Israeli bulldozers uprooted hundreds of trees in the West Bank village of al-Mughayyir on Sunday (August 24, 2025) in the presence of the Israeli military, according to AFP journalists who witnessed the scene.

Most of the felled vegetation appeared to be olive trees, essential to the economy and culture of the West Bank, while olive groves have also long been a flashpoint for violent clashes between farmers and encroaching Israeli settlers.

Abdelatif Mohammed Abu Aliya, a local farmer from the village near Ramallah, said he lost olive trees that were over 70 years old on about one hectare of land.

“They completely uprooted and levelled them under false pretences,” he said, explaining he and other residents had already begun replanting the pulled-up trees.

AFP photographers on the ground saw overturned soil, olive trees lying on the ground, and several bulldozers operating on the hills surrounding the village.

One bulldozer had an Israeli flag, and Israeli military vehicles were parked nearby.

“The goal is control and forcing people to leave. This is just the beginning — it will expand across the entire West Bank,” said Ghassan Abu Aliya, who leads a local agricultural association.

Residents said the bulldozing began on Thursday. A Palestinian NGO reported 14 people had been arrested in the village over the past three days.

When asked about the incident, the Israeli army told AFP late on Sunday it had “launched intensive operational activity in the area” following a “serious shooting attack near the village”.

‘Heavy price’

In a statement issued Friday, the army said it had arrested a man from al-Mughayyir, accusing him of being “responsible for a terrorist attack” nearby.

On August 16, the Palestinian Authority reported that an 18-year-old man had been shot and killed by the Israeli army in the same village.

The army said its forces responded to stones thrown by “terrorists” but did not directly link the incident to the young man’s death.

In a video widely circulated in Israeli media on Friday, a senior military commander refers to the attack in al-Mughayyir and vows to make “every village and every enemy… pay a heavy price” for attacks against Israelis.

Avi Bluth, the military’s top commander in the West Bank, says in the video that the villages of Palestinian attackers could face curfews, sieges and terrain “shaping actions” with the aim of deterrence.

Violence in the West Bank has escalated since the war in Gaza began following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

Since then, at least 971 Palestinians — including both militants and civilians — have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank, according to AFP figures based on Palestinian Authority data.

In the same period, at least 36 Israelis, both civilians and soldiers, have been killed in attacks or military operations in the West Bank, according to official Israeli sources.

The West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, is home to about three million Palestinians and 5,00,000 Israelis living in settlements that are considered illegal under international law.

Israel gave final approval for a controversial settlement project in the occupied West Bank that would effectively cut the territory in two, and that Palestinians and rights groups say could destroy plans for a future Palestinian state.

Settlement development in E1, an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, has been under consideration for more than two decades, but was frozen due to U.S. pressure during previous administrations.

On Wednesday (August 20, 2025), the project received final approval from the Planning and Building Committee after the last petitions against it were rejected on Aug. 6.

If the process moves quickly, infrastructure work could begin in the next few months and construction of homes could start in around a year. The plan includes around 3,500 apartments to expand the settlement of Maale Adumim, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said during a press conference at the site last Thursday.

Mr. Smotrich cast the approval as a riposte to western countries that announced their plans to recognize a Palestinian state in recent weeks.

“This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize,” Mr. Smotrich told reporters. “Anyone in the world who tries today to recognize a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground.”

The location of E1 is significant because it is one of the last geographical links between Ramallah, in the northern West Bank, and Bethlehem in the southern West Bank.

The two cities are 22 kilometers (14 miles) apart by air, but Palestinians traveling between them must take a wide detour and pass through multiple Israeli checkpoints, adding hours to the journey. The hope for final status negotiations for a Palestinian state was to have the region eventually serve as a direct link between the cities.

Peace Now, an organization that tracks settlement expansion in the West Bank, called the E1 project “deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution” which is “guaranteeing many more years of bloodshed.”

Israel’s plans to expand settlements are part of an increasingly difficult reality for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as the world’s attention focuses on the war in Gaza. There have been marked increases in attacks by settlers on Palestinians, evictions from Palestinian towns, and checkpoints that choke freedom of movement, as well as several Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

More than 700,000 Israelis now live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for a future state. The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction in these areas to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.

Israel’s government is dominated by religious and ultranationalist politicians with close ties to the settlement movement. Mr. Smotrich, previously a firebrand settler leader and now finance minister, has been granted Cabinet-level authority over settlement policies and vowed to double the settler population in the West Bank.

Israel has annexed east Jerusalem and claims it as part of its capital, which is not internationally recognized. It says the West Bank is disputed territory whose fate should be determined through negotiations. Israel withdrew from 21 settlements Gaza in 2005.