Haaretz
Court avoids intervention amid claims IDF not securing Palestinians' harvest
Date: 11-01-04
High Court Justice Dorit Beinisch said Monday that the Israel Defense Forces must protect Palestinians during their olive harvest, however, she said the court had no power to determine the amount of troops that should be allotted to the task.
Justice Beinisch was responding to a petition submitted by Palestinian farmers and by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), which argued that the IDF was not securing the harvest workers, and that a plan contrived by the IDF in fact made the harvest impossible. According to the plan, each village was allotted certain days in which it could harvest its olive groves.
Beinisch said that the fact that Palestinian farmers' olive harvest was being disturbed by settlers was a "tragedy," and that the IDF must protect the farmers while they work.
The state, represented by attorney Orit Koren, said that the IDF had to devise a system assigning certain days to each village because it had to take many tasks and demands into consideration. Koren added that the IDF cannot provide forces to each village, every day.
At the end of the hearing, the court ruled that the ACRI must provide the state, later that day, with a list of trouble spots in which farmers were having problems harvesting their olives.
The fundamental argument of the petition - a demand by the ACRI that the IDF prevent violence by settlers - will be discussed at a later date.
SOURCE
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