Israeli settlers on Saturday destroyed more than 1,000 olive trees near the village of al-Shuyukh north of Hebron, in the third such attack on the villagers' livelihood in recent memory.
Local activist Ahmad al-Halayqa told Ma'an that Israelis from the nearby settlement of Asfar, also known as Metzad, attacked the village and destroyed 1,200 trees.
He said that all of the destroyed trees had been recently planted following a similar attack by individuals from the same settlement which had destroyed trees in the area last month.
He said that the trees in the area belonged to local Palestinian farmer, Muhammad Abu Shanab al-Ayaydah as well as the children of Abd al-Qader Abu Shanab al-Ayaydah and Mousa Abu Shanab al-Ayayadah.
Al-Halayqa told Ma'an that the settlement of Asfar is located on land confiscated by Israeli authorities from Palestinian residents of al-Shuyukh, and now they hope to expand the land under their control by taking over the area where the olive trees were targeted.
And since "Local activist Ahmad al-Halayqa" is lying about that, he is probably lying about everything else.
As is nearly always the case, there are no photographs of these destroyed 1,200 olive trees, just as there weren't any photos of the 500 trees allegedly destroyed last month and 70 the week before that.
These numbers are now added to the absurd figure of 800,000 olive trees that the PA and an anti-Israel NGO have reported as being destroyed since 1967.
Of course, Ma'an reports the obvious lies as fact.
OCHA-OPT, which has its own problems with the truth, when in reporting on the alleged February incident, notes that the 500 "trees" were planted in a "donor-funded project," meaning that some Europeans had been paying for Arabs to plant these saplings in public lands illegally.