Ask any Palestinian about their reference to Palestine, wherever they reside, and the olive tree would determine prominently in what Palestine means to them. This may be alongside the flag and the Kufiyah. It could be tough to discover a Palestinian home that doesn’t retailer and eat giant portions of olives and olive oil. Yearly, the olive harvest, which takes place within the autumn, is a time for arduous work and dedication to reap the olives, to press them for oil and to arrange the remaining for consumption, both within the home Palestinian market or for export.
It’s estimated that there are near 8 million fruit bearing olive timber within the Palestinian territories, producing an estimated 25,000 tonnes of olive oil per yr. It’s additional estimated that round 100,000 households depend on olives for his or her fundamental revenue.
Palestinians additional see the olive tree as symbolising their longevity and their resilience of their homeland. Whereas some timber date again to the Roman period, one tree in Bethlehem is estimated to be 5500 years previous and will be the oldest olive tree in the world. It’s more likely to have been planted by the Canaanites. It’s reported that Palestinians plant some 10,000 new olive timber a yr, whereas Israel and settlers have destroyed greater than an estimated a million timber.
The symbolism of the olive tree extends additional than its financial worth. Yasser Arafat famously referred to the olive tree in his speech to the United Nations in 1974, when he pleaded, “As we speak, I’ve come bearing an olive department and a freedom-fighter’s gun. Don’t let the olive department fall from my hand. I repeat: don’t let the olive department fall from my hand.”
READ: Israeli settlers’ arson attack on farms in occupied West Bank
Yasser Arafat handed away in November 2004, nonetheless holding onto the olive department. Nevertheless, the destruction of Palestinian olive timber, significantly by settlers, continues unabated. In Israeli language, this is able to be referred to as agricultural or financial terror and the perpetrators, terrorists. In most democratic nations, terrorists could be delivered to account however not in Israel. Reporting by western media, if discovered, would consult with ‘settler violence’.
A fast search of the web would yield a spike in settler terror across the time of the harvest however, as well as, theft of the harvest that Palestinians have tended to for a yr and on which some rely closely for his or her annual revenue.
Th situation is now a typical one, the place Palestinians are restricted from harvesting their olive crop by the Israeli Defence Power (IDF). They might want a allow from the occupation to have a tendency their land or to reap their olive crop. Their land could possibly be on the opposite facet of the Apartheid wall. Even with a allow, they could should drive miles to undergo a gate within the wall, merely to entry their land. They might arrive at their land to search out the settlers have stolen their crop or cut their timber down.
The settlers generally is a handful or, as occurred lately in Salfit, tens of settlers got down to intentionally interrupt the olive harvest, terrorise the olive pickers and use stones or pepper spray to drive them off the land.
The Palestinian farmers can’t look to the Palestinian Authority safety forces for cover whereas they attempt to earn a residing peacefully. Whichever space within the West financial institution or East Jerusalem they occur to personal land in, the IDF wouldn’t enable the PA safety forces to return to the rescue of Palestinians. Nevertheless, because the occupying drive, one would count on the IDF to undertake that position themselves. They do not do that. Quite the opposite, they both accompany the settlers figuring out what they plan to do, or they arrive as soon as the Palestinians have reacted to defend themselves from settler assaults, to not arrest the settlers however to arrest Palestinians who resist. The self-proclaimed ‘most ethical military on this planet’ reveals its true face—by appearing most immorally, with a purpose to shield the criminals and arrest the victims.
Within the absence of safety from PA safety forces or the IDF, Palestinian civilians come to the rescue of Palestinian farmers, together with the formation of safety teams reminiscent of Fazaa, who break up themselves into teams serving to choose olives with the farmers, monitor the settlers to attempt to keep away from the assaults and monitor and doc the assaults.
READ: Settler violence and Israel’s impenetrable web of impunity
The uptick in settler violence throughout the olive harvest season and the safety they’re afforded by the IDF merely confirms that, whether or not in uniform or out of uniforms, the settlers and IDF collude of their makes an attempt to drive Palestinians off their land by means of violence, to permit the settlement venture to proceed unabated. New ‘unlawful’ outposts are created to shrink the land obtainable for Palestinians and edge Israel nearer to larger Israel on the land of historic Palestine.
The settlers are successfully used as human shields by Israel of their persevering with annexation of Palestinian land. Those that proceed to cling onto the ‘two-state-solution’ should now settle for that, if Israeli governments assisted by settlers and guarded by the IDF proceed to violate the rights of Palestinians, in order to shrink the land obtainable for his or her growth and terrorise them to depart their land, then that charade is over.
Israel has little interest in peace. The Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennet, has acknowledged his three nos. No assembly Mahmoud Abbas; no to restarting the peace course of and no to a Palestinian state. The rationale for this, in keeping with him, is the Palestinian Authority’s (PA’s) pursuit of Israeli warfare criminals on the ICC. He lately went additional, claiming that “a Palestinian state could be a terror state”. He makes this declare because the Palestinians face terror from a state that heaps terror on the occupied Palestinian individuals and is now broadly considered an Apartheid state.
The Israeli governments should know what the settlers and the IDF are as much as within the occupied territories because the Palestinians try to reap their olives. Whereas the settlers act as human shields for the expansionist Israeli venture, the federal government shields them from accountability for his or her crimes by emboldening them, fairly than bringing them to account. It’s time the world recognised this collusion in oppression and acted to sanction Israel for its and its settlers’ crimes.
The views expressed on this article belong to the creator and don’t essentially replicate the editorial coverage of Center East Monitor.
