Eight peace activists from Brighton arrived today in the West Bank village of Al
Masra to help the Palestinian villagers harvest their olives and to try to protect
them from attack by local Israeli settlers.They will be spending a week in the
village accompanying families to their olive groves.

The village of Al Mazra’a al Qibliyah will be attempting to harvest their Olives
over the next few weeks, supported by international supporters, knowing they are
likely to face aggression, intimidation and violence from Israeli settlers from
Talmon B settlement, one of 37 illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Information for journalists

During recent years Talmon B settlement has taken 14,000 dunums of land (4 dunums= 1 acre) from the Palestinians of Al Mazra’a. The villagers challenged a recent land
confiscation in court and won, only to have the land reclaimed by the IDF then
handed back to the settlers.

They have demonstrated against the theft of their land, and in October 07 a group
from Brighton joined them as they uprooted some of the grapevines illegally planted
on their land. The demonstration was met with live ammunition from the settlers and
three people from Brighton were arrested. During the following days settlers entered
the village to smash windows and destroy the olive trees. Fifteen Palestinians,
including the town’s Mayor and several underage children, were then arrested by the
Israeli Defence Force and detained for several months without charge.

In February this year a Palestinian teenager was shot dead by a settler during a
peaceful demonstration against the siege of Gaza. So far the settler has gone
unpunished and the Brighton Tubas group is currently working on ways in which to
bring him to justice and aid any court proceedings.

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