Israeli campaign of West Bank destruction moves on to region’s food basket

Arraba, occupied West Bank – As Kamal al-Uraidi drove a beat-up Volkswagen down the Arraba-Ya’bad road, an otherwise pleasant early September day was disrupted by the whirring clang of bulldozers and the snapping cracks of olive trees being ripped from the ground on both sides of the road.The destruction stretched for kilometres: Whole fields of olive groves razed, structures reduced to twisted metal, Israeli flags planted as far as the eye could see – all the way to the strategically significant Arraba Junction and even past the red pylons marking the boundary of Area A, which is technically under the control of the Palestinian Authority.Al-Uraidi passed the first bulldozer completing its destructive work on the al-Fari family’s land on Thursday. Briefly, two Palestinian women from the family could be seen pleading with two soldiers, who kept them back from the machines finishing off the last of the family’s olive groves. The family later said their phones were confiscated during the uprooting so they could not film it and their IDs taken and photographed.A second bulldozer worked simultaneously further down the road, demolishing more olive trees; on another destroyed plot, famili...