Twenty-eight cars were vandalized earlier this week in the Palestinian West Bank village of Mazra'a al-Qibliya near Ramallah, Palestinians reported. Some of the cars were also reportedly spray-painted with graffiti in Hebrew and Stars of David.

Palestinians said they had complained to the Israel Police, but that police forces refrained from entering the village when rocks were thrown at them.

Open gallery view A car is seen sprayed with Hebrew graffiti, last week. Credit: Mohammed Hassan

“On Sunday night or Monday morning, we found a few cars in the area with all their tires slashed," the head of the village, Sa'id Shartah, said. "They also wrote ‘Enough with the terrorist attacks’ on the car belonging to the local government and on the village bus, and drew a Star of David in red on the cars. They made a mess. Almost 30 cars were damaged.”

Shartah added: “The police didn’t come but the [Israeli] District Coordination and Liaison Office came. They didn’t come over this, but we showed them pictures and told them about it all. The police came in the afternoon and there were a lot of children who threw rocks, and didn’t let them enter the village, so they left.”

Palestinian sources and Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and Yesh Din reported on Sunday that hundreds of olive trees and vines were found destroyed on land belonging to five different villages in the West Bank.

In at least four of these cases, the trees were in plots Palestinians can only harvest under army supervision due to the plots’ proximity to settlements or outposts from which Israelis have attacked Palestinian farmers.

In the last two months, ahead of the olive harvest, there has been an increase in the number of trees deliberately damaged. Yesh Din has found that the highest rate of failure to investigate politically-motivated crimes against Palestinians relates to damaging trees, usually olive trees.