“The Israeli DCO is looking for the offenders at the end of the world,” Hamdi Jazi (55) said helplessly, “while they’re before their very eyes!”. This time, he refused to meet with the DCO official who came to his land to examine the damage and the trees the settlers chopped down; he has given up hope the offenders will be caught and punished.
On Friday morning, 24 April 2020, Jazi received a phone message from a village resident informing him of harsh sights in his olive grove. He rushed there with his sons and discovered that settlers had cut down 35 of his trees, which were at least 40 years old, and left only five intact.
This January, settlers cut down 80 olive saplings he had planted in 2013.
Jazi owns two dunams of land [1 dunam = 1,000 sq. meters] near Route 60, about a kilometer northwest of a-Sawiyah.
The settlement of Rehelim was founded in 1991 about 600 meters away, on village land.
In a testimony he gave on 25 April 2020 to B’Tselem field researcher Salma a-Deb’i, Jazi described his feelings:
I was shocked when I saw 35 olive trees lying on the ground. They’d cut them off at the stem, apparently just that night, because the trees were still green. I felt like I’d just witnessed an execution! They murdered those trees. I couldn’t bear the sight and left.”
Crimes against farmers take place every day in the West Bank, and it’s evident from the settlers’ actions that they’ve marked the area and are deliberately destroying it. They damaged my trees and those of landowners from nearby plots. They overlook nothing and destroy everything. What did the trees do wrong?!
I don’t have any trees left, and I’m afraid to come to the grove because of the settlers’ aggression.