How Palestine’s National Flower Mirrors Its People’s Plight
ATMOS (22/7/2025) With the arrival of spring, a carpet of flowers blankets the occupied West Bank. Even the lands scarred by Israel’s 400-mile separation barrier burst into color as the blossoms emerge. In the northeastern village of Faqqu’a, surrounded by Israel’s fence, one flower stands out: a tall iris with large, deep purple petals and sword-shaped leaves. Iris […]
Read →
Ganancias corporativas, pérdidas ambientales: el mayor lago artificial de Europa impulsa olivos intensivos
EL SALTO (19/10/2025) Una enorme presa construida con fondos públicos en el sureste de Portugal prometió desarrollar una de las regiones más áridas y empobrecidas de Europa. Sin embargo, la agricultura industrial de olivos está destruyendo ecosistemas y provocando la erosión del suelo y la pérdida de biodiversidad, mientras grandes corporaciones obtienen beneficios. Las hileras […]
Read →
Western Europe’s largest artificial lake was meant to save Alentejo. It may be doing the opposite
GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE (August) The Alqueva dam promised prosperity for Portugal’s parched south. Instead, it’s fuelling a corporate-driven monoculture that ecologists and farmers warn is destroying the land and the way of life it sustained. On a bright winter morning, Eva Barrocas watches over her sheep as they graze in the olive grove her grandparents planted […]
Read →
‘An ecocide’: How olive oil giants are using a mega dam to intensify production in Portugal
EURONEWS (13/4/25) Standing under an enormous olive tree, José Pedro Oliveira gently caresses its gnarled trunk. “It is more than one thousand years. Maybe older than Christ,” he says. Located near Serpa, in the gently rolling hills of Alentejo in southeastern Portugal, his 30-hectare olive grove is part of a mosaic of oak and fruit […]
Read →
“A oliveira é considerada a árvore da paz, mas estão a torná-la numa arma de guerra”
PÚBLICO (8/12/2024) A época da apanha da azeitona é a mais importante para comunidades rurais palestinianas. Mas com o intensificar de ataques do Exército e colonos israelitas, é também a mais perigosa. Apesar dos riscos, os palestinianos continuam a cuidar das suas oliveiras, e a colher os frutos de uma tradição com milhares de anos. Walaja, Palestina […]
Read →
Los aceituneros palestinos y los árboles milenarios que los arraigan a la tierra
EL SALTO (8/12/2024) A mediados de noviembre, cuando los cielos se llenan de nubes y las primeras lluvias del otoño finalmente llegan a Palestina tras largos meses de sequía, Salah Abu Ali anuncia el inicio de la cosecha de uno de los olivos más antiguos del mundo en Walaja, un pueblo confinado entre Jerusalén y […]
Read →
Waging a war on Palestinian olive trees
NEW INTERNATIONALIST (5/12/2024) After the first rainfall of autumn, Salah Abu Ali announced the harvest of one of the world’s oldest olive trees in al-Walaja, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. He spread red mats around the enormous gnarled trunk, fetched wooden ladders to reach the high branches and gathered his family under the monumental tree. ‘Everyone […]
Read →
Israeli army kills Palestinian grandmother picking olives from her own land
THE NEW ARAB (27/11/2024) When Hussam Abu Salameh received permission from the Israeli military to access the olive grove that has been in his family for generations, he decided to wait. His land, located east of Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank, is next to the separation wall, where he had previously been shot […]
Read →
Where shepherds coexist with wolves
BBC (9/8/2024) “My two favourite animals are sheep and wolves,” says Miguel Afonso as he looks over his flock of 200 sheep bleating and grazing on the gently rolling hills surrounding the village of Rio de Onor in northeastern Portugal. Holding his sturdy crook, the 34-year-old shepherd doesn’t see his love for wolves as inconsistent […]
Read →
Nurturing Seeds of Freedom in Palestine
YES MAGAZINE (5/8/2024) Surrounded by a 26-foot-high separation wall, barbed wire, and a watchtower, a group of young Palestinians prepares a 3.5-acre piece of land for the growing season in spring. The noise of their hoes shaping the soil mixes with the humming of construction cranes from the nearby Israeli settlement of Modi’in Illit. Established […]
Read →