Farming Under Fire - Activist Blog Reports
Zaytoun on July 22nd, 2009See footage and reports of farmers under attack in Gaza and the West Bank www.farmingunderfire.blogspot.com
Israeli Forces Open Fire on Palestinian Farmers and Internationals in Khoza’a
Zaytoun on February 27th, 2009February 24, 2009
Khoza’a, Khan Younis, Gaza
Palestinian farmers, accompanied by international Human Rights Workers (HRWs), were fired upon by Israeli forces in the village of Khoza’a, near Khan Younis, this morning. The farmers and HRWs were attempting to work on land around 300m from the ‘Green Line’.
Read more here
Watch video on You Tube here
Gazan Farmers Speak Out
Zaytoun on February 9th, 2009On Saturday 7th February, international human rights workers once again accompanied farmers in al-Farahin, Abassan, in the south of the Gaza Strip as they successfully harvested their crop of peas in the shadow of the Green Line. This followed attacks from the Israeli military in recent days, as reported by the International Solidarity Movement. Farmers were interviewed about their experiences and an eyewitness spoke about the fatal shooting of local farm worker, Anwar Il Ibrim, on 27th January in the same field.
Click here for interviews with farmers in al-Farahin on 7th Feb
Click here for photos taken in al-Farahin on 7th Feb
Click here for Press TV report from 7th Feb
Shooting At Farmers, What Gives Israel The Right?
Zaytoun on February 5th, 2009By Eva Bartlett in Gaza
I was fairly certain that one of us would be shot today.
This morning, farmers from Abassan Jadiida (New Abassan), to the east of Khan Younis , the southern region, returned to land they’d been forced off of during and following the war on Gaza. The continual shooting at them by Israeli soldiers while they work the land intensified post-war on Gaza. The Israeli soldiers’ shooting was not a new thing, but a resumption of the policy of harassment that Palestinians in the border areas have been enduring for years, a harassment extending to invasions in which agricultural land, chicken farms, and the houses in the region have been targeted, destroyed in many cases.
Today’s Abassan farmers wanted to harvest their parsley. To read the rest of this article with pictures click here
Also see Israeli Forces Open Fire on Palestinian Farmers and Internationals in Al Faraheen
Olive Harvest in Financial Times
Zaytoun on December 25th, 2008Fiona Dunlop recently visited Palestine as part of the Zaytoun harvest trip. Below is a piece she wrote for the Financial Times about her experience.
Pressed into service
By Fiona Dunlop
Published: December 20 2008
In the shade of gnarled olive trees, their leaves stirred by a gentle breeze, we look out over endless Biblical hills of chalky limestone. As the muezzin’s call reverberates across the valley, Mashour, a Palestinian farmer, joins us and we tuck into a glorious picnic of meze as intensely flavoured as any I have tasted.
The fresh ingredients, simply combined, have produced a concentrated tomato dish laced with grassy olive oil, velvety foul (fava bean stew) with even more swirls of oil, mutabal (smoky aubergine, garlic and tahini purée) seasoned with lemon juice and oil, creamy labneh (yoghurt cheese), and, of course, hummus - all mopped up with flat bread that we saw baked just hours earlier by the farmer’s wife. The extra virgin oil, barely a week old, is exquisite, cold-pressed from olives that have been cultivated in the surrounding hills for thousands of years. Without that oil, Palestinian food would fade away.
Above us the layered branches are so thick with olives that they resemble huge bunches of plump grapes. This has been a bumper year.
Stripping them by hand is satisfying, leaving hands dirty but unscratched and surprisingly smooth. No wonder the Myceneans used olive oil as a base for ointment.
The farmer is grateful for the help as, with only a few weeks to harvest, the pressure is on. Throughout Palestine, picking is manual and, therefore, labour-intensive though this supposedly produces better quality oil than when trees are mechanically shaken, as in most of Europe. One of Mashour’s workers is agile Abu Hassan who, at 54, is as prolific as a father (he has 23 children) as he is at picking olives.
Clambering round the top branches like a goat, he descends only to pray, drink tea or swap trees. Mashour’s day starts at dawn when he climbs the terraced hillside with his donkey and ends late at night when a friend drives him and his sacks of olives to the nearby press.
