Palestinian Report: Occupation Damaged 3,413 Trees in the West Bank During a Week

A Palestinian official report documented, on Thursday, the damage to nearly 3,413 trees, most of them olive trees, in scattered areas of the West Bank, as a result of Israeli assaults in the period between December 11-18 of the current month.

The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture explained, in a report published on the American platform "Facebook", that last week witnessed a noticeable escalation in assaults by the Israeli army and settlers, which caused severe damage to the agricultural sector.

The ministry indicated that its teams documented the damage to 3,413 trees, most of them olive trees, with the governorates of Ramallah and Al-Bireh (center) and Nablus (north) accounting for the largest share of the damages resulting from Israeli assaults.

The report clarified that those assaults during the mentioned period included land leveling, tree uprooting, destruction of hundreds of meters of irrigation networks, killing and stealing sheep, destroying fodder, and demolishing poultry farms.

According to the report, the total value of damages during the mentioned period exceeded two and a half million dollars.

The ministry stated that "Israel continues its policies of land seizure, issuing demolition notices, and forcing farmers to uproot their trees with their own hands, in an attempt to cause psychological and moral breakdown, in a direct targeting of the olive tree that represents a symbol of Palestinian identity and steadfastness".

Previously, a report by the Palestinian governmental Anti-Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission revealed Israel's seizure of 2,800 dunams (a dunam equals 1,000 square meters) of lands owned by Palestinians during the past month of November, through orders of "land seizure and expropriation and modification of state land boundaries".

Meanwhile, the commission's data indicated that Israel has issued, since the beginning of 2025, a total of 53 orders for land seizure for military purposes, in a noticeable intensification of the use of this type of orders that pretext military reasons to control Palestinian lands.

Since the start of the genocide war in Gaza, the Israeli army and settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians, injured nearly 11,000, in addition to arresting more than 21,000.

Meanwhile, Israel's genocide war in Gaza has left more than 70,000 Palestinian dead and 171,000 injured, mostly children and women, along with immense destruction with a reconstruction cost estimated by the United Nations at about 70 billion dollars.