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Palestinian youths, not settlers, caught axing olive trees for compensation
By Israel Insider staff and partners December 2, 2006

Maariv NRG reports that Palestinian youths were caught in the act as they were cutting olive trees illegally, claiming they did it at the request of the owner of the grove.

Forest inspectors caught the youths axing the trees, shedding a new light on frequent complaints by Palestinians farmers that settlers cut their trees in an attempt to hurt their livelihoods.

In the past, as a result of such complaints, IDF soldiers and police have been called on to protect the Palestinians farmers in the territories during the olive harvest season. But the police suspect now that in some cases the Palestinians themselves are the ones cutting the trees and then blaming the settlers in an attempt to get compensation from the Israeli Civil Authority.

According to the Maariv report, foresters of the JNF patrolling the Shaar Efraim area today noticed to their surprise a number of Palestinians cutting olive trees in violation of the law, damaging scores of olive trees. The foresters call a police force, which arrived and held four of them for questioning.

The four, after being transferred to the police station in Kedumim, confessed that the owner of the property invited them to cut the trees for firewood. A police spokesman for the Judea-Samaria District, Superintendent Pintzi Mor, told Maariv NRG that the owner of the land would be called in for questioning.

Sources in the police said that over the years the police have experienced a phenomenon of the filing of complaints to the Civil Authority regarding the destruction of olive trees, along with a claim for financial compensation. In the last year alone the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria filed claims for 350 thousand shekels ($75,000) for the destruction of olive trees.

The police said they now intend to check the complaints in detail. A senior source in the police told Maariv NRG that "most of the complaints for damage to olive trees were filed in recent years at the end of the harvest season or towards the end, something that increase the suspicion that this is a cooked deal."

Link: http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Diplomacy/9991.htm