One thing is for sure, I discover, these olives will not be going to Nablus, the nearest Palestinian town and most logical marketplace. On a trip there, I learn that getting truckloads of olives through the checkpoint is an insurmountable problem. No profit can compensate for the long hours of waiting, unloading, being searched and reloading. I stop off at the Toukan soap factory, a surviving landmark of the town’s 19th-century heyday, to find out where they source their olive oil. “Italy,” replies the manager. “It’s cheaper and I can get large quantities without any problem.”
As far back as the 14th century, Nablus’s oil and carob paste were lyrically praised by Ibn Battuta, seven centuries before Israel named Nablus the capital of terrorism and bombed it heavily in 2002. It is a chilling feeling to explore a street market where the stone walls are plastered with posters of so-called martyrs clutching AK-47s.
Yet this is the case inside the peeling medina. Slipping through an archway into a shadowy alleyway, I instantly smell za’atar, a zesty Palestinian seasoning of wild herbs and sesame seeds, as well as that timeless Middle Eastern aroma of sweet tobacco. Deep crimson pomegranates are plentiful but not squeezed as in Ramallah or East Jerusalem. Instead the street tipple of choice served by bell-ringing vendors turns out to be nauseatingly sweet. Discreetly I spit it out - not quite the delicious liquorice and carob juices that I have read about.
Nablus’s narrow lanes hum with gastro-activity, foul and falafel-makers, bakers, tea-stands and of course narguileh cafés where Biblical-looking old gents in white keffiye puff, chat and drink tea for hours. I join them for a refreshing sage tea and we discuss the origins of local streetfood. Foul ? Egypt, I suggest. No no, Palestine, they reply. Falafel ? Lebanon, I say tentatively. No, they laugh, wrong again - it’s Palestine. Hummus ? No conclusion is reached about this regional obsession. Middle Eastern food is as complex as its politics, and the borders just as disputed.
Armed with the address for the best kunafeh (cheesecake) in town, I leave my new friends. Past a mosque and an Ottoman bell-tower I find a lone man working in an open-sided, tiled kitchen beside a mountain of metal trays. This is kunafeh central, producing the top Al-Aqsa brand.
Unhurriedly, the cook shifts from one huge platter to another, smearing them with ghee, then a thick layer of goat’s cheese, which bubbles gently over a burner before receiving a final topping of semolina and almonds. Once baked golden-brown, the cheesecake is drizzled in syrup.
Across the side-alley, a steady flow of customers enters the café to devour a hot slice at table or have a box filled to take away. I at last indulge in this perfect textural mix, comfortingly sweet, highly addictive.
Back in the market, my harvester’s heart leaps as I spot sacks of firm, fresh olives, pale green, pink and deep purple, backed up by recycled plastic bottles of that familiar liquid gold. But considering the thousands of trees in the rolling white hills around Nablus, the quantity on sale is laughable, probably the production of one extended family.
There are an estimated 10m trees in Palestine and about 100,000 families depend on them, yet vast quantities of oil remain unsold due to the occupiers’ restrictions. The contradictions mount up but the oil, when you can get it, is sublime.
Website here
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/26975b8c-cbcd-11dd-ba02-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
Gaza Olive Harvest Suffers Under The Blockade
Zaytoun on December 2nd, 2008From Reliefweb - 27 November 2008
Oxfam’s Mohammed Ali Abu Najela reports on the impact of Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip on the territory’s olive oil industry.
The agricultural sector in Gaza has been severely affected by the ongoing conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Since the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada in 2000, 112,000 olive trees have been destroyed in the Gaza Strip by the conflict and Israeli military incursions. Also, one third of agricultural land - thousands of dunums (1 dunum=.25 acre) along the border with Israel - has been inaccessible to Palestinian farmers since Israeli settlements were dismantled in 2005. Israel then carved out a security zone that included valuable Gazan farming land. Farmers have been killed and injured trying to access and cultivate these lands.
To read the rest of this article click here.
Olive Tree Planting Programme - February 2009
Zaytoun on December 1st, 2008A program for Civil International Solidarity with Palestinians
Invitation to the Olive Tree Planting Programme 7th - 16th February, 2009
The JAI and the Alternative Tourism Group (ATG) are glad to invite you for the 2nd Olive Planting Programme taking place in February 2009.
