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.

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] 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.

 

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. 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] 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] 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]

 

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] 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.

 

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.

 

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. 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. 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 …”

 

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.

[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.

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