Settlers Burn West Bank Factories and Olive Groves as Israeli Soldiers Block Palestinians From Fighting the Fires, Owners Say

A fire tore through roughly 50 dunams of olive trees and the yard of the al-Omari aluminium factory in Ein Siniya, north of Ramallah, on Monday morning. Emad Khater, head of the village council, told Al Jazeera a settler from the nearby Atara hilltops had been seen near the facility before the blaze started, and that Israeli soldiers then stopped residents and workers from putting it out.

Ein Siniya sits in Area B of the occupied West Bank, land the Oslo Accords place under Palestinian civil authority. Khater said the fire fits a longer pattern in the village: what he described as deliberate burnings of trees, homes and cars, along with theft and assaults on workers inside local factories.

The fire follows an earlier attack on the same industrial site. Abdul Samad Abdul Aziz, the facility's owner, told Al Jazeera that settlers infiltrated the property in late July and set fire to heavy machinery, severely damaging a stone crusher and causing an estimated $700,000 in losses. He said settlers have since built an outpost with livestock on the road leading to the site after displacing Palestinian shepherds who had grazed there, and that vehicles and offices have repeatedly been targeted in what he called an effort to force the owners out.

A similar attack hit a facility in as-Samu, south of Hebron, on August 21. Owner Khaled al-Zaarir said about 30 settlers assaulted the site after months of death threats, damaging two excavators, three stone-cutting machines, three bulldozers and a security office. A fire left more than 90 percent of the heavy equipment unusable, he said, affecting 55 people who depended on the facility for income.

Economist Moayad Afanah said industrial sites across Area B and Area C are being hit "collectively and deliberately," pointing to recent attacks on the al-Junaidi dairy factories near Tulkarem as part of the same pattern. He said the cost of destroying a single bulldozer or excavator can run into the hundreds of thousands of shekels, draining Palestinian investment and, in his words, creating conditions that repel business and life.

The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, a Palestinian monitoring group, recorded 798 settler attacks in July alone, according to CRRC official Amir Dawoud, including 440 incidents of property damage or land levelling, 67 cases of confiscation or theft, and damage or poisoning to 5,027 trees. He cited a March 25 incident in which settlers pitched a tent near a concrete factory in Taybeh, and an August 16 attack in Sinjil in which cables were cut and an electronic board stolen from a stone cutter.

"Settler terrorism performs a dual function: inflicting direct economic loss, and producing a coercive environment that pushes Palestinians to withdraw from the land, opening the way for colonial expansion and control over it," Dawoud said.

None of the incidents described carry an Israeli military or settler statement, and Al Jazeera's reporting relies on accounts from the facility owners, council officials and CRRC. Afanah said West Bank unemployment has reached 29 percent, a crisis he said the attacks on industry are deepening.