The chief rabbi of the Jewish Yitzhar settlement, located in the West Bank, will issue an edict that allows settlers to steal the agricultural crops of Palestinian farms in nearby villages.
Israeli sources said that the rabbi, regarded as the spiritual leader of the settlement, said that other rabbis have different opinions as to whether it is legal for the settlers to rob the Palestinian farmer's crops or not.
However, he said that he will issue an edict allowing such acts after considering each case separately.
Jewish settlers in the Yiitzhar settlement have repeatedly attacked Palestinians in nearby villages and towns.
Last month, they poisoned and damaged the main water spring for the Madama village.
An Oxfam team tried to repair the damage but they said that they needed protection because armed Israeli settlers opened fire on workers repairing the same spring in two separate occasions during 2002.
Israel's Haaretz daily said that extremist settlers have attacked the water system for the village several times, destroying the water pipes and throwing building waste into the water holes.
The council head of the village, Ayed Kamal, said that the Palestinian Authority stopped sending complaints to the Israeli army because it fails to act on Palestinians' complaints against settlers.
ALjazeera.com 07.Mar.05
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This is the sixth time in the past three years that the spring, the only source of water for the village's 1,700 residents, and the water system, have been deliberately damaged.
The village is near the extremist Yitzhar settlement and its outposts in the West Bank.
An Oxfam delegation, accompanied by an IDF force for protection, set out last Thursday to gauge the damage. The Oxfam group needed protection after armed Israelis opened fire on workers repairing the spring and water pipes on two previous occasions during 2002.
Talia Somech, a spokeswoman for the IDF's civil administration, told Haaretz that the IDF learned of the damage only during the visit on Thursday and that the matter would be passed on to the police.
Kamal told Haaretz that 10 days ago a group of Israelis, some of them armed, clashed with shepherds near the spring. That evening the water stopped flowing to the villagers' houses. On Thursday they found that the water pipes had been broken and the cement encasing one of the water wells had been smashed to pieces. The debris had been thrown into the well.
For three years - from the end of 2000 to the end of 2003 - unknown perpetrators repeatedly sabotaged the water system, smashing the water pipes and throwing building waste into the water holes. During these years the villagers had no water supply.
Oxfam financed the encasement of the pipes above the surface with concrete and built an iron net around the water holes to protect them. However, once again the concrete and pipes were smashed and the drinking water fouled with dirty diapers and other waste.
