(IsraelNN.com) Dozens of Palestinian Authority Arabs accompanied by Israeli anarchists entered the town of Yitzhar in Samaria on Friday morning. The group said it had come to harvest olives. One member of the group was senior Kibbutz Movement official Yoel Marshak, Yitzhar residents said.

IDF officers said they had not received a request to harvest olives in the area. Such a request would almost certainly have been rejected, residents of Yitzhar said, as the group was located within the territory of the town itself and not in an Arab-owned orchard.

Officers and police forcibly removed the group from the town. The confrontation led to the closure of the entrance to Yitzhar for a short time.

"This incident goes to show yet again how the stories about 'olive harvesting' are mainly planned provocations,” residents of Yitzhar said.

A similar incident took place approximately one month ago, when Arabs infiltrated Yitzhar and began damaging olive trees. Soldiers forced them to leave. Soldiers said the Arabs were apparently trying to make it appear as if residents of Yitzhar had cut down Arab-owned trees.

Friday's incident came just two days after the Bethlehem-based PA Ma'an news agency reported that Arab villagers in the Shechem region of Samaria planned to “take action against settler violence” by targeting Jewish towns in the region. The villagers said they would first target the Jews living in Homesh, in northern Samaria . Homesh was reduced to rubble in the 2005 Disengagement and has been repopulated by pioneers to a limited extent.  

In addition, the Arabs announced plans to hold an event in the village of Asira el-Kabalia on Saturday. The village, located near Yitzhar, was the site of Jewish-Arab clashes recently after a resident of the village infiltrated Yitzhar and stabbed a nine-year-old boy.