A Zaytoun team member has just had her laptop and olive oil samples confiscated by Israeli customs in what can only be understood as a deliberate attempt to harass peaceful non-violent individuals who are working towards peace in the region. The freedom to earn a dignified living is the most basic of human rights, one…
Read the full article here
Under 17′s form over 50% of the population here & I’ve been quite disturbed by the many accounts of arrest and torture of Palestinian children whilst here. My time spent in the village of Marda and elsewhere a tangible sense of restlesness, internalised anger & alienation was evident amongst children. This was new, harvest teams…
Read the full article here
One afternoon whilst the Zaytoun harvest team were picking olives high up on the steep rocky hills of Marda we were ordered to, by someone on a loudspeaker at the bottom, to move along 100 metres as they were about to blow up a section of the hill in 10 minutes ! In disbelief we…
Read the full article here
Marda was one of the villages where the Zaytoun harvest team supported farmers harvesting their olives. It’s a beautiful village with a natural spring both dating back to Roman times. The village lies in the shadow of West Banks largest Israeli settlement, Ariel, making it difficult & dangerous for farmers to tend to their trees…
Read the full article here
Nablus is famous for its traditional olive soap industry which dates back many centuries. The soap is produced in stunning old buildings with exquisite architectural detail and the crumbling facade betraying its historical grandeur. A disused Olive soap house in the centre of Nablus’s old city Nablus’s olive soap contains over 70% olive oil and…
Read the full article here
I’ve just returned from the Palestinian city of Nablus. A city which has suffered terribly under the intifada from arial bombardments, tanks and on the ground Israeli millitary. Nablus is one of the oldest cities in the world, dating as far back as 9,000 years. It is also one of the largest cities in the…
Read the full article here
Six settler girls from Benjamin, a settlement Northwest of the West Bank city of Ramallah, attacked Palestinian farmers while they were working in olive orchards in the nearby village of Sinjil. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, of the organization, Rabbis for Human Rights (which assists Palestinian residents in the region with the annual olive harvest) said that…
Read the full article here
Zaytoun 2005 harvest report by Dave Owen On Sunday, 6th November a group of volunteers set off from Jerusalem for a West Bank village in the Salfit region to pick olives with Palestinian farmers. The core group of ten (eight British, one Irish, one German) was joined by others over the following two weeks, including…
Read the full article here
A brief note for those interested in the workings of fair trade and olive oil standards in Palestine. While we were here we attended and gave a couple of presentations to Palestinian farmers and exporters on the requirements of fair trade in Europe. It’s part of the series of fair trade seminars organised by Oxfam…
Read the full article here
As Sawiye is a wonderful village. We stayed with Jamalat and Hakim, whose hospitality was so generous – in between political meetings in the sitting room and womens’ gatherings in the TV room, they didn’t mind hosting 8-10 internationals at all! Jamalat is hard at work on writing a proposal for rural women’s IT education,…
Read the full article here
