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 comes to pick olives, the young and the old. It’s our source of income and our source of hope. This tree has been feeding people for thousands of years,’ says Abu Ali. Scientists who studied the tree estimated its age at between 4,000 to 5,000-years, predating any of the Abrahamic religions.
The olive season between October and November used to be a festive time, with communities coming together to pick olives, sing, drink tea and share food in groves passed down through generations. Nearly half of all cultivated land in the occupied West Bank and Gaza is planted with olive trees, and around 100,000 Palestinian families are estimated to rely on their groves as a source of income.
But al-Walaja is besieged by Israeli settlements and the separation fence that has cut off farmers from their lands. ‘Before the wall was built, we had a lot of old olive trees here,’ says Abu Ali, pointing to the nearby fence of a settlers’ road encroaching on his land. ‘Now we live in a prison.’
During the 1948 Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe, al-Walaja’s residents lost three-quarters of their land and were forcibly displaced. Some, like Abu Ali’s family, resettled on the remaining land and rebuilt the village on al-Walaja’s southeastern ridge. Since 1967, when Israel occupied what remained of Palestine, more of al-Walaja’s land has been confiscated to build Israeli settlements and the separation wall.
As Israeli settlements expand, picking olives has become an increasingly dangerous activity. In the West Bank, restrictions imposed by the Israeli army have prevented Palestinians from reaching their ancestral lands, while settlers escalate their attacks against Palestinian farmers to expel them from the land.
On October 17, Hanan Abu Salameh, a 59-year-old mother of seven, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers while harvesting olives from her family’s land near the separation wall in Faqqua, close to Jenin.
Since the start of the olive harvest in October, the UN has documented 250 settler attacks across the West Bank, with more than 2,800 trees burnt or cut down, making it the ‘the most dangerous olive season ever’.
While olive branches have long been seen as a symbol of peace, Israel “is waging a war against our olive trees,” says Ameed Aldasouqi, a farmer from Burqa who was prevented from accessing his olive grove by Israeli forces.
Last year, Palestinians were unable to harvest 96,000 dunums (9,600 hectares) of olive groves in the West Bank because of Israeli restrictions, resulting in the loss of 1,200 metric tons of olive oil, worth an estimated $10 million. In Gaza, over three-quarters of olive groves have been destroyed by Israeli attacks since October 2023.
For decades, Israeli forces and settlers have destroyed millions of trees from Palestinian lands, says Ibrahim Manasra, who works with the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature. His organisation has led a planting campaign under the slogan “they uproot a tree, we replant ten.”
According to Manasra, the targeting of olive trees is part of ongoing efforts to displace Palestinians and appropriate their lands. “The olive tree represents the Palestinian farmer. To uproot them is to uproot the farmers,” he explains.
“Olive trees are not just a source of income,” says Abeer al-Butmeh, who coordinates a network of Palestinian environmental NGOs. “They are symbols of resistance and our belonging to the land. They prove that we have been here for a very long time caring for the trees.”
Despite the threats of violence and dispossession, Palestinian farmers like Abu Ali, the guardian of Walaja’s 5,000-year-old tree, remain defiant.
“This tree survived all these years of natural disasters, earthquakes, storms and destruction caused by humans. It has defied humans,” he says. “Generation after generation we have taken care of this land and this tree. My sons will take care of it – it will remain here for future generations.”
Photo by Mosab Shawer
For the New Internationalist