Gaza Airstrikes Destroy Olive Groves

Media coverage of Israeli attacks on Gaza tend to focus on the immediate damage inflicted. Last week, the bombing torched dozens of olive trees threatening the livelihood of Palestinian farmers for seasons to come.

Gaza- Last week, 12 Palestinians and one Israeli were killed during a three day round of cross-border attacks on Gaza. Beyond the loss of life, Israel's airstrikes also wrought long lasting damage on Palestinians' livelihoods dependent on olive cutlviation.

On Sunday October 30, at 3am, an F-16 shelled an olive grove in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, destroying over 40 trees and leaving a crater five metres deep and twice as wide.

Sufyan Musa, whose family has owned the farm for over 50 years, explained: “It’s like the farm was hit by an earthquake, and now there is nothing; no farm, no yield, no point.”


Ayman Ismail Hamad lives next to the olive grove. He described the terror his family underwent, saying “it was so scary. The children and women here started to shout and cry. When we looked out to see what happened, we found everything totally destroyed. The F-16 didn't spare anything..”



The attack's effects are both immediate and long-term. “This is really hard – to wait the whole year for the fruit to grow so you can sell it, only for the farm to be completely destroyed like this. These trees have been slaughtered, and even if we replant, nothing will grow on the bombed area again,” said Musa.

Musa added that his is not the only farm to have been attacked in recent escalations. “The whole of Beit Hanoun is a disaster zone,” he said. “Most farms here have been shelled or razed.”

Muhammed Elshembary owns 120 olive trees on the northern border of Gaza, adjacent to the ‘buffer zone’ - 300 meters of land forbidden to Palestinians all along the Israeli border. Gazans have been warned that they will be shot if they enter the ‘buffer zone,’ and that even farming within one kilometer puts them at risk of death.


■ "The Story of Gazan Olive Oil" a photoblog by Ruqaya Izzidien

“Living and farming here, on my land, brings me suffering and fear,” said Elshembary. “My trees have often been chopped and my land razed. The army knows I am just a farmer and still they come and destroy my trees. The olive grove we are standing in has been attacked seven times in the last eight years, yet still we farm and the trees grow, then they return and cut them down.”


Elshembary believes that these attacks on farms are an attempt to force him to leave. “My work is very hard but I will not leave. I live 500 meters from the Israeli wall and military outposts. They want me to leave this land so it will become like the ‘buffer zone’, arid and abandoned; with no trees- that is how the siege strangles our economy.”

Economy under siege

The harvest season in Gaza used to last around two months, providing livelihoods to around 25,000 workers, but it now takes just a few hundred workers little over a fortnight to pick every olive in Gaza.


Sufyan Musa puts the poor olive harvest down to more than just the destruction of trees, claiming that the airstrikes create more difficulties for an industry struggling to survive as a consequence of the ongoing siege, imposed by Israel since 2007.


Yousef Abu Muhammed owns an olive press in Gaza City, where agriculturalists congregate from all over the occupied territory to extract oil from their olives. He believes that the ripples of a besieged olive industry don’t simply affect workers. “The blockade has profound repercussions on farms, consumers and olive presses,” said Abu Muhammed. “These days, farmers sell a liter of olive oil worth 20 shekels for 30 in order to get by,” he said, a necessary move if farmers are to meet their costs.

Under the blockade, importation and exportation are controlled by Israeli authorities, leaving Gazans unable to sustain trade outside of the coastal enclave.

Abu Muhammed explained, “Even I, as an olive press owner, can’t get machine parts from outside, because we just can’t get out. Gazans are locked in so we have to be introspective and self-reliant. We used to sell olive oil in the West Bank and Amman. Now we are cut off here, there are still no real crossings, so we only sell in Gaza.”


The olive press has been in my family for 51 years but these days there aren’t many olives,” he explained. “Production is only about one quarter of what it used to be and all the trees have diseases or have been destroyed.”



Ripples from Operation Cast Lead



Olive trees, typically, do not bear fruit for the first five years and many trees in Gaza are still suffering the consequences from exposure to bombs dropped in Operation Cast Lead. According to the Palestinian Authority, 15 percent of Gazan agricultural land was destroyed in the 2008-2009 war and Israeli forces have destroyed over 100,000 olive trees since the year 2000.


Sana Sadat had 27 trees destroyed by the Israeli army even before the 2008-2009 invasion. But she recalls that “After the war, white powder residue remained on the trees that hadn’t been razed from all the explosions and the olives from these trees were unusable. Every time they invade and come to our area, they raze the land. The result is that we end up dreaming of our trees reaching 20 years in age.”


Gazan farmers circumvent the obstacles in the way of their livelihoods by creating ingenious uses for waste products. Sadat explained, “The dry pulp that is left over after the oil is squeezed from the olive is used as animal fodder or fuel for open fires and cooking. Palestinians are resourceful and we are under siege; nothing can afford to go to waste in Gaza.”


The olive tree has long been the emblem of Palestinian culture; its harvest once provided employment to over 20,000 Gazans and its fruit fills every home in the form of oil, beauty products or food. The recent bombing of olive groves in Gaza impedes an industry that is already struggling to cope with a blockade which threatens access to agricultural land and isolates the industry from the world outside.