A Palestinian human rights activist, Mohammad Ali Hamdan said on Saturday that a group of Israeli extremist settlers burned up Palestinians olive oil gardens in the village of Jaba’a, located 15 kilometers southwest of Bethlehem.

At least four hundred trees were completely burnt, according to Hamdan.

He said Israeli settlers have recently stepped up their aggressions on Palestinians’ properties in West Bank.

The attackers aim at scaring people off and making them leave their homes so that the Israeli regime could expand its settlements, Hamdan said.

Israeli settlers in the West Bank have increasingly been assaulting Palestinians in recent years and vandalized their property. However, the Tel Aviv regime rarely detains the assailants.

The Israeli regime maintains a defiant stand on the issue of its illegal settlements on Palestinian land as it refuses to freeze settlement expansion. Tel Aviv has come under repeated and widespread international condemnation over the issue.

On Friday European Union officially bared cooperation with any Israeli entity that was involved in settlement activities operating in occupied territories beyond the pre-1967 lines.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

Human rights groups accuse Tel Aviv of ignoring complaints by the victims of settler attacks.

SHI/SHI