Residents of the West Bank settlement outpost of Adei Ad began replanting hundreds of olive trees on Tuesday that they had uprooted from Palestinian lands last week.

The trees were returned to their Palestinian owner, a resident of Kafr Karyut, at the insistence of the Civil Administration. After the farmer complained that some 300 of his trees had been stolen by settlers, the Civil Administration investigated and found that not only had the trees been stolen, but some of them had been replanted in Adei Ad or along the access road to the outpost. It then ordered the settlers to return the trees by on Tuesday.

The settlers prepared the ground at Kafr Karyut for the replanting, laid the infrastructure for an irrigation system, and replanted the first few trees.

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"We are dealing with this incident in a focused manner ensuring that the land's Palestinian owner can access them freely, and we are in constant contact with him," a source in the Civil Administration said Tuesday. "We are continuing to monitor the issue and the implementation of our instructions."

Pinhas Wallerstein, chairman of the Benjamin Regional Council where Adei Ad is located, said that the settlers agreed to replant the trees in order to avoid a confrontation with the security forces, but continue to insist that the trees are actually Jewish-owned.

"This is an olive grove near the settlement of Ahiya that has been worked for years by employees and relatives of Yossi Shukar, who died a few months ago," Wallerstein said.

Since the trees bore no fruit this year, he continued, the family decided it was a good time to move them, and at the request of Adei Ad residents, they agreed to let some of the trees be replanted there. Nevertheless, in order to avoid a clash with the Civil Administration, the family later agreed to restore them to their original location, Wallerstein said.

A senior Civil Administration source responded that the agency investigated the claim that the grove was owned by Jews, but concluded that the land was in fact Palestinian-owned.