Burning wheat fields - Samson redivivus

Near Orif
Haaretz reported 28 May 2012

An Israeli settler shot and wounded a Palestinian man on Saturday in a clash that began when a group of settlers set fire to fields belonging to a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, officials said.

Residents said about 25 settlers, some of them carrying guns, set fire to wheat fields in the village of Orif, which is near the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Some villagers came out to extinguish the fire and clashed with the settlers, said Nablus official Kassan Daglas. Israeli soldiers then came to the scene and broke up the clashes.

The Palestinian was shot in the stomach, medical officials said, and taken to the hospital. Haaretz

Near Etam
The inspiration for the people of Ofir to set Palestinian farmer's fields into fire most likely comes from the Holy Bible. The book of Judges admiringly tells about the adventures of the mighty long-haired hero Samson teasing the sworn enemies of the tribes of Israel, the Philistines.

But it came to pass within a while after, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid; and he said, “I will go in to my wife into the chamber.” But her father would not suffer him to go in.

And her father said, “I verily thought that thou hadst utterly hated her. Therefore I gave her to thy companion. Is not her younger sister fairer than she? Take her, I pray thee, instead of her.”

And Samson said concerning them, “Now shall I be more blameless than the Philistines, though I do them a displeasure.”

And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails.

And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives.

Then the Philistines said, “Who hath done this?” And they answered, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife and given her to his companion.” And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire.

And Samson said unto them, “Though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you, and after that I will cease”;

and he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter. And he went down and dwelt in the top of the rock of Etam.
Judges 15:1-8 KJ21

Near Ekron
Professor Trude Dothan has directed intensive archaeological excavations at Tel Miqne, the Biblical Ekron. Much have been learned from these and other excavations about the culture of the Philistines (Egyptian peleset) living from Late Bronze Age on at the Philistine coast. Even the name Goliath has recently been found inscribed in a potsherd. Modern scholars think that the Philistines arrived from the direction of the Aegean Sea during the tumultuous last centuries of the 2nd millennium before Christ.

Since the Philistines were not Arabs, who are also mentioned in the Bible as dwellers in the desert, why are the people of Palestine so called?

The decisive person was the famous Greek historian and geographer Herodotus (484 – 425 BC) who came during his travels also to the great harbour of Gaza and asked "what is this country called". He was told that it is the country of the Philistines. From this came the Greco-Roman name Palaestina for the entire area which survives in the Ottoman name of the pashalik of Filastin and the British Mandate period name Palestine separate from Eastern Palestine or Transjordan.