MONGABAY (30/11/2023)
The first rainfall of autumn after months of drought signals the start of the olive harvest, the most important time of year for many Palestinian farmers. Between October and November, Palestinians gather mats, ladders and buckets to pick olives and picnic in orchards that have been passed down through generations.
“Many farmers rely completely on their olive harvest,” says Ghassan Najjar, a 35-year-old organic farmer using agroecology techniques in Burin, a village near Nablus in the northern occupied West Bank. “It’s our livelihood, our source of life.”
Nearly half of all cultivated land in the occupied West Bank and Gaza is planted with more than 10 million olive trees of mostly native, drought-resilient varieties. Around 100,000 Palestinian families are estimated to rely on these trees as a source of income. Most of the olives are sent to presses to produce olive oil, a staple in Mediterranean cuisine, while some are cured for eating and are also used to make medicine and soap.
But what used to be a cherished time with extended family and friends coming together to pick olives, drink tea and share food under the trees has become increasingly dangerous and mournful in the West Bank. According to human rights organizations, Israeli settlers who claim the land, in violation of U.N. resolutions, regularly attack Palestinian farmers, prevent them from reaching their ancestral lands, steal their olives and agricultural equipment, and destroy their olive trees.
While global attention is focused on the war in Gaza, farmers across the West Bank are facing growing violence. Since the war began on Oct. 7, settler attacks against Palestinians have more than doubled, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In the past month and a half, at least 230 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank, including 61 children. Settler violence and intimidation have forcibly displaced 16 Palestinian communities, and the Palestinian Authority reports that more than 3,000 olive trees have been destroyed by the illegal settlers.
For Ghassan, this olive harvest season has been the worst he can remember. “We are seeing an increase in the number of attacks, not only from settlers but also from the army,” he says. “[The Israeli military] cut access to all roads leading to our agricultural land. The settlers have burned and cut about 500 olive trees in Burin,” Ghassan says. Some of the trees were “hundreds of years old. Older than the state of Israel,” he says (…)
Photo: Anne Paq