guardian.co.uk
Family olive groves fall to Israeli attacks
Army and settlers feed Palestinians' resentment Israel
destroys groves in the West Bank and Gaza
Special report: Israel and the Middle East
Ewen MacAskill in Nablus
Saturday April 14, 2001
The Guardian
Ahmed Kasem, a Palestinian olive-farmer, enjoys curling up for
a nap in the shade of one of his trees. When he is not dozing,
he wanders round the olive groves, as he has done for most of
his 76 years, watering the trees or tucking a little more earth
round their roots to protect them from the sun.
He lives in Huwwarah amid a pretty landscape of cypress, pine
and olive trees a few miles south of Nablus, on the
Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Olive trees have been cultivated in this part of the world since
the Romans. On the hillsides above his home, there are olive
trees that were planted 1,000 years ago that still produce olives.
Closer to home, he can point to trees that were planted by his
father 100 years ago.
He loves the olive tree. "For me, being with the trees is like
being in heaven. I am not crazy but I open my heart to the trees.
I think of the trees as I do my family. I speak to them when I
have troubles."
He has had plenty of troubles to share with the trees in the past
seven months. The olive branch, the universal symbol of peace,
has fallen victim to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as have Mr
Kasem and his fellow villagers.
The Israeli army and Jewish settlers living nearby have been
uprooting the olive trees. Mr Kasem lost 20 of them when an
olive grove was bulldozed by the Israeli army in December.
"It was four in the morning. A neighbour knocked on the door. I
rushed out almost naked. They had gone by the time I got there.
The field was churned up, the trees lying all over the place," Mr
Kasem said.
"I took the roots home. They are in the yard. I look at them every
day. I say to them 'I spent half my life nurturing you'. I will keep
the roots to remind my grandchildren what the Jews did to me
and to them."
Although he has other olive trees, the loss was painful.
"Even if you have lots of kids, the death of one is going to hurt,"
he says. "I planted those trees when I was only 20. It was the
start of the winter season. I bought them at a village near Tel
Aviv and took them home in my brother's truck."
The destruction of the olive groves is continuing at Huwwarah.
Sixty other olive-farmers in the village have suffered losses: they
estimated 2,500 olive trees have been torn up by the Israeli army
or Jewish settlers.
Two weeks ago the Palestinian Authority announced that in the
past seven months 25,000 olive trees had been uprooted in the
West Bank and Gaza.
Major Yarden Vatichai, an Israeli army spokesman, said: "We
do it because there is a threat to our soldiers and civilians. They
can be a hideout for Palestinian gunmen."
Most of the trees uprooted have been close to Jewish
settlements, or beside roads used by Jewish settlers.
Israeli peace groups, some of whose members have been
arrested trying to stop the destruction, dispute the army version
and claim the real reason for the uprooting is to aid the further
Israeli annexation of Palestinian land.
Palestinians, such Mr Kasem, see the loss of the olive trees as
part of a deliberate policy by Israel to humiliate them, to sap
their will.
The mayor of Huwwarah, Wajeeh Odeh, 44, admitted that
Palestinian youths have thrown stones at Jewish settlers using
the road but said the Israeli response had been disproportionate.
"The kids throw stones to demonstrate their opposition to the
occupation," he said. "There have been no Palestinian snipers
here. No soldier or settler has been killed or wounded."
One of the toughest parts of life under Israeli occupation is the
curfew. The first and longest imposed by the army on Huwwarah
lasted 38 days, beginning on October 6. It was a 24-hour curfew.
There have been two others since.
"We were not allowed to leave our homes," one of Mr Kasem's
neighbours, Mustapha Dawoud, said. "It was like being a pigeon
in a cage."
Closure of the village to the outside world has been near
constant. Israeli checkpoints at either side of the village ensure
a safe passage for Jewish settlers but they cut off access for the
Palestinians.
There are ways round, using desert by-pass roads, but locals
use these at the risk of being shot. "I took a risk," Mr Kasem
said. "I got a lorry and a driver and got some of the crop
through."
He is confident that one day, God willing, there will be a
Palestinian state and that the Israeli army and the settlers will
be gone. He will safely replant new trees then.
"If not me," he says, "my children or grandchildren will." |
