Monday, April 19, 2010

From 1967 to 2006, Israel uprooted an estimated 2.5 million trees in the occupied territories


From 1967 to 1999, Israel uprooted an estimated 1,000,000 trees in the OT, and an additional 1,405,658 trees from 2000-2006 (source: Status of the Environment, Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ), 2007)

On the uprooting of trees following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Meron Benvenisti wrote:

"The destruction of hundreds of thousands of dunams of fruit-bearing trees does not fit Israel’s self-image as a society that knows how to “make the desert bloom.” And the contention that the green Arab landscape had been destroyed because of the necessity of adapting the crops to the agricultural practices of the Jews only underscores the conclusion that it was not the war that had caused this devastation, but rather the disappearance of the specific human community that had shaped the landscape in accordance with its needs and preferences. (”Sacred Landscape,” Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000; p. 165)

And:

Report: 14000 Palestinian olive trees subjected to Israeli aggression in 2009
A Palestinian research centre, specialised in monitoring Israeli violations, revealed that the Israeli occupation authorities destroyed 14000 olive trees in the Palestinian territories during 2009. Such assaults included the uprooting of thousands of olive trees, for the sake of expanding the Israeli settlements, and the burning and cutting of thousands more by settlers.

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