From the independent
Mahfuz Abu al Nasr, a Palestinian farmer from the West Bank village of Salem, was grieving yesterday over the wreckage of his livelihood. Jewish settlers had come in the night and destroyed 30 olive trees he planted a decade ago, in revenge for the deaths of three young Israelis in a drive-by shooting last Sunday."It is like losing your son," said Mr Nasr, 65, who has 10 children. "I watched them grow every year. At last they were producing. Every tree was as big as a house."
The trees lay scattered on the rocky ground, cut down by power saws. The crushed branches still bore olives ripe for harvest. Only seven trees on his two-acre plot had survived. "I have no shop, no sheep, no cows," he said sadly. "I only had my olive trees."
This was not the first time that militant settlers, waging a war of attrition against their neighbours in the hills east of Nablus for the past four years, had raided his grove.
Every year, their attacks cost Mr Nasr 5,000kg of olives and 180 litres of oil. He is going to plant new trees, but he will have to wait years until they bear fruit. This time, the vengeful settlers had lopped and burned trees on 70 Salem farms
