News from the Region
Effects of Israel's Wall on Palestinian Farmers and the Olive Harvest
By Miryam Rashid
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| The Wall in Abu Dis, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Photo: Terry Foss |
Vast swathes of Palestine's picturesque landscape of rolling hills and green valleys, dotted with millions of olive trees which have been a part of the Palestinian landscape for thousands of years, are being destroyed to make way for Israel's Wall - a long, winding, deeply intrusive structure projected to be three times as long as the Berlin Wall when completed.
In the name of security, in 2002 Israel began replacing vast tracts of Palestinian agricultural lands, along with displacing tens of thousands of farmers who till it, with concrete walls, barbed wire, fences, metal, and steel. Potentially, 320,000 Palestinians will be trapped between the Wall and the 1967 borders.
Officially, Israel says it is building the Wall in order to separate Palestinians from Israelis. However, 80% of the Wall is being built inside the West Bank which it has illegally occupied since 1967.
In a report called, "Under the Guise of Security," B'Tselem and Bimkon, two Israeli human rights organizations, studied the path of Israel's Wall and concluded in their report:
“Not only were security-related reasons of secondary importance in certain locations, in cases when they conflicted with settlement expansion, the planners opted for expansion, even at the expense of compromised security.”1
"Whatever we do they've got the power - they're going to build the Wall. We just want to appeal to everyone to stop Israel from stealing the land. It's not for security reasons. They need to be stopped from killing the old trees, trees which are as old as the Roman Empire.”
-- Najeh Shalabi - Mas'ha, West Bank 2
Between 2000-2004 alone, Israeli bulldozers uprooted 400,000 olive trees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 3 Olives are the major source of income for 7000 Palestinian families, many of whom will now lose their livelihoods.
The Wall, which takes the form at times of a 25 feet high wall and at others of barbed wire fences, twists and turns to accommodate Israeli colonies and their planned expansion while trapping Palestinians in disconnected, ghetto-like areas throughout the West Bank. This is a story of settlements, not security.
"For hundreds of thousands of Palestinian farmers, the Wall will represent a prison with no warden, with no means of sustaining their families – to the point that will force many of them to simply leave their homes, and try living elsewhere as refugees. This is an intention of quiet ethnic cleansing, the sort that cannot be photographed, but is nevertheless as effective and devastating." -- Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, 5/18/03 4
The situation in Jayyous, a village in the northern West Bank, is a microcosm of what is happening throughout the West Bank. Seventy percent of its most fertile lands, along with its water sources, have been segregated behind the Wall. Farmers are now required to seek an Israeli permit in order to access their lands. At times, over 75% of landowners and farmers of Jayyous have been denied the permits. The majority of the inhabitants of Jayyous, who once depended on their land for livelihood, are now dependent on external food assistance programs. 5 There is now a 65% poverty rate among Palestinian communities living near the Wall. 6 A key source of this poverty is the destruction of agricultural land, the only possible source of livelihood open to many Palestinians. Olive trees are the second major crop in Palestine, used to produce olive oil, olive wood and olive based soap. Every year, olive oil production traditionally accounted for 15 to 19% of total agricultural output in Palestine. 7
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| Palestinians and international volunteers harvesting olives. Photo: Electronic Intifada |
The autumn olive harvest used to be a time of celebration in West Bank villages whose lands have been swallowed by the Wall. Entire families would spend days together in the olive groves. The groves that have not been uprooted are now often located on the Israeli side of the fence, so that many farmers will not succeed in reaching their groves and now struggle to make ends meet.
Since the construction of the Wall, the Palestinian olive harvest has been bleak. Olive oil that should sell for $5 per kilogram is down to $2 – the break-even price is $3 per kilogram. At these prices, reinvestment in the land is becoming unfeasible. 8
"The fence is a death sentence for the Palestinians. [It] is a mistake, it will only exacerbate the problem, it will make people more frustrated. People here want to work, and you are creating more hatred instead of the possibility of living together."
-- Shmil Elad - Einav Israeli Settlement, West Bank. 9
Though the Palestinians are supported in their opposition to the Wall by international law, UN resolutions, the International Court of Justice, Amnesty International, and many others, it has not yet had an impact on Israeli policies on the ground.
The Wall is illegal and it is unjust. But it is a fact of life for Palestinians and they need our support.
What you can do:
Footnotes:
- B'Tselem, www.btselem.org
- Palestinian Environmental NGO’s Network, http://www.pengon.org/
- Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees, http://www.parc.ps/first.html
- Arnon Regular in Ha’aretz, The World Bank: The Separation Fence Will Hurt Palestinians Immensely, 05/18/03
- Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem, http://www.arij.org/
- Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Sep, 2005
- http://www.afsc.org/israel-palestine/Ziyarat-az-Zeitoun.htm
- http://www.merip.org/newspaper_opeds/oped122104.html
- Meron Rapoport in Yedioth Aharonoth, A Wall In Their Heart, May 23, 2003) www.gushshalom.org/archives/wall_yediot_eng.html
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