Palestinians in the village of Burin were just sitting down to end their daily Ramadan fast when they noticed smoke rising on the outskirts of the eastern part of the village. As the evening unfolded they were forced to watch as the night sky lit up their village with orange flames and clouds of smoke. By the time the settlers and soldiers retreated, and the residents were able to put out the fires, the damage had already been done. “That land was planted with hundreds of olive trees, many of them were more than 70 years old,” Walid Saeed, 70, a local farmer in Burin, tells Mondoweiss. “There is no way to describe how we feel in Burin after what happened. This land, these trees, they are our whole lives, our heart and soul. They mean everything to us.”

B’Tselem researcher Nasr Nawaja’a tells Mondoweiss that intimidation from Israeli settlers and the Shin Bet has increased since a video he recorded showing the arrest of Palestinian children made international headlines. In fact, just a few days after the video of the boys’ detention was published, Nawaja’a says he was summoned for interrogation by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, and was warned to “not make any more trouble for the army.”

After months of delays, the Palestinian Authority (PA) began its public coronavirus vaccination campaign this week, albeit to a very slow start.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that the man, 45-year-old Atef Hanaysheh, was shot with live ammunition in the head during a protest against settlement expansion and the confiscation of Palestinian-owned land in the village of Beit Dajan.

Just days before US President-elect Joe Biden is set to take office, the Israeli government approved the construction of 800 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank — a move critics have deemed as an effort to take advantage of the final days of the pro-settlement Trump administration.

Earlier this week residents of Hebron staged protests against the Palestinian Authority (PA) over renewed COVID-19 lockdowns across the West Bank, sparking clashes and confrontations between armed civilians and PA security forces.

Palestinians, like many other people around the globe, have largely settled into a new reality, accepting COVID-19 as an unfortunate reality, but a reality they must live with nonetheless. That is, until this week.

A group of Republicans senators led by Arkansas’ Tom Cotton are urging the Trump administration to label West Bank goods as “Made in Israel.” A letter sent to Trump by the lawmakers was obtained by Axios. “This decision would support Israel and push back against anti-Semitism and the BDS movement,” it states.

“I would like to tell Pompeo, and all Americans, that when you drink that wine, you are drinking the blood of the Palestinian people,” Abdel Jawab Saleh, a Palestinian who owns land on this site of the Psagot settlement said.

The Israeli settlers in the Nablus district are notoriously violent, and are routinely recorded as attacking Palestinians and their property year round. But once the olive harvest comes around every year, settlers typically focus their attacks onto Palestinian farmers and their olive trees.