Tag: Farmers

Planting hope and natural resistance in Burin

by Jonas Weber

4 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On the 4th of February International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) attended the replanting of 50 olive trees on the hillsides above the village of Burin, outside of Nablus. The planting went without disturbances from the surrounding illegal settlements of Bracha and Yitzhar.

Replanting livelihood and resistance – Click here for more images

During 2011 around 3700 olive trees were destroyed in the hills around the village of Burin, most of them due to attacks from the illegal settlement Yitzhar. The 50 olive trees replanted today on the hill slopes facing the illegal settlement of  Bracha will not bear fruit for many years but serve as a long term investment for the villagers of Burin. Small as it may be, this initiative marks the relentless struggle to go on with their lives despite of Israeli occupation.

Since the campaign began to raise money for trees, donations were sent nearly daily from Australia, Italy, France, the US, Canada, Sweden, and Finland for example. According to the Trees of Resistance campaign, they  “have received support from past volunteers, hopeful future volunteers, refugees, tree lovers and just fantastical lovely generous people.”

The Bilal al Najjar youth center in Burin has also received considerable support and volunteered its members to partake in the tree planting.

After the planting volunteers were shown the ongoing construction of a new community center in the center of Burin. Some proud, young men showed volunteers the re-plastered insides of an old stone building about to be transformed by the efforts of the Bilal al Najjar center.

An international organizer of the All for Burin campaign stated that while “the center provides projects that need to be kept alive… it also gives the youth of Burin a sanctuary. A place that is theirs, where they can work, learn, plan communal activities and unite. These activities have an overwhelming importance within community. To bring children and adults together, to feel united and most of all to have and create new happy memories to be taken with everyone in the future.”

Support the further planting of trees destroyed by Zionists and help Burin’s youth center for continued peace and livelihood for Palestinian villagers that continue to face mounting threats by price tag campaign extremists and the Israeli military which defends them.

Jonas Weber is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

A new stage for West Bank popular resistance

by Dylan Collins

28 January 2012 | The Palestine Monitor

In a hazy room, clouded with cigarette smoke and steam from hot syrup-sweat tea, residents of Kafr ad-Dik and its neighboring villages, along with Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists, excitedly gathered together waiting for the midday prayer to finish. The twenty-seventh of January marked the fourth Friday during which the village of Kafr ad-Dik has staged a nonviolent protest against the annexation of its agricultural land by the Israeli Occupation Authority (IOA).

The village of Kafr ad-Dik, and the greater Salfit District, is located on top of the largest water table in the West Bank, thus providing it with some of the most fertile land in the region. Home to generations upon generations of farmers, Kafr ad-Dik, and the neighboring villages of Rafat, Balut, and Bruqin, have had the majority of their agricultural land stripped away from them in the last ten years by the IOA. In turn unemployment and poverty rates in the farming-based community have skyrocketed.

In a village of which 99% of the inhabitants are olive farmers, the IOA’s annexation of the majority Kafr ad-Dik’s groves has been devastating.

Approximately 4,000 dunams of vital agricultural land, shared by the four villages, has been appropriated by the IOA over the past ten years. Last month, the IOA significantly increased its total of annexed land in the area when it earmarked an additional 1,000 dunums for the alleged expansion of the nearby illegal Israeli outost, Ale Zahav. Kafr ad-Dik residents, however, are convinced this latest annexation of land will be allocated to the construction of an entirely new outpost.

Left with no land to farm, and consequently no source of income, Kafr ad-Dik’s farmers have been forced to either rent out small plots from farmers who still have access to their lands in neighboring villages, or work their own land, now owned by the illegal Israeli settlements, for a paltry wage of around $13 a day.

Popular resistance, in the form of weekly nonviolent marches and demonstrations, has become increasingly commonplace in many West Bank villages since the beginning of the IOA’s construction of the Separation Wall and its subsequent seizure of Palestinian land. Villages such as Bil’in, Ni’lin and, more recently, Nabi Saleh have been the vanguard of the West Banks popular resistance movement over the last few years, with the media giving little to no focus to villages outside the spotlight.

