THE OLIVE TREES OF PALESTINE WEEP

Universally regarded as the symbol of peace, the olive tree has become the object of violence. For more than forty years, Israel has uprooted over one million olive trees and hundreds of thousands of fruit trees in Palestine with terrible economic and ecological consequences for the Palestinian people. Their willful destruction has so threatened Palestinian culture, heritage and identity that the olive tree has now become the symbol of Palestinian steadfastness because of its own rootedness and ability to survive in a land where water is perennially scarce.

This woman partakes in a celebration of a successful harvest season.

She looks to be part of the land itself, rugged, proud, enduring.

Throughout the centuries, Palestinian farmers have made their living from olive cultivation and olive oil production; 80 percent of cultivated land in the West Bank and Gaza is planted with olive trees. [1]

Palestinian farmer Tawfiq Hasan Salim of Jayyous reacts following

the destruction of his olive trees by settlers from Zufim. Photo: Gary Fields

In the West Bank alone, some 100,000 families are dependent on olive sales.[2]

Today, the olive harvest provides Palestinian farmers with anywhere between 25 to 50 percent of their annual income, and as the economic crisis deepens, the harvest provides for many their basic means of survival.[3]

But despite the hardships, it is the festivities and traditions that accompany the weeks of harvesting that have held Palestinian communities together and are, in fact, a demonstration of their ownership of the land that no occupation can extinguish except by the annihilation of Palestinian society itself.

Echoes of more peaceful days, a young girl

singing and dancing to celebrate a successful harvest.

And that is precisely what Israel has been doing ~ through brute force and far more insidious ways. Under an old law from the Ottoman era, Israel claims as state property, land that has been "abandoned" and left uncultivated for a period of four years and this land is then usually allocated to Israeli settlers. Of course, the land has not been voluntarily abandoned.

The much hated wall that keeps the farmers from their farms and will cost them much land by Israeli appropriation laws by forcing them to leave land untended for a few years at a stretch.

Because of Israel's closure policy, which imposes the most draconian restrictions on movement, Palestinian farmers cannot reach their agricultural lands to tend and harvest their crops. Not only are permits required to move about in their own homeland, but farmers are forced to use alternative routes which must be negotiated on foot or by donkey because about 70 percent of these alternative routes ~ those connected to main or bypass roads ~ have been closed by the Israeli army with concrete blocks and ditches.

And now a wall is being built for "security reasons" which will permanently separate Palestinian families from their farmlands, except for the gates that allow access at certain times, but more often than not, at the whim of Israeli soldiers who may not even turn up to open them.[4]

Palestinian farmers waiting for the army to open the gate in order to go back from their fields to their houses. In 2003 Israel built the separation wall in the area, cutting the village from part of its agriculture land. The residences often suffer various problems in gaining access to their land and dependent on the arbitrary attitude of the army. Photo by: Keren Manor/Activestills.org

This makes year-round maintenance of farmers' crops extremely difficult if not impossible. Hence, the "abandonment" of land that Israel uses to justify its land theft. Since 1967, the Israeli military and illegal settlers have destroyed more than one million olive trees claiming that stone throwers and gunmen hide behind them to attack the settlers.[5]

A tree burns near Huwwara. On 19 June 2008, Israeli settlers from Yizhar settlement burnt dozens of dunums of agricultural lands owned by Palestinians. They also attacked Palestinian houses and people by throwing stones, and erected checkpoints. The Israeli army came but had prevented the firemen and people to reach the fires for hours during which the fire could spread in the area. Thousands of trees were destroyed. The settlers also attacked a house in the nearbye village of Sirra by throwing stones. They also put the land on fire and drew some David Stars on a Palestinian house. Photo by Anne Paq/Activestills.og

This is a specious argument because these trees grow deep inside Palestinian territory where no Israeli settler or soldier should be in any case. But, Israel is intent on appropriating even the last vestiges of land left to the Palestinians and so turns a blind eye to any methods used by settlers and soldiers alike to terrorize the farmers away from their farms and crops, even if that means razing their land. Farmers are constantly under threat of being beaten and shot at, having their water supplies contaminated (already scarce because 85 percent of renewable water resources go to the settlers and Israel), their olive groves torched and their olive trees uprooted. [6]

Palestinian after being attacked by settlers from Yitzhar. On Saturday, 11/10/2008, the residents of Burin and the near by villages wenT to harvest olives in their fields next to the settlement of Yitzhar. While harvesting they were attacked by settlers that came down to the fields, threw stones on Palestinians and damaged olive trees. Two Palestinians were injured. Photo by: Keren Manor/Activestills.org.

