As Palestinians embark on picking their olives, a main income-generating seasons for thousands of Palestinian families, extremist Israeli settlers on Friday harassed Palestinian villagers harvesting olives in the village of Sebastia, to the north of Nablus in the West Bank, and chased them out of their lands, according to local sources.

Mayor of Sebastia, Mohammad Azem, said dozens of Israeli settlers backed by a military escort broke into the village, harassed the villagers and chased them out of their lands.

Not only the army did nothing to stop the settlers, Azem added, but also the Israeli soldiers fired teargas canisters towards the villagers to prevent them from confronting the assaulting settlers.