Gaza- Wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh, Rehan shares her family’s drink while picking olives from her land in the “Ma’an” area, east of the city of Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
But this woman, who comes from a family that inherits the agricultural profession and owns areas of land planted with olive trees, is missing for the second year in a row the customs and rituals that have been passed down through generations and that add a lot of joy to the olive harvest season, which Palestinians revere and receive with official and popular celebratory activities.
These rituals are absent from Rehan’s family, and she tells Tel Aviv Tribune Net that “the season is tasteless” with the absence of many uncles, relatives and neighbors who were displaced by the war, including the martyrs and the wounded, the majority of whom are displaced, and for the second year in a row “the olive season does not bring us together.”
Great value
The olive tree has great value for the Palestinians, and they view it as a symbol of their roots in this land and their connection to it. They receive its harvest annually with celebrations in which chants and traditional songs rise to the beat of the popular dabke, while the women are busy preparing the traditional breakfast meal of olive oil, thyme and tea, and then they go to participate in the harvesting before Preparing “Maqluba” over a wood fire as a lunch meal.
All that remains of all the rituals is this. Rehan points to the keffiyeh she was wearing, and says that the olive tree was one of the occupation’s targets during the war. Large areas were bulldozed and destroyed, and farmers were displaced and divided among martyrs, wounded, and displaced people.
“At times like these every year, we spend our days from the early morning until the evening hours among the olive trees, sharing singing and laughter. Where are the people who used to share these joys with us?” Rehan wonders and answers at the same time, “The war destroyed us and separated us.”
As a result of this war, which is about to complete its first year on the seventh of next October, the farmers’ joys have changed to intense fear and anxiety over the course of the moment as they work on their lands, most of which are adjacent or close to the Israeli security fence along the eastern borders of the Strip.
Rehan adds, “We rushed early to pick olives for fear of any developments that would spoil the season for us, as happened last season,” referring to its coincidence with the outbreak of war on October 7, 2023.
The olive harvest season in Palestine begins annually from the beginning of October until after mid-November, but farmers in the southern Gaza Strip preferred to pick them early in the last third of September, fearing failure and loss of fruits.
Destruction and bulldozing
Last season failed for the majority of Gazan farmers, especially in the north of the Gaza Strip, while farmers in the south took advantage of a temporary truce that lasted for 7 days in November of last year and picked olives from their lands that had not been affected by Israeli bulldozing and destruction.
As for Rehan and her family, they fear losing the season, or that something will prevent them from reaching their land in one of the areas east of Khan Yunis, whose residents the occupation forces have repeatedly forced to displace, and therefore they preferred early harvesting of olives.
Reham complains that the current season is not abundant, and the olives are small and not as they were in previous years, and she attributes the reason to the inability of farmers to access their lands and take care of them.
In her opinion, the current season is “very bad” in terms of the quality and quantity of fruits, and she states that many of her relatives, acquaintances, and neighbors either lost their trees, which were bulldozed and destroyed by the occupation’s mechanisms and raids, or they neglected them due to fear and the lack of agricultural materials, equipment, and water, and their production was bad and weak.
Among many types of goods and materials, the occupation authorities prevent medicines, fertilizers and agricultural supplies from entering the Gaza Strip through the only commercial crossing of Kerem Shalom under their control, and impose severe restrictions on it, at a time when the Rafah land crossing with Egypt continues to be closed since its invasion of the city of Rafah on the 6th of Last May.
Farmer Youssef Sharab agrees with Rehan in describing the season as “bad.” He told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the force of explosions resulting from air and artillery strikes caused the olive crop to fall from the remaining trees, while large areas planted with olives were bulldozed and destroyed.
He is certain that the current and past seasons are the worst in his life as a farmer. He inherited this profession from his father and grandparents, and he oversees large areas of tree land in the “Al-Qarara” area, northeast of the city of Khan Yunis, which has been subjected to extensive bulldozing and destruction.
While Sharab’s wife and their children were working to sort the olives from the remains of trees that had been spared destruction, and prepare them either for pressing and producing oil or pickling, storing and eating them as appetizers, he added that a few presses are still working in the south of the Gaza Strip as a result of the permanent power outage crisis since the outbreak of the war or the scarcity of fuel. .
Assassination of the olive tree
In turn, farmer Muhammad Qadeeh has finished picking olives from his agricultural land in the town of Abasan, which is a few hundred meters away from the Israeli security fence east of Khan Yunis. He feels great regret at the low quality of the fruits and their scarcity. He asked in his interview with Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “Is it possible that this is the production of 50 trees?” olive?”.
Qudaih estimates that this quantity “does not exceed 50 kilograms of olives. Their seeds are small and dry, their color tends to be black, and they are not suitable for pressing and producing oil. They are bad if pickled and are not enough for his family and 6 families from his family.”
According to the Ministry of Agriculture in Gaza, 50 thousand dunums (a dunum equals a thousand square metres) were planted with two million olive trees before the outbreak of the Israeli war, which led to the leveling and destruction of an area of 40,500 dunums.
The Director General of the Ministry’s Tree Horticulture Department, Engineer Muhammad Abu Odeh, told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that this area represented 50% of the tree horticulture area at the sector level, producing 15,000 tons of olives for pickling, 35,000 tons for pressing, and 5,000 tons of olive oil, and due to the war there. A deficit of 2,500 tons of pickling olives and 4,000 tons of olive oil.
Regarding the impact of the war on olive presses, Abu Odeh explained that 40 presses were operating in the Gaza Strip before the outbreak of the war, the majority of which were out of service and only 6 presses remained: one in the northern Gaza Strip, 4 in the Central Governorate, and one in Khan Yunis.
In addition to the destruction, the speaker identifies reasons for the presses being out of service, most notably the high production costs, the power outage, the scarcity of fuel needed for operation, the unavailability of quantities of olive fruits due to destruction and bulldozing, and the unavailability of packaging containers for oil and olive fruits.