On a larger scale, the Israeli military brings in the bulldozers to uproot trees in the way of the "security" wall's route and where they impede the development of infrastructure necessary to service the illegal settlements. Some of these threatened trees are 700 to 1,000 years old and are still producing olives. [7]

A magnificent 1500 year old olive tree.

These precious trees are being replaced by roads, sewerage electricity, running water and telecommunications networks, Israeli military barracks, training areas, industrial estates and factories leading to massive despoliation of the environment. If Israel has its way, neither the trees nor the Palestinians who have cared for them will survive the barbaric ethnic and environmental cleansing of Palestine. On top of all this, since the settlers' homes are always built atop the hills, these people have begun to purposefully pollute the water that would eventually reach the Palestinians in the lands below.

The irony of it all is that Israel's uprooting of olive trees is contrary to the Jewish halakhic principle whose origin is found in the Torah: "Even if you are at war with a city ... you must not destroy its trees" (Deut 20:19). Under the pretext of "redeeming" the land the Jews claim God gave them and the trees they are supposed to preserve, Israel continues to violently expropriate Palestinian land.

With each uprooted tree, another slab of concrete is put in place for the wall and the illegal Jewish settlements ~ the landscape sculpted and changed beyond all recognition and no longer the sacrosanct place that has long given Israel its spurious Biblical justification for dispossessing the Palestinians of the land they have nurtured since time immemorial.

Where once there were trees and grazing land,

there are now sprawling settlements.
This beautiful cement city houses 400, 000 on the West Bank.

The agonizing pain of loss felt by Palestinians for their ravaged land is not expressed in the statistics. Only those who have suffered the same cruel violations or those who seek to protect and preserve the delicate balance of the world's environment can understand what it means for people of the land. International law, although on their side, remains ineffective as no world government, not even the United Nations, is prepared to pressure Israel to stop its illegal collective punishment of the entire Palestinian population.

Palestinian couple harvesting the family olive tree

as have their ancestors on this land
for thousands of years. For long will they be able to continue?

Today, there are campaigns all around the world to end the uprooting of trees in Palestine and to replant those which have already been uprooted. And each year, when the Palestinian olive harvest approaches, international volunteers join Palestinians to provide some human protection from the acts of violence visited on Palestinian farmers by Israeli settlers and soldiers who want to stop the harvesting of crops.

Four settlers from Tel Rumeda attacked a photographer, stoning him and breaking his cameras. Israeli, Palestinian and international activists harvested olives in Tel Rumeda until the police arrested 3 activists, letting the settlers free. Photo by yotam ronen/Activestills.org

These wonderful acts of solidarity help to heal the land, but they cannot heal the pain of those who have to watch the uprooting of age-old olive trees, the desecration of their land and their millennia-old heritage. Such heartbreaking reality has led the Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, to say,

"If the olive trees knew the hands
that planted them,
their oil would have become tears ..."

A traditional Palestinian olive and fruit groves farm in days past.

Endnotes

[1] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affiars, "The Olive Harvest in the West Bank and Gaza," October 2006.
[2] Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ), "Olive Harvest in Palestine. Another Season, Another Anguish," November 2004.
[3] Canaan Fair Trade, www.olivecoop.com/Canaan.html.
[4] OXFAM, "Forgotten Villages: Struggling to survive under closure in the West Bank," September 2002, p. 21.
[5] ARIJ, "Olive Harvest in Palestine. Another Season, Another Anguish," November 2004.

A Palestinian farm child makes little characters from bits of the crop.

[6] UN Report of the Special Committee to investigate Israeli Practices affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and other Arabs of the Occupied Territories, No. 40, September 2005.
[7] Atyaf Alwazir, "Uprooting Olive trees in Palestine," Inventory of Conflict and Environment(ICE), Case Number: 110, American University, November 2002.