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Olive livelihood threat { October 23 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2596-2002Oct22.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2596-2002Oct22.html
Palestinians See New Threat to Livelihoods
Jewish Settlers Accused Of Attacking Olive Crop
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 23, 2002; Page A20
MAZRAA SHARQIYA, West Bank, Oct. 22 -- Members of the Azzam family gathered in their three-acre olive grove today for a usually routine ritual that in recent weeks has become increasingly hazardous: the annual olive harvest.
As 16 family members, from toddlers to grandparents, shook the branches and raked through the silvery green leaves with their fingers to plunk the small, green olives onto tarps spread like blankets below the trees, they said they were constantly on guard against Jewish settlers who this year are waging a violent and economically devastating war against Palestinian olive pickers.
Next to the family plot, hundreds of olive trees were set afire two weeks ago by residents of nearby Jewish settlements, family members said. Down the road, about 100 other trees were sawed to the ground. Ten miles north, in the town of Aqraba, settlers three weeks ago shot and killed a 24-year-old Palestinian man who was picking olives on his land, according to Palestinian witnesses.
Since the harvest season began in early October, Palestinian communities across the West Bank have reported almost daily attacks by