Palestine…Beautiful views, shame about the neighbours
Nahla Mahmoud and her family live near the top of a hill overlooking Asira Al Qibliyya, a Palestinian village in the West Bank. From their garden, they can see houses and farms spreading out across the valley below. On a clear day, they can see the waters of the Mediterranean to the West and the Jordan Valley to the East.
But the views up here in the Nablus hills come at a high price: the family lives on the front line of attacks by armed Israeli settlers. The hilltop above them is dominated by the illegal settlement of Yitzhar. Its residents regularly attack Nahla’s family and damage their property. Autumn is a peak time for clashes between Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank, as it is when Palestinian farmers harvest their olives. Many have trees in areas near the settlements, but cannot reach them for fear of violence.
This year has been no exception. The poor yield of olives – only around a tenth the crop of a peak season – meant the 2009 harvest took less time than normal, finishing by early November. But farmers are also calculating the cost of almost daily attacks by settlers, who are often armed with machine guns.
During just one week in October, settlers denied Palestinians access to their land, threw rocks at harvesters, cut down trees and intimidated farmers, according to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).
