Palestinian olive harvest under threat from Israeli settler attacks and restrictions

On a Thursday afternoon in the direction of the top of final month, a 59-year-old Palestinian girl got down to collect olives on her household’s land close to the village of Faqqua, within the north of the occupied West Bank.

It was one thing that Hanan Abu Salameh had executed for many years.

Within minutes, the mom of seven and grandmother of 14 lay dying within the mud of the olive grove, with a bullet wound in her chest – she’d been shot by an Israeli soldier.

Even although the household had co-ordinated their intention to select olives with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in keeping with her son Fares and husband Hossam, the soldier fired a number of photographs as different relations fled for canopy.

The IDF says it’s investigating the incident, however Hanan’s grieving family have little hope or expectation that her killer can be dropped at justice.

This wasn’t an remoted incident.

Harvesting olives is an age-old ritual and likewise an financial necessity for a lot of Palestinians, however, in keeping with the UN, it’s more and more precarious.

Farmers throughout the West Bank – internationally considered Palestinian land occupied by Israel – face heightened dangers, like organised assaults by Israeli settlers looking for to sabotage the olive harvest, together with the usage of drive by Israeli safety forces to dam roads and Palestinians’ entry to their lands.

“Last year we couldn’t even harvest our olives, except for a very small amount,” says Omar Tanatara, a farmer from the village of Umm Safa.

“At one point, the army came, threw the olives we’d already gathered on the ground, and ordered us to go home,” says Omar, who can be a member of the village council.

“Some people were even shot at and olives trees were cut down with saws – that’s how we later found them,” provides Omar, as he and different villagers use small hand-held rakes to tug this 12 months’s harvest from their remaining bushes whereas they will.

Even when Israeli and worldwide activists accompany villagers to their olive groves, hoping to discourage the menace, there’s no assure of security.

Zuraya Hadad instinctively winces as we watch a video of the incident by which her ribs have been damaged by a masked man wielding a big stick.

The Israeli peace activist had been serving to Palestinian farmers choose their olives when she was assaulted with out provocation.

Rather than arresting her attacker, Israeli troopers, who’d accompanied settlers to the positioning, simply advised him to maneuver on.

“Even when we come to help, it doesn’t guarantee that the Palestinians can harvest their olives,” Zuraya tells me as she recovers from her accidents at dwelling.

“We try to raise awareness, but in the end it’s either the settlers steal the olives or cut the trees, or they remain unpicked and go to waste.”

Land is on the coronary heart of the decades-old battle between Israel and the Palestinians – who controls it and who has entry to it.

For hundreds of Palestinian households and villages, cultivating and harvesting olives is an enormous a part of their economic system.

But many say that, in current occasions, entry to bushes on their land has been impeded, typically violently by Israeli settlers.

Hundreds of bushes – which might take years to achieve fruit-bearing maturity – have been intentionally burned or reduce down, says the UN.

More than 96,000 dunums (roughly 96 sq km; 37 sq miles) of olive groves within the West Bank additionally went uncultivated in 2023 due to Israeli restrictions on entry for Palestinian farmers.

After being gathered by hand, villagers from Umm Safa take sacks stuffed with olives to the close by manufacturing unit, the place the presses have restarted this season.

Olives are a very powerful agricultural product within the West Bank. In a great 12 months, they’re price greater than $70m (£54m) to the Palestinian economic system.

But earnings was nicely down final 12 months and this 12 months can be even worse, says manufacturing unit proprietor Abd al-Rahman Khalifa, as even fewer farmers are in a position to harvest their crop owing to assaults by settlers.

“Let me give you an example,” he tells me.

“My brother-in-law in Lubban – next to the Israeli settlement – went to pick his own olives, but they broke his arms and they made him leave along with everyone who was with him.”

“We, as Palestinians, don’t have petrol or big companies. Our main agricultural crop is olives,” he provides. “So, like the Gulf depends on oil, and the Americans on business, our economy is dependent on the olive tree.”

On the hill overlooking the olive groves of Umm Safa stands an unlawful settler outpost – a farm.

The extremist settler who runs it, Zvi Bar Yosef, was sanctioned this 12 months by the UK and different Western governments for repeated acts of violence in opposition to Palestinians, together with twice threatening households at gunpoint.

Over the final 12 months of the struggle in Gaza, Jewish settlers have been emboldened by the help of far-right Israeli ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir.

As nationwide safety minister, he has given out free firearms to lots of of settlers and has inspired them to say their proper to what – they are saying – is their “God-given” land.

Ben-Gvir has additionally been accused of brazenly supporting the disruption of olive harvesting on Palestinian land.

At the olive press, farmers wait patiently within the yard to witness the transformation of the olives they’ve been in a position to collect this 12 months into “liquid gold”.

The olive tree has been a logo of this land for hundreds of years.

For generations of Palestinians, it’s their hyperlink to the land – a hyperlink that’s beneath menace now greater than ever.