Ten thousand olive trees uprooted: Israel wipes the Palestinian state off the map
In the shadow of the genocide in Gaza, Israel has intensified its colonization of the West Bank.
Special Envoy to Al-Mughayyir (West Bank)The fields of Al-Mughayyir, a Palestinian village of 4,000 inhabitants near Ramallah, are devastated. Where centuries-old olive trees once stood, there is now disturbed soil. Remains of stumps and roots of trees that now, as the olive harvest begins, will have been unable to bear fruit. On August 22, a convoy of bulldozers entered the fields, protected by the army, and in 48 hours uprooted 10,676 olive trees. Marzouq Abu Naim, deputy mayor, shows this newspaper the list with the names of the 300 families who have lost their livelihoods. "Israel is implementing a plan to expel the people from this land. Without the olive trees here, we cannot survive. Every year we export millions of liters of pure olive oil. That's why they kill our olive trees, to make us leave," he complains. Olive trees are not only one of the Palestinians' main resources, but also a symbol of their attachment to the land. While the world symbolically recognizes the Palestinian state, Israel is rushing to erase it from the map.
Israeli General Avi Bluth, head of the central command, ordered the trees to be uprooted. Officially, the measure was in response to the search and capture of a Palestinian who had injured a settler on his land while he was grazing sheep. But the same general later declared his objective of collective punishment: "Every village and every one of our enemies must know that if they attack any resident [settler], they will be subjected to a siege, a curfew, and a land transformation operation."
In the shadow of the genocide in Gaza, Israel has intensified its colonization of the West Bank, the territory bordering Jordan under the control of the Palestinian Authority. The settlements, illegal under international law, are expanding daily, and settlers attack villages with complete impunity, protected by soldiers. They are protected by the Finance Minister, the far-right Bezalel Smotrich—himself a settler—to whom Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has handed over management of the West Bank. They are also protected by the Interior Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a settler representative of Kahanism, a violent and racist movement that calls for the expulsion of Palestinians from their land.
Al-Mughayyir is a village that makes its living from agriculture, in the fertile lands of the Jordan River Valley. Before the Palestinian attacks of October 7, 2023, the army and settlers had already driven the shepherd families from these lands. The Bedouins, who live in small isolated communities in the grazing areas, suffered constant attacks, even having their school burned down. They have now settled in the village, but they can no longer feed their livestock there: they cannot approach the pastures, which the army has also declared a military zone. Two years ago they had 35,000 head of cattle, and now barely 6,000 remain. A large barrier on the only road leading east prevents Palestinians from accessing their land and water wells. The genocide in Gaza and the stifling of the West Bank are two different paths to the same goal: the Palestinians' departure.
Ayou Abu Ali, a 23-year-old farmer, shows us his house, where his wife and one-year-old daughter live. They always keep the windows closed and the blinds down. "Living here is very difficult: at night, the settlers come and throw stones or firebombs at us. I'm afraid for my family," he says. The Palestinian-backed Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CWRC) will try to help him build a fence and will bring him fire extinguishers. The young man still has pellet wounds in his chest: "If I go near my trees, they shoot at me."
In some of the village's houses, you can see the marks of this summer's settler attacks: Stars of David or the initials MTA or MH (for the Maccabi Tel Aviv and Maccabi Haifa football clubs) spray-painted on the walls.
We approach the edge of the land declared a military zone. At the top of a hill, the settlers have established an outpost: four containers where they live and from where they have strategic control of the village. When they see us approaching the mountain of rubble with which they have cut a path to delimit the area they have appropriated, they focus on us with a powerful spotlight that flashes.
A thousand Palestinians dead
In September, Smotrich presented a plan to annex 82% of the West Bank, in response to the recognition of the Palestinian state by France, the United Kingdom, and Canada, among other countries traditionally allied with Israel. Referring to the West Bank by the biblical name Judea and Samaria, Smotrich demanded that it be transferred to Israeli sovereignty: "We will never allow the establishment of a Palestinian state, because it would pose an existential danger to Israel. After decades of hesitation, the time has come to say it."
![View of the devastated olive groves in Al-Mughayyir.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 5712 4284"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
According to data released by the UN this Saturday, since October 7, 2023, the army and settlers have killed 999 Palestinians in the West Bank. A total of 3,500 attacks against Palestinians were documented, leaving 3,938 injured, 2,700 vehicles destroyed, and 50,000 trees or saplings damaged. Small, newly planted olive trees destroyed by settlers last week can still be seen. Palestinian attacks have left 41 settlers and soldiers dead during the same period.
Smotrich's words and the facts on the ground confirm that the Oslo process launched in 1993, which was intended to lead to a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, has been buried. It remains to be seen whether the Palestinians will be expelled from the Strip or whether it will become, as Trump's plan calls for, a US-supervised colony under the administration of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and controlled by an international military force. Perhaps international pressure could halt the formal annexation of the West Bank, but on the ground, Israel has already imposed a fait accompli: violence by the army and settlers, and land seizures that have been ongoing for years, have gone unchecked.
Sitting on a stone by the roadside, 55-year-old Abdulatif Alya looks at the remains of his 350 uprooted olive trees. "What they want is to displace us, to uproot us from our land, but we will remain planted here as long as we have breath. We will plant new olive trees and start over."