Besides olive planting, the program will feature introductory presentations about the current situation in Palestine and the effects of the Apartheid Wall, tours in the old city of Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, in addition to cultural events and social gatherings.
Proposed schedule
· Saturday, Feb 7, Day 1: Arrival to the airport and travel to Bethlehem to meet representatives from the organizing institutions for an overview and discussion of the program. Dinner and free time.
· Sunday, Feb 8, Day 2: Visiting Bethlehem. An afternoon of site-seeing and an introduction to the town. Watching Documentary about the situation in Palestine.
· Monday, Feb 9, Day 3: Half day planting trees at a selected field followed by lunch. Visiting Duheisha refugee camp. Evening with BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugees’ Rights. Dinner and free time.
· Tuesday, Feb 10, Day 4: Half day planting trees at a selected field followed by lunch. Meeting with the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ) for a presentation on the Israeli Apartheid Wall and land expropriation by Israeli authorities. Dinner and free time.
· Wednesday, Feb 11, Day 5: Visiting YMCA headquarters in Jerusalem, A tour in the old city of Jerusalem to visit the main sites in the city. Lunch. In the afternoon we will join The Israeli Committee Against House Demolition ICAHD for a settlement tour around Jerusalem. Dinner and free time. (suggested family stay)
· Thursday, Feb 12, Day 6: Half day planting trees at a selected field followed by lunch. A tour in the old city of Hebron to visit the Ibrahimi Mosque, es-souq (the market), and to see the Israeli division of Hebron and the Israeli settlers who occupy the center of the city. Followed by a meeting with an organization based in Hebron. Dinner and free time (suggested family stay)
· Friday, Feb 13, Day 7: Visit to the city of Ramallah. A meeting with Defense for Children International DCI, Al-Dameer and a Palestinian political representative. Dinner and free time.
· Saturday, Feb 14, Day 8: Half day planting trees at a selected field followed by lunch. Meeting with representatives from the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the East Jerusalem YMCA and YWCA of Palestine Dinner and free time.
· Sunday, Feb 15, Day 9: Half day planting trees at a selected field followed by lunch. Evaluation meeting followed by a farewell dinner at a local restaurant with staff members and volunteers. Overnight in Bethlehem.
· Monday, Feb 16, Day 10: Departure
More Information:
· The cost of the 10 days program including accommodation, meals, and local transportation is 620$.
· A tour guide will be present with the group at all times for facilitation purposes.
· Travel from and to the airport is not included in the cost but can be arranged for groups.
· Places are limited.
For any other information, questions, concerns, or to request a registration form, please contact:
· Jawad Musleh, Alternative Tourism Group, program coordinator, via email at: jawad@atg.ps or by phone at (+972) 2 2772151.
· Baha Hilo, the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the East Jerusalem YMCA and the YWCA of Palestine campaigns officer via email at: olivetree@jai-pal.org / bahilo@gmail.com or by phone at (+972) 2 2774540.
Harvest 2008 photos
Zaytoun on November 24th, 2008A selection of photos from our 2008 harvest team, who were in villages in the Nablus and Salfit districts this year, can be found at www.simulacrum.org.uk/plogger/
Increasing Violence During Olive Harvest 2008
Zaytoun on October 21st, 2008|
A report from the UN declares that there has been as many attacks on farmers so far this year, as in 2007 all together. Even Israeli politicians have declared that the situation is getting out of control. Prior to the olive harvest season, Israeli and Palestinian officials agreed that the Israeli defense force would prevent the settlers from assaulting farmers during their olive harvest. Instead, the Israeli soldiers accompanied settlers in harassing farmers in several occasions during the last two weeks. Farmers are being forced to start their harvesting before the actual season has started, or will have to leave their trees half-full of olives. According to the Israeli High Court ruling of 2006, it is a violation of the law for soldiers to obstruct farmers from harvesting. - www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=32281
- http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3735&Itemid=1 |
|
|
Joint Advocacy Initiative |
Recipes of the West Bank Olive Harvest
Zaytoun on September 15th, 2008The annual West Bank olive harvest holds special significance for Palestinians. Read recipes and stories about some of the traditional dishes enjoyed in conjunction with the olive oil season.
