Barriers to the Olive Harvest

Amira Hass

MachsomWatch, a group of dissident Israelis, has
been accompanying farmers in the northern West Bank on
their troubled journeys to their lands, which are locked
behind the separation fence and, in effect, have been
expropriated from them. The women of MachsomWatch get
reports from the various gates in the fence. The state
promised the High Court that it would make it possible for
the farmers to reach these lands. So it promised. But most
of the year, the gates are open only twice a week. People
have therefore given up on trying to grow vegetables and
wheat, which require daily attention, or on letting their
sheep graze in uncultivated pastures. Many times, the
gates do not open at the appointed hour. Many times,
soldiers do not accept the residents' permits or
confiscate them on various pretexts. The activists from
MachsomWatch spend long hours on the telephone, trying to
reach army command posts to check why a gate was not
opened on time, why a permit was confiscated, why a
request by two women for permission to work their family
lands was turned down.

Now that it is harvest time, the gates are due to open
every day, three times a day. Instead of several dozen
permits for every village, several hundred are being given
out. Yet there are still many who are turned down, in
arbitrary fashion. This daily damage to the Palestinians
does not find its way into the headlines.

The Israeli occupation establishment constantly imposes
various forms of harassment on Palestinians engaged in
agriculture, one of the foundations of the Palestinians'
existence: the separation fence, which imprisons the lands
of 42 villages behind it; the settlers' constantly
expanding security fences; the expropriation of lands for
the construction of bypass roads and security roads; the
destruction of wells; the closure of various areas
(including the entire Jordan Valley) for military
purposes; the closing of roads to Palestinian vehicles;
the checkpoints every few kilometers; the diversion of
trucks carrying produce to long and badly paved roads; the
waiting in line for hours and days at Israeli crossings;
the closing of the Gaza crossing for months, thereby
making it impossible for Gazans to market agricultural
produce; the discouraging bureaucracy required at Civil
Administration bases to obtain a pass to reach one's own
lands - or to not obtain it at all.

All these forms of assault by the establishment, which
appear to be more and more deliberate, explain why more
and more Palestinian agricultural lands appear as if they
have been abandoned, with unplowed soil and trees with
rotten fruit. They also explain why more Israeli than
Palestinian produce can be seen in Palestinian
marketplaces, and why so very many farmers need food
parcels.