Barrier cuts into Palestinian olive harvest

News, November 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

By Mark Heinrich

Reuters, Arab News

JAYYOUS, West Bank — “My olives are withering on their branches because the Israelis won't let me through this fence,” said Palestinian farmer Mahmoud Khorushi, peering sadly at his vines on a terraced slope beyond.

Olives are a major Palestinian cash crop and the vines a symbol of continuity on land tended by families for generations. Harvests used to be joyous occasions for family reunions, with relatives coming from far and wide to help out until Israel imposed a military clampdown on the West Bank and Gaza Strip in response to a Palestinian uprising.

This year, the olive harvest in the most fertile belt of the arid region has been disrupted by Israel's controversial construction of a “security” barrier across the West Bank, cutting off thousands of Palestinian farmers from their crops.

Long before work started in 2002 the spread of Jewish settlements had been eating into Palestinian rural holdings. In recent years, extremist settlers have periodically chopped down Palestinian olive groves without prosecution.

“They kill our trees to kill the hope of our people. I am ruined,” said Fauzi Hussein, surveying the remains of 255 olive trees which he said had been destroyed by settlers from a new outpost overlooking his village in the central West Bank.

Construction of the planned 680km mix of electronic fences, walls and trenches may prove the single biggest strike against the foundation of Palestinian life on the land, UN and World Bank studies indicate.

“The (barrier) will have severe humanitarian consequences,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a November report. In a study based on an official map, it said 274,000 Palestinians could wind up marooned between the barrier and Israel's border, or in enclaves created by the structure once construction was complete. Israel's foreign ministry rejected the findings, saying that only four per cent of Palestinians would be west of the barrier.

Israel says the barrier is needed to keep out suicide bombers and gunmen waging a three-year-old Palestinian revolt. But by often meandering from Israel's border well into the West Bank, the barrier's first 180km have separated over 70,000 people from fields, markets, schools and public services from the rest of the territory where Palestinians seek a state.

More than 65,000 olives trees have been uprooted, thousands of hectares of rural property appropriated and scarce water sources threatened by its construction, according to international studies.

And by appearing to annex territory where Jewish settlements have proliferated, the barrier is compounding obstacles to a “roadmap” to peace, its US-led sponsors say.

'Stop building,' Bush says

“Israel should freeze settlement construction..., end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people and not prejudice final negotiations with the placement of walls and fences,” US President George W. Bush said in London last week.

Israel brushed off the criticism from its main ally and vowed to continue.

It was bad news for Palestinian olive farmers in villages like Jayyous who wait for hours each day in the hope of crossing the barrier and tending their vines on the slopes beyond.

Israel has built 29 “farm gates” along the first 150km in what it says is a policy of ensuring that farmers can tend their fields.

Palestinians say the gates have been open for only brief periods at varying times and are sometimes shut for days on end. Israel says such closures are due to “security alerts.”

Villagers complain of “collective punishment.” They say the harvest has been impaired and could amount to less than half of last year's.

Israel's defence ministry said farmers have filed about 50 claims for losses so far and compensation was granted for each.

'Orwellian' permit system

Israel requires Palestinians living within the “closed military zone” of the barrier to hold permits to transit farm gates or pass checkpoints en route to and from other villages.

Local municipal officials say most of the permits have been issued to the very young or old or to others who moved abroad years ago — rather than to male residents in their 20s, 30s and 40s who form the overwhelming majority of olive growers.

Israeli army spokeswoman Captain Sharon Feingold responded: “We give permits to anyone except those deemed a security threat or whose linkage to the Seam Zone (barrier) is not proven.

“Yes, we do get complaints about the gates and we are addressing them,” she said. “The whole concept's still new. Both sides have to learn it. We're committed to maintaining normal routine for the Palestinian people in the Seam Zone.”

Those lacking permits still turn up at the gates every morning in Jayyous and other villages, hoping that a soldier might take pity on them and let them go through.

“Nine times out of 10 it won't happen. But we're here just in case because we're desperate to harvest at least some of our crop before it spoils,” said Khader Suleiman, a Jayyous grower. As his group waited, Israeli army jeeps roared past ignoring them. Finally one stopped and soldiers opened a gate. “Go home, you've come at the wrong time!” one barked at the farmers.

Women and elderly people with permits raced to another gate a kilometre away after hearing that a US human rights monitor had shown up to challenge soldiers there.

The observer remonstrated with the soldiers but only the women and elderly with permits were allowed through. The younger men had to retreat to another day of idleness at home. “If and when the gates open depends entirely on the whim of the soldiers on duty,” said Jayyous Mayor Fais Hassan Selim.

Heaped in his front yard are the gnarled remains of a huge 400-year-old olive tree he said Israeli forces tore from a family plot. “It's a memorial,” he said.

Friday-Saturday, November 28-29, 2003

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03.

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