Palestinians try to put out fire set by Israeli settlers in an olive grove near the West Bank village of Burin, near Nablus, Monday, June .3, 2013.al

reports:

A group of Zionist settlers set fire to around 100 olive trees owned by Palestinian farmers near Nablus in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian official said Wednesday, as the 2014 olive harvest, a major source of income for Palestinian farmers, begins.

“A group of settlers from the Yitzhar settlement located near Huwara town in Nablus set fire to the town’s olive fields, causing the destruction of 100 trees,” Ghassan Daghlas, the Palestinian Authority official in charge of the settlements file in the northern West Bank, told Anadolu Agency.

The attack sparked clashes between the settlers and local residents, which ended upon the arrival of Israeli Occupation Forces.

Daghlas condemned what he described as increasing settler attacks on Palestinian property and olive fields, slamming the Jewish-only Yitzhar settlement as “a center of extremism.”

“The settlement hosts a religious school and a religious center that issues edicts that call for killing Palestinians and stealing their land,” the official said.

Around 20,000 Jewish settlers live near Nablus in 39 Zionist-only settlements. Palestinian residents, for their part, complain of repeated attacks by settlers, who usually enjoy the protection of the Israeli forces.

Earlier this month, in the village of Yasuf in the Salfit district in the central West Bank, a large group of Israeli settlers violently beat 25-year-old Palestinian woman Alaa Fathi Atiyani while she was picking olives from trees with her children in an orchard, two days after dozens of Israeli settlers protected by soldiers burned and damaged olive trees in the village.

Similarly in Nablus, a group of Zionist settlers attacked Palestinian farmers and stole their olive crop, while another group chopped down dozens of olive trees on Palestinian agricultural lands.

The spate of attacks come as the 2014 olive harvest, a major source of income for Palestinian farmers, begins across the northern West Bank, and just weeks before harvesting begins across the south.

Attacks on the fall harvest are a key way that Palestinians are forced out of their homes and their lands confiscated for settlement construction, as the loss of a year’s crop can signal destitution for farmers with no other way to support themselves.

According to a 2012 report on Israeli settler violence released by the Palestine Center, a Washington-based nonprofit, every year the olive harvest period sees the highest peak in attacks on Palestinian civilians and property.

Over 7,500 olive trees were damaged or destroyed by settlers between January and mid-October in 2012, according to OCHA.

Settler violence against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank is systematic and ignored by Israeli authorities, who rarely intervene in the violent attacks or prosecute the perpetrators.

In 2013, there were 399 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Israeli authorities rarely investigate violent crimes carried out by settlers against Palestinian communities.

(Al-Akhbar, Anadolu)