Tag: Olive Harvest 2008

Two Palestinian farmers injured as Yitzhar settlers attack olive harvest near Huwwara, Nablus

Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians farmers near Huwwara on Saturday 11th October.

More than 25 settlers from the illegal Israeli settlement of Yizhar descended upon Palestinian farmers while the farmers were undertaking their annual olive harvest. The settlers were armed with machine guns, and one fired a single shot in the air before they began to hurl rocks at the Palestinian farmers, injuring two. One of the injured, Mustafa Najah from Burin, was hit in the head and taken to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus. He is thought to have sustained eye injuries.

The attack continued for ten minutes before Israeli soldiers arrived on the scene. The soldiers, however, instead of removing the settlers from the land, started to fire into the air, insisting that the Palestinian farmers cease their harvesting and leave the lands. Farmers report that the soldiers and settlers then walked around the groves together, telling farmers to leave their own lands. The farmers were forced from their lands for over an hour, before eventually being allowed back to continue their harvest.

Settlers continued to maintain a menacing presence on the hilltop overlooking the olive groves throughout the afternoon, kept at bay only by the presence of the Israeli army, who, after their initial rampage, took on the protective duties by which they are legally bound. The farmers were also joined by Israeli and international activists, who will continue to maintain a presence with the farmers until their harvest is complete.

The farmers, however, expressed concern about the well-being of their olive trees overnight, after arriving at their lands to find more than 15 olive trees had been cut down by settlers in the preceding days. Lying in the shadow of Yizhar, the olive groves had been unattended by farmers since ploughing was done in May, as this area is considered extremely dangerous.

Settlers from Yizhar regularly terrorise the surrounding villages: burning lands; attacking houses; shooting at Palestinian villagers; and stealing livestock and farming equipment. They have destroyed more than fifty percent of the surrounding olive groves, and, according to the municipality of Huwwara, throw stones at Palestinian cars on a daily basis. “No stones, no trees, no people are safe from them.”

Harvesting olives on the Green Line in Gaza

Film by Fida Qishta. Language editing by ISM Gaza

On the 9th October, members of ISM Gaza supported an action organised by a Palestinian youth group called The Local Initiative.

Olive farmers were accompanied onto their land, situated extremely close to the Green Line, under the shadow of several Israeli watchtowers. Palestinian and international activists worked alongside local farmers to bring in the 2008 harvest. Farmers in this area have been denied access to their land by Israeli occupation forces and vast numbers of their trees (150,000 – 200,000) have been destroyed.

However, on this day farmers were able to reach their groves and successfully harvest their olives, fulfilling their basic human right to produce food for their families and their communities.

ISM Gaza join 2008 Olive Harvest Campaign

Many farmers in the Gaza Strip are being denied access to their land by Israeli occupation forces. An arbitrary ‘buffer zone’ is being imposed hundreds of metres deep long the Green Line. Agricultural land has been destroyed in these areas and massive numbers of olive and fruit trees have been bulldozed, devastating the livelihoods of entire farming communities.

According to the PCHR, approximately 31.503 dunums/31.5 million square metres of land in the Gaza Strip, most of it agricultural, has been razed by the Israelis. This represents at least 10% of the total arable land base of the Gaza Strip. This statistic was published in 2005 but much more destruction has been carried out since. The Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights quoted 31,845,815 square metres of agricultural land levelled by the end of 2007. This does not include lands confiscated more than once; the area confiscated being nearly 10 million square metres.

Gazan farmers have also been impacted by the illegal Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip. Fuel shortages have hampered their ability to power their irrigation systems and closures have made crop exports impossible. As food supplies are severely restricted, it is more urgent than ever for Gaza to be as self-sufficient as possible in food production. The Israeli attacks on farmers and their property are yet a further escalation of the collective punishment suffered by the population of Gaza on a daily basis under this siege. They are akin to the atrocities endured by Gazan fishermen as they struggle to access local food sources in the face of arrests, injuries and even killings. The plight of these farmers and fishermen goes unnoticed by the international community, despite blatant violations of the current ceasefire, which would make headline news if the tables were turned.

ISM Gaza is pleased to be participating in the 2008 Olive Harvest Campaign. We will be accompanying farmers working along the Green Line ‘buffer zone’ to harvest their olives. We have established relationships with farmers in Abassan Al-Kabeera in southern Gaza and are liaising with them regarding their olive harvest. In the meantime, a newly formed group in Beit Hanoun, The Local Initiative, established contact with us to join them and others to harvest olives in the ‘buffer zone’ in their area. The olive harvest in the Gaza Strip has just begun and will continue for a couple more weeks. We look forward to joining farmers in various areas of the Gaza Strip as they harvest their olives and show Israeli Occupation Force soldiers that they will continue to work their land.

Farmers from Salim village discover theft and damage to their olive groves

On Monday 6 October approximately 15 families went to their lands near Elon More settlement only to discover many of the trees have yielded little harvest and the olives had been stolen by settlers.