As illegal Israeli settlements continue their unhindered expansion with impunity, robbing Palestinians of their land and livelihood on a daily basis, similar popular resistance demonstrations are popping up in villages all over the West Bank. In order for the new popular resistance efforts to be effective, it is imperative that media sources lend their ears more equitably to the growing number of villages cooperatively combating the occupation.

Nasfar Qufesh, the coordinator for the Popular Committee in the Salfit District, is insistent upon the fact that widespread, disciplined popular nonviolent resistance, represents the strongest means by which West Bank villages can resist the occupation. He says the aim of popular resistance is to, “create awareness in western countries, particularly America, of how, and for what purposes, their hard earned tax money is used.”

The Israeli Occupation Force’s (IOF) blatant use of excessive force during the weekly nonviolent protests throughout the West Bank, via mass amounts of tear gas, rubber bullets, sound grenades, and live ammunition, is an excellent example of American tax dollars hard at work.  The US furnishes Israel with over three billion dollars a year in military aid alone, most of which is made up of non-repayable grants.

Although still in its nascent stages, the popular resistance in Kafr ad-Dik is growing. Community leaders predict similar movements to fan out across West Bank villages as a main method of confronting the occupation and its confiscation of their land.

Farming with a grain of salt

22 December 2011 | Palestinian Center for Human Rights

Farming on land that has become almost impossible to farm is now daily reality for 62 year old Naeem El Laham, also known as Abu Mohammed. Together with his wife, 6 sons, 5 daughters and grandchildren he lives on his farm west of Khan Yunis.

“Our farming land stretches out over 2 dunums. My sons help me with the work on the land, just like I helped out my father on the land when I was younger,” says Abu Mohammed.

On his land he has small palm trees, beehives, 6 sheep, some olive trees, and a few vegetable plants. At first glance this looks like any small farm. It is only when you take a closer look at the plants and hear the story of Abu Mohammed, that you realize this farm is under serious threat.

“Until eight years ago we were able to buy water from a source nearby. However, that became too expensive.” Like many other farmers in the Gaza Strip the family is struggling for an affordable water supply, they dug their own water well in 2003.

“About four years after digging the well I noticed an increasing salinity in the water coming from our well” says Mohammed. “The plants deteriorated, as did the harvests. We used to plant vegetables on the land for our own consumption but since they only received salty water, these crops have stopped growing. Since 2003 we were growing lemon trees. When the salinity in the well water rose, the trees turned yellow and produced only small lemons with a salty taste.”

In 2010 Abu Mohammed decided to cut the lemon trees as they were no longer productive. He planted several dozen palm trees instead, as they are apparently more adaptable to the high salinity in the water. “It will take a several years for the trees to have a considerable size and even then, the dates that they produce will not be as profitable as the lemons we used to grow,” sighs Mohammed.

Until two years ago the family drank the water coming from the well, which made them ill. Mohammed explains how “most of our family members had kidney problems and the younger children were taken to hospital many times for kidney stones and vomiting. The doctor in the hospital convinced us to stop drinking water from the well and to buy treated water. This has put another big burden on our already stretched family budget.” Abu Mohammed describes how during Operation Cast Lead white phosphorus landed approximately 1.5 kilometers away from his farm. The smoke and fumes reached his farm and he noticed that his olive trees have stopped growing since.

Abu Mohammed and his family have tried everything they can to continue working the farm, but it seems to become more and more impossible. “We need help to replant our lands”, says Abu Mohammed as he speaks of his wish to continue the family tradition of farming.

Approximately 70,000 people work in the agricultural sector in the Gaza Strip, 25,000 of whom are seasonal workers. The coastal aquifer is their main source of irrigation water for the land. Due to a lack of other resources this aquifer is being over abstracted which leads to seawater and saline water intrusion. Sewage leaking into the ground water has also increased the already high nitrate levels. Advocacy group EWASH has stated; “In the past, agricultural production has ensured household food security for the Gazan population as well as contributed to economic security. Currently, agriculture in the Gaza Strip is barely viable.”

