Every year Palestinian olive pickers are subjected to the violence, wanton destruction and sheer vandalism of Israeli “settlers”. But they remain steadfast — a symbolic protest of their identity, existence and belonging to Palestine.
The “settlers”, a euphemism for Zionists colonialists, know this and step up their violence against the olive tree, its branches and the dark-red soil it is grown on, running through the Palestinian veins and locking them unto the land as if they are one.
This year is no different. Since October 1, when the olive picking harvesting season started, the Israeli colonists have been exceptionally vehement in displaying their violence against man and the blessed tree. Their crescendo of excruciating incidents is expected to continue until the end of November, when the season comes to an close.
The typical scenario is repeated time and again, a flagrant picture of hate. Colonists descend on olive groves in Palestinian towns and villages, mostly in groups, and pick on Palestinian growers, men, women and children, kicking and punching them to scare them off the land they own, and frequently pillage the olive produce.
Now it was the turn of the 25-year-old housewife to be beaten in front of her children by colonists with long twisted side-boards hanging below their ears. They descended on Alaa Fathi Atiyani while she was picking olives with her children and clobbered her with their sticks.
This is one of the many cases that have taken place during the harvest. Another is that of Mohammad Homoudeh in Kufur Yassef, south Nablus, who was assaulted by six colonists with sticks. As he ran, the windows of his car were smashed, his wife got the butt end of the colonists’ fury and had to be hospitalised. The Israel police later said it was a minor injury.
And then there is the vandalisation of trees by pouring gas on them and setting them ablaze. This is what happened to at least 100 trees in the Howara area next to Nablus. They were set upon by colonists from the Yitzhar colony and burnt to the ground, a tiny fraction of the incidents that took place as documented by the United Nations, which stated that, in 2013, 386 assaults were registered against Palestinians and their property with nearly 11,000 trees destroyed.
Indeed many United Nations officials this year have become so livid at what is happening, they are speaking out regardless of diplomatic decorum. Robert Serry, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, has gone on record calling the actions of the colonists “reprehensible” and pleading with the “Israel government to bring those responsible to justice”.
But judging from past years, these comments will continue to fall on deaf ears and be swept under the carpet by the Israeli government, the army and the police. For one, it was the Israeli government that took it upon itself after occupying the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 to fill the territories with colonies and colonial outposts to populate the Palestinian areas with Jews.
Figures speak louder than words. Btselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, stated that in the beginning of 2013, there were 125 Israeli government-sanctioned colonies in West Bank, not including occupied Jerusalem and in Hebron, in addition to 100 “colonial outposts” which basically means colonists come to a Palestinian area and decide to stay there. Some call them “wildcat settlements” but they are fully supported and defended by the Israeli army.
For one thing, they are encouraged by the Israeli government to live there and are given incentives, Israeli soldiers are always on standby, hoisting their firearms and machine guns while colonists go on a rampage uprooting olive tree and looting and pillaging the harvests.
In all, Btselem suggests these colonies house around 515,000 colonists. About 20,000 of them live in 39 colonies in and around Nablus, which includes Howara, located in fertile land with olive trees as the main crop.
The Israeli army is specifically told to protect the colonists, defend them and make sure that no harm comes them as they happily go about of burning swaths of olive groves.
According to the Israeli rights group Yesh Din, “when complaints are reported to the police by Palestinian growers, 99 per cent of the time they are ignored”. It reported that of the 264 incidents taken to the police between 2005 and 2014 only four resulted in indictments.
“The police are not going to the crime scene to collect evidence. They don’t ask for eyewitnesses to give their version of the incident,” Noa Cohen, a researcher in Yesh Din told the Washington Post. “They don’t look for suspects and if they do, they don’t check their alibi,” adding the case is almost always closed for “lack of evidence”.
Despite such pressure, olive farming continues to be one of the mainstays of the Palestinian economy. Experts say 48 per cent of the Palestinian agricultural land are planted with olive trees and make up about 14 per cent of the agricultural income, supporting between 80,000 and a 100,000 Palestinian families.
According to an OXFAM report, olive trees together with their oils contribute $100 million (Dh367 million) yearly to the Palestinian national economy. It states the figure could be much higher if Palestinian farmers and their groves are left alone, as these lands produce some of the best quality olives and olive oil in the world.
But this won’t to happen as long as Israel continues to drag its feet on the peace process because of its extreme ideological views. On the contrary, it is argued by experts, and Israeli themselves, that the number of colonists on the West Bank more than tripled since the Oslo peace process was signed in 1993 between Israel and the Palestine.
A report by the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem (ARIJ) in coordination with the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture statistically points to the pillaging of the lands in the occupied West Bank with the hope that no Arab traces remain on the land, but this is simply not going to happen, except in the case of a possibility of forced transfer that is hurled every know and then.
Ali Abd Al Rahman, president of the Union of Agricultural Committees, set up to help improve the state of agriculture and which was last October given the Food Sovereignty Award by the American Sovereignty Alliance, argues it is vital to set up a system of food security against the occupation to support the 25 per cent of the Palestinian population who live below the poverty line.
“For us agriculture is not only how much share we have in the gross national product, it is not just the thousands working in agricultural sectors .... For us agricultural is a style of life, our heritage, our connection of people to the land,” he was recently quoted in the American Progressive magazine as saying.
The report of the ARIJ is startling, however, because it shows the extent of the wilful destruction of Palestinian agriculture. It states that between 1967 and 2011, 2.5 million of the West Bank trees were destroyed by Israel either to make way for more building of colonies, constructing their “separation wall” — 85 per cent of which is inside Palestinian lands in the West Bank — providing colony infrastructure such as bypass roads and/or areas cordoned of as “security areas” by the Israeli army.
The report stated that a third of the trees that were destroyed were olive trees, many of which were between 500 and a 1000 years old and clearly show the Palestinian claim to their lands. The ARIJ states that translating the third into actual figures means that 1.2 million trees have been uprooted since 1967. These make up nearly half of the territories of the Palestinian agricultural economy. Other figures bandied about suggest the figure is less, at 800,000, but even that is a huge figure. Experts say the scale of the tree-uprooting is equivalent to destroying New York’s Central Park 33 times!
The fight over the land will continue for a very long-time. Colonists have been conditioned to believe the land belongs to their ancestors and the Palestinians are no more than vagabonds to be driven out. Huge steps are taken practically every day by Israel. The separation wall which Israel is building has dissected Palestinian olive groves even more as many lie within the wall controlled by the Israeli army. They control access and control permits of who goes in and who goes out. This is another insidious measure aimed at forcing the Palestinians to give up the land of their identity and ancestors.
Frequently, the vast majority applications by Palestinians to go across the wall to tend to their crops are rejected by the Israeli army, and nobody can do anything about it. The land is laid to waste.
Marwan Asmar is a commentator based in Amman. He has long worked in journalism and has a Phd in Political Science from Leeds University in the United Kingdom.