The village had been given 3 days from the Israeli District Co-ordination Office (DCO) where protection for farmers would be provided in the area around the settlement which is a designated ‘Area C’ despite the land belonging to the village. The gate which marks the area was due to be opened at 7am, but farmers were not permitted to pass until 7:45.

International activists accompanying farmers to the fields were barred from passing and were informed by the army that the area was a “closed military zone for internationals”. The area had been deemed a closed military zone the previous night up until 31 December. Barring access for internationals accompanying farmers is a common tactic. The area that was actually deemed a ‘closed military zone’, however, was closer to the settlement and after 2 hours internationals were able to join farmers in the fields.

During this time many farmers had begun to return from their lands after discovering very few olives on the trees. Salim farmer, Abdul Hardi Jabur has 6 dunams of land near the settlement. He returned to the village after 1 hour with a total of approximately 100 olives. Last year he was able to harvest 16, 60kg sacks of olives from the same area. Several other farmers experienced similar problems. Abdul said “they have stolen (the settlers) our olives and brought in workers from outside the settlement to do it”.

This is not an isolated problem in the Nablus region or across the West Bank. During last years harvest both Tell and Sarra also experienced problems with settlers stealing the olive crop and many villages including Salim have suffered from settlers burning large areas of land containing olive trees. This year the problem has been exacerbated with many farmers not being permitted access to their lands to enable them to tend to trees throughout the year, which is vital to ensure a maximum crop yield during the harvest. Just 4 years ago the village planted 1,000 new trees, however, due to the limited access to the land just 100 have survived. There were also obvious signs of damage to a number of the trees where branches had been cut by electric chainsaws. The farmers believe that this year will see them harvest just 20% of the yield harvested in the previous year.

While the Israeli Government has publicly declared that settlement expansion has ceased, the tactic employed by settlers of damaging trees, land and theft of crops renders the farmland useless. This combined with the use, by the Israeli army, of the illegal ‘permit’ system denying access to Palestinians to their land, effectively annexes it to the settlements, a story repeated across the West Bank.

The villages of Qusin; Deir Sharaf; Burin; Kufr Qalil; and Awarta in the Nablus district were able to harvest their olives without incident on Monday 6th October; whilst a number of villages in the Salfit region experienced difficulties and harrassment from Israeli soldiers both trying to access their lands, and whilst harvesting.

Olive Harvest Campaign 2008: Israeli forces prevent residents of Tell from harvesting their olives

Israeli forces marked the beginning of the olive harvest season by forcing Palestinian farmers from their lands in Tell.

After the recent rain in Palestine, the 2008 Olive Harvest Campaign was launched today, ten days earlier than planned. For more information on the campaign please click here

On Sunday 5th October, approximately twenty farmers attempted to harvest olives from their lands adjacent to the notoriously violent Israeli settlement of Harvat Gilad. Whilst the Palestinian olive harvest does not officially begin until 10th October, farmers from Tell, a village near Nablus, felt compelled to start harvesting their olives early, due to the fact that settlers stole all olives from nearby lands the previous year.

Farmers were able to harvest for only two hours, under the watchful eye of Gilad’s “hilltop youth”, before Israeli police arrived, questioning farmers and ordering them to cease their harvesting and leave their lands immediately. Aware of the illegality of this instruction, international activists accompanying the farmers called the Nablus District Co-ordination Office (DCO), to inform the office of the breach in law. After explaining the situation twice to the officer in the DCO, the officer refused to take any action by saying “I don’t understand and I don’t care”, before hanging up.

Israeli soldiers then arrived to the olive groves, and also ordered the farmers and internationals to leave, advising that they had implemented a “closed military zone” – a territorial closure of a specific area in response to a “threat of terror”. The use of a “closed military zone” in such a situation, where there was no apparent threat to the security of settlers or Israeli forces, constitutes a clear violation of the laws governing its implementation. To force farmers to abandon their harvest also violates the laws governing the use of a “closed military zone”, as the High Court ruling from 2006 obliges Israeli forces to allow Palestinian farmers the opportunity to complete all necessary agricultural work on their land “up to the last olive”.

The Israeli soldiers refused to show the maps that demarcated the “closed military zone” (a legal requirement of its implementation) until all farmers and activists had evacuated the area. Once on the nearby road, the unit commander produced a map with a red circle marked sloppily around the whole area – a further violation of the Israeli law that states that the area subject to closure must not exceed the minimal amount of territory that is necessary to provide effective protection to the Israeli residents.

A map of the “closed military zone” procured from the Nablus DCO by an Israeli human rights activist, however, showed the closure to be only
a small area nearby to the settlement, although farmers and activists were evicted from lands more than 500 metres from Harvat Gilad. Throughout the eviction process, Israeli soldiers referred to dates that the DCO had issued in which to offer protection to the farmers as times in which the farmers would be “allowed” to harvest on their lands. This is a reflection of the increasing trend amongst the Israeli forces to transform their legal obligation to protect Palestinian farmers into a permit system – thereby creating a practice whereby Palestinians are systematically denied free access to their lands.