Settlers: Arabs Cut Olive Trees to Incriminate Jews

Residents of the Eli (pronounced Eh-lee) settlement in Benjamin Region say they discovered say they discovered on Wednesday "price tag" graffiti sprayed on chopped olive tree trunks in the settlement, Israeli press source reported. A day earlier, those same settlers had caught Arab villagers who were chopping down olive trees in their own village field, and spraying "price tag" on them, to incriminate their Jewish neighbors.

The settlers reported that over the past few days they'd been observing Palestinian youths arriving at their village olive grove wearing NGO provided vests and carrying electric saws. Those youths spent the day cutting down trees, and a day later the stumps had been sprayed with the slogan "Tag Mechir-price tag."

Eli's security coordinator Amitai Frankel told Walla that pruning dry branched is part of growing the olive trees, "but this time we saw they were simply cutting down the entire trunk and taking it away… They actually killed those trees."