevent them from continuing in the harvest.
He said the settlers also hurled stones at the farmers, who attempted to fend off the attack, inflicting injuries on five of them and damaging two vehicles.
This week, the West Bank witnessed a wave of Israeli settler attacks and agricultural terrorism as Palestinian farmers began the year’s olive harvest. The attacks included chopping down and setting fire to olive trees in various areas of the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli occupation army also contributed to sabotaging the Palestinian olive harvest season by preventing farmers from reaching their lands located near the settlements or beyond the apartheid barrier.
The olive harvest season, which has just started, is one of the most important for thousands of Palestinian households in the occupied territories whose income depends heavily on the success of this season.
