A prominent Israeli rabbi on Friday issued a religious ruling permitting Israeli occupiers to take olives from Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, claiming that harvesting the crop “demonstrates Jewish ownership of the land,”

The ruling was issued by Rabbi Dov Lior, one of the most prominent religious authorities among Israeli occupiers in the West Bank, and was published by Israeli Channel 13.

Lior claimed that Palestinians do not own their land, arguing that they had not purchased it from the “people of Israel” or from any Jewish person and describing the land as “stolen property.”

Citing Jewish religious law, he claimed that ownership of land cannot be transferred through theft and that Palestinian land therefore remains the property of the “people of Israel.”