rituals of the olive harvest season<\/a>, while pushing out the Palestinians who have kept those traditions for generations.<\/p>\nSeveral new farms have been set up in the occupied West Bank. One shares videos of olives being pressed. Others invite Israelis to \u201cjoin in\u201d the experience.<\/p>\n
Palestinians say the videos circulating show a disregard for the actual owners of the land taken by the settlers, and a clear attempt to appropriate the season, imitating its rituals and claiming them as their own.<\/p>\n
Those rituals \u2013 things like collective picking, singing, and shared meals on the farms \u2013 are rooted in a deep connection to the land.<\/p>\n
The olive harvest season may be an exhausting time of the year for Palestinians, with its hard work and long hours in the sun, but it\u2019s a rewarding one. Olive farmers traditionally gather for family get-togethers, with neighbours and friends volunteering to help one another harvest the olives, in a cultural tradition known as \u201couneh\u201d.<\/p>\n
The season has a light-hearted element, with debates about whose land produces the best oil, who should charge the most, and who knows how to pick the most olives and not drop any to the ground.<\/p>\n
Older generations pass down lessons from history, such as the best time to harvest and how to nurture the trees \u2013 an inherited knowledge of climate, agriculture and the land itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey planted so that we can eat. We plant so they [will] eat,\u201d a well-known Arabic saying goes. It highlights the continuity of this inheritance, and the responsibility towards future generations.<\/p>\n
Last harvest?<\/p>\n
These trees, which are meant to be protected, nurtured and passed on, are being taken away \u2013 not only by settlers, but by soldiers, too.<\/p>\n
Hazem Sanaf, 61, stood on a nearby hill in the village of Beit Rima and watched as Israeli bulldozers ploughed through his lands in late September, after he had received an Israeli military order. The bulldozers destroyed and uprooted more than 400 trees belonging to Hazem and his neighbour, some of them decades old, and his only source of income.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just want to take our olive trees from us,\u201d he said, his eyes reflecting his pain.<\/p>\n
Hazem is not alone. Several Israeli military orders to uproot olive trees have been handed out across the occupied West Bank. Some have been carried out, while others await their turn.<\/p>\n
In the past, the Israeli military has cited the need to clear land of trees to prevent security threats or ambushes on troops. But Palestinians say it reflects a pattern of dispossession and impoverishment.<\/p>\n
According to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC), Israeli settlers and soldiers have destroyed approximately 50,000 trees this year alone.<\/p>\n
Fuad Daraghmeh, from the village of al-Lubban Asharqiya, near Ramallah, carried the thick, broken stem of a tree.<\/p>\n
\u201cI took care of it for 30 years,\u201d he said, and headed home. He did not say what he planned to do with the stem, but others said that their trees had been uprooted before, and that they had managed to nourish them back to life.<\/p>\n
Others are resigned to saying goodbye to the trees. They sit by the bulldozed trees with small hand tools, picking the last fruit of what they believe is their last crop.<\/p>\n
Palestinians have been watching videos of settlers harvesting their olive trees, including the one shared by Suissa.<\/p>\n
Beyond the pain, one remark keeps coming up: the method used by Suissa in vigorously beating the tree is no way to treat it, and no way to harvest olives.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people who have tended to their lands for decades know that,\u201d one Palestinian activist, who did not wish to be identified for security reasons, said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ramallah, occupied West Bank \u2013 The video shared in Israeli settler groups shows two men bashing an olive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2664,85,46,44,47,43,45,48],"class_list":["post-640733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-features","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-palestine-conflict","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-occupied-west-bank","tag-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}