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Occupation Forces Continue Uprooting Olive Trees, Imprisoning Marda
Latest News, PENGON/Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, November 6th, 2004

Above: Olive trees that Occupation settlers had burned in the northern part of Marda village, in the Salfit District, two months ago.

Occupation Forces entered the village of Marda, in the Salfit District, on Wednesday, October 26, imposing curfew on the village and preventing the residents from reaching their lands for olive picking during this harvest season as the Occupation Forces uprooted six fruit bearing olive trees in the southwest portion of the village.

This follows the recent destruction of Marda lands when settlers burned 60 olives trees in the northern part of Marda village.

Marda village is located in central Salfit District, with 2000 residents and an area of 9160 dunums. Of the village lands, 3600 dunums have been confiscated for the settlement of Ariel located on the south, southeast and southwest parts of Marda lands. In addition, 300 dunums of the village’s lands have been confiscated and destroyed for the building of settlement bypass roads, and these in the western and northern parts of Marda.

Marda faces constant suffering as it is endlessly targeted by the Occupation and its settlers, surrounded by the Ariel settlement built on village lands that at some points, in the western side of the village, approaches the homes by some 300 meters; in addition to the two settler bypass roads that cut through the village between west and east, separating people from their lands.

Marda has become a big prison, encircled by Ariel settlement, bypass roads, and the Apartheid Wall. The Apartheid Wall ensures massive land confiscation and the separation of people from their lands, as well as that the village itself will be, once and for all, isolated from the rest of the Salfit Distrcit. The Apartheid Wall in the Salfit District continues to cause massive destruction for all the villages and people, Occupation policies that seek to make people leave their lands and homes for Occupation control and its settlement expansion.

Above: The settlement of Ariel, one of the largest settlements in the West Bank, built on Marda lands and near the village homes and groves.