16th November 2013 | The Electronic Intifada, Joe Catron | Gaza City, Occupied Palestine
During
the recent olive harvest, which lasted from the end of September
through October, dozens of Palestinian volunteers joined
farmers in their groves near the tense barriers of the
Gaza Strip.
The
volunteers worked during a week at the height of the harvest season,
from 20 to 27 October, in two of the farming districts most often
targeted by Israeli forces:
Beit Hanoun, around the
Erez checkpoint in northern Gaza, and al-Qarara, a town in the
Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip.
Along
with others near the “buffer zone” separating Gaza from present-day
Israel, these areas face regular incursions by Israeli forces, which
often send tanks and bulldozers to level farmland. Even more frequent
are the bursts of gunfire aimed at farmers or others near the barrier
erected by Israel.
These attacks have claimed vast tracts of
productive farmland stretching hundreds of meters into the Gaza Strip,
converting them to wasteland or fields of low-maintenance crops, most of
which are wheat.
Abeer Abu Shawish, project coordinator for the
Protection for Better Production campaign — a project of the Arab Center
for Agricultural Development — said that more than fifty volunteers
joined the effort.
The mobilization involved farmers’ organizations, like the
Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and other groups across Gaza.
“Our
partner organizations mobilized volunteers to help farmers in the
restricted area harvest their olives,” Abu Shawish said. “They’re other
farmers, civil society activists, women: all these people joined us this
year.”
Destruction
“We can just plant
wheat and wait,” said Abu Jamal Abu Taima, a farmer in the village of
Khuzaa outside Khan Younis. “Other crops need to be tended every day.”
Abu Jamal’s 50
dunams (a
dunam is
equivalent to 1,000 square meters), which he plans to sow with wheat
after the November rains begin, once contained olive groves as well as
greenhouses for an array of vegetables.
“We used to grow enough olives for seventy large bottles of olive oil,” he said. “Now? Six.”
In
2002, Israeli forces began razing Palestinian agricultural areas near
the barrier, as well as along the Philadelphi Route by the Gaza Strip’s
border with
Egypt.
This
included the demolition of Abu Jamal’s olive groves and greenhouses, as
well as his home. “The Israelis destroyed them with four bulldozers,
five huge tanks and three Hummers,” he said.
Since its occupation of the Gaza Strip and
West Bank in
1967, Israel has uprooted 800,000 olive trees in those territories,
Oxfam reported in 2011. As the graphic design activism initiative
Visualizing Palestine recently illustrated, those trees would cover an area
33 times the size of New York City’s Central Park.
By 2013, according to the Palestinian
ministry of agriculture in Gaza, Israeli forces had leveled “some 20,000
dunams of
land areas planted with half a million trees” in the Gaza Strip,
contributing to a local deficit in olive oil production of 60 percent (“
Israeli crimes against farmers cause 60 percent deficit in olive production,” Palestine News Network, 24 September 2013).
In the West Bank, the destruction of olive trees by both Israeli settlers and occupation forces continues.
Stop the Wall and
the Palestinian Farmers’ Union have organized an accompaniment project
there, the You Are Not Alone campaign. By 8 November, its volunteers had
documented the burning and uprooting of 1,905 olive trees by settlers
during this harvest season alone.
Toxic sewage
A
report by Stop the Wall states that its list of attacks does not
“pretend to be complete.” Among the problems encountered by farmers
trying to reach their olive trees are “
settlers pump[ing] toxic sewage water on agricultural land” (“
Settlers burn and uproot 1,905 olive trees during the harvest season,” 8 November 2013).
On 28 October, the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz published excerpts of a list of
settler attacks on Palestinian olive groves and farmers maintained by the Israeli army (“
Israeli attacks on Palestinian olive groves kept secret by state.”
The
Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din has reported that Israeli
occupation police “overwhelmingly failed to investigate the incidents
and prosecute offenders,” noting that of 211 investigations actually
opened between 2005 and June 2013, only four produced indictments (“
97.4 percent of investigative files relating to damage of Palestinian olive trees are closed due to police failings,” 21 October 2013).
On
11 September, the Israeli army’s West Bank commander said his troops
would destroy olive groves in the town of Yabad for unspecified
“security purposes” (“
Israeli authorities to destroy olive groves for ‘security purposes,” Ma’an News Agency, 9 November 2013).
“We are still here”
But the destruction of olive trees in the Gaza Strip is largely complete. For years Israel has used armored
Caterpillar D9
bulldozers, accompanied by tanks, to clear away olive trees in the
“buffer zone.” Farmers in the area, who face the constant threats of
both gunfire and leveling of land, have little reason to plant any crop
needing regular attention or significant resources, much less crops that
require years of careful cultivation and maintenance.
“I want to plant more olive trees, and other things, but cannot,” Abu Taima said. “For now, I plant wheat.”
With
exceptions — most notably a 28 October airstrike on an olive grove near
Soudanya in the north of Gaza — the Strip’s olive harvest passed more
quietly than most agricultural activities in the territory.
“We
try to bring international attention to the farmers and discourage
Israeli attacks on them,” the Protection for Better Production
campaign’s Abu Shawish said. “By supporting them, we encourage them to
access their lands and keep using them. It shows the Israelis we are
still here, and we can access our lands without any fears. Farmers in
the restricted area can resist the occupation by existing on their own
lands.”
The Arab Center for Agricultural Development’s programs
for farmers do not end with accompaniment, Abu Shawish explained. The
organization has conducted intensive leadership training for 100 farmers
from the Gaza Strip’s five governorates, in farmers’ rights as well as
skills like public advocacy. It has also held awareness-raising
workshops for 500 more farmers.
“We are interested in building a social movement for farmers in Gaza,” she said.
The workshops also aim to build popular support for
boycotts of Israeli products and the purchase of Palestinian goods among farmers.
“These
workshops are about how to encourage farmers themselves to be involved
in the boycott campaign, and how they can help the national economy by
boycotting Israeli agriculture,” Abu Shawish said.
“We try to
encourage farmers to boycott Israeli agricultural goods and buy
Palestinian products to support the local economy. It’s raising
awareness. At the same time, it’s about getting farmers involved in the
campaign itself.”
Abu Taima, too, has a path of resistance.
“For
us, the land is something very important,” he said. “We cannot just
leave it. We will not have another 1948. We will not leave our lands
again.”
Joe Catron is a US activist in Gaza, Palestine. He co-edited The Prisoners’ Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag, an anthology of accounts by detainees freed in the 2011 prisoner exchange. He blogs at joecatron.wordpress.com and tweets @jncatron.
