Some 40 Israeli writers, artists and businessmen picked olives withPalestinian villagers south of Nablus today in protest against increasingviolence from Jewish settlers.
The demonstration, which took place in the olive groves nearAqraba village, was attended by veteran Israeli writers Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshuaand David Grossman, who protested alongside Rabbi Menachem Froman, apro-peace rabbi from the Jewish settlement of Teqoa south ofJerusalem.
"We have come here to call for justice," said Oz, who wasnominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature this year.
"I came to protest against what I regard as a crying and viciousplunder of the Arab olive harvest," he added in English.
Israeli and international aid workerssayIsraeli settlers are waging a campaign ofintimidation and harassment against Palestinian farmers during themonth-long olive harvest.
In the valley just outside the village, farmers face repeatedraids by armed settlers who live on outposts at the edge of thenearby Jewish settlement of Itamar.
Reading from a heavily-bound book of Jewish teachings, Fromancondemned the violence and the plunder of the Palestinian oliveharvest, citing Jewish texts which forbade such practices.
"There is a worse thing than plunder -- and that is the currentsituation between the Jews and the Palestinians living in Judaea andSamaria," he said, using the Biblical term for the West Bank.
"It is a deep religious duty to love your neighbour and thePalestinians are our neighbours."
Froman has earned opprobrium from settlers for reaching out toPalestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the spiritual leader of themilitant Islamic group Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, proposing tobroker settler-Palestinian coexistence through 'loving thyneighbour'.
But veteran peace activist Yakov Manor said that the uncheckedtheft and violence perpetrated by the Jewish settlers showed therewas no law and order in the West Bank.
"Beyond the Green Line (the 1967 border between Israel and theWest Bank) it is just complete chaos," he said. "What the settlersare doing is a complete mutation of Zionism."
During this year's olive harvest, settlers have killed onePalestinian farmer and wounded several others.
The Israeli 'rights' group B'Tselem said settlers had also stolenolives belonging to Palestinian farmers.
AFP