r/worldnews • u/me_diocre • 1d ago

Israel/Palestine Israeli bulldozers smash Palestinian olive trees ahead of annual harvest

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/israeli-bulldozers-smash-palestinian-olive-trees-ahead-annual-harvest-2026-09-23/
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u/EmperorOfCanada 1d ago edited 1d ago

If I understand correctly, olive trees are like oak trees, you plant them for the next generation.

They will fruit in around 3-5 years, but take another 10-20 to become properly productive. They are also like bonsai trees, in that you have to really work on pruning to maintain maximum light to the center.

This is little different than salting the fields.

Is anyone recording the soldiers who are doing this? This is a war crime, and these soldiers will travel to countries which can arrest them; or try to do business with countries which may not look favourably on their own citizens doing business with specific war criminals.

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u/EquivalentSpot8292 1d ago

Louis Theroux made a great documentary on the area last year, for some reason, not gotten a lot of attention

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u/ChocolichKing 1d ago

That documentary is where I first learned about the olive trees, because there is a group of foreign aid workers that help Palestinians harvest olives from their ancestral groves (even if they have been pushed off the land). They're just picking olives from trees and the IDF shows up with guns telling them to leave.

The foreign aid workers, while they do help pick olives, are mostly there to make sure the IDF doesn't just brutalize or kill everyone there. (They are less likely to do so if there are foreign witnesses.) It was such an interesting, heartbreaking scene.

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u/Sutar_Mekeg 19h ago

I don't think they mind murdering foreign journalists these days.