Israeli occupation forces on Monday uprooted about 100 olive trees in the Wadi Sa’ir area, east of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, in order to claim the land for military use, according to a local dignitary.
“This is a new crime added to the crimes of the Israeli occupation, and we condemn this new aggression on Palestinian land,” Musa Al-Farroukh, the mayor of the town of Sa’ir, said.
Palestinian sources said the army uprooted the trees in order to seize 11 dunums of land to establish a new military checkpoint in eastern Bethlehem. One dunum is equal to 1,000 square meters.
Al-Farroukh said the military did not even allow the Palestinian families that owned the confiscated land to remove the trees and plant them elsewhere.
Younis Arar, one of the directors of the Palestinian Authority’s Resistance to the Wall and Settlement Authority, told Arab News that the aim of the move was to make the Wadi Sa’ir checkpoint in front of an Israeli army camp into a permanent fixture.
The new checkpoint would hinder the movement of thousands of Palestinian citizens and vehicles passing through the area, he added.
According to Arar, there are 800 Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank, of which 102 are contained within an area of less than 1.5 square kilometers inside the old city of Hebron.
He said the Israeli military was using the pretext of setting up checkpoints to seize Palestinian land and uproot trees, and that Israeli courts were biased in favor of the army.
“You cannot win any case to remove a military checkpoint or an Israeli army camp as long as the issue is related to the security of the Israelis, and no one will respond to your request, neither the judiciary nor anyone else,” Arar said.
Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank affect the movement of 3 million Palestinians living in the area.
“What is happening is an implementation of the deal of the century that former US President Donald Trump announced, and today it is implemented by Israel by turning the West Bank into isolated cantons and islands,” Arar said.
Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti told Arab News that Israel was using the “land, rights and blood” of Palestinians to help extremist Zionist parties win the country’s elections.