Demonstration in the no go zone, Beit Hanoun

by Nathan Stuckey

20 December 2011

Photo: Rosa Schiano, International Solidarity Movement – Click here for more images

Every Tuesday there is a demonstration against the occupation and the Israeli imposed no go zone that surrounds Gaza, stealing much of Gaza’s best farmland.  Today, it was unseasonably warm, it felt almost like summer.  We started our march from in front of the destroyed buildings Beit Hanoun Agricultural College.  Music played over a megaphone as we marched down the road into the no go zone.  As we got closer to the no go zone the music stopped, it got quiet.  Usually, when the music starts the chanting begins, but not today.  Everyone seemed to be lost in thought, perhaps pondering the green that has recently appeared in the no go zone.  The bulldozers haven’t come for many weeks to kill all life in the no go zones.  Perhaps they were remembering the olive trees, and orange groves that used to be here.  Perhaps they were thinking of the families that used to live in the destroyed houses that we were walking by.  Perhaps they were thinking of the houses that no longer exist, the houses that have been completely erased by the Israeli bulldozers.

We entered the no go zone and went to the flag that we left here several weeks ago.  It flies in the breeze, a reminder that this land is Palestinian, that while the people of Gaza might have been driven from their homes they have not yet been erased by the Israeli military like the orchards that used to grow in the no go zone.  We took the flag down.  We marched further into the no go zone, to land which no one had been to since May of 2000.  We made our way across the no go zone, land scarred dozens of times by the blades of Israeli bulldozers, to a small hill.  We climbed the hill and we planted the flag.  The ground was hard, it has not rained lately, but we found a soft spot and drove the flagpole into the earth.  We piled rocks around its base to strengthen it.  We looked out over 1948, the land which many residents of Beit Hanoun had been driven from 63 years ago.

We began to walk back to Beit Hanoun.  Through the no go zone, on land no one had been to in many years.  As always, when you go new places in Gaza you see new destruction which you had no inkling of before you stumbled upon, but it was always there, another untold story in the crimes of the occupation.  We paused by some rubble that I had seen many times on our marches into the no go zone, I never knew what it had been.  It was a well.  It had of course been destroyed by an Israeli bulldozer, all of the trees which it used to water ground under the treads of the same bulldozer.  The well is dry now.  Perhaps someday it will be repaired and orchards will once again thrive on this land.  Someday, after the occupation finally disappears into the pages of history.  Until then, it stands alongside the hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed in the Nakba, alongside the thousands of homes destroyed by Israel, as a mute reminder of the crimes of Israel.

Your help needed: Donating olive trees this holiday season

19 December 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

As we creep up to Christmas and are seeing more and more trees appear in houses and high street windows, while we debate when to put up our own, if at all this year, I ask you all to give consideration to a much more special tree (in my opinion): the Palestinian olive trees.

International volunteers assisted in planting the olive trees
International volunteers assisted in planting the olive trees

This year has been a rough one for farmers in Palestine. In one village alone, Burin (Nablus) over 4000 olive trees have been destroyed by Israeli settlers. Qusra bid its martyr farewell, Essam Aoudhi who was murdered by Israeli soldiers while trying to defend his olive trees and land. Attacks leading up to the olive harvest were coming thick and fast, with the Israeli settlers ensuring the most amount of damage before the harvest, causing unbelievable loss to farmers’ revenue.

In January volunteers in Palestine will join the farmers to show solidarity in projects such as land repair, ploughing for the new season and replanting olive trees. It is the latter project that we ask for help with.

Olive trees are the Palestinian Christmas tree. We ask from the most sincere of places for you to make a donation of whatever you may be able to afford. We are looking to raise as much as possible to buy olive trees and donate them to the villages.

Olive trees cost about $3 at the moment plus inexpensive transport.  Buy an olive tree along with your Christmas tree this year, or if your Jewish why not buy eight for the eight evenings of Hanukkah.

Please feel free to donate through our PayPal account using the email zatoun.nablus@gmail.com, where you can also contact us if you have anu additional questions. For more information please visit our Facebook Event.
Thank you so much!

Much love and Merry Christmas,

International Solidarity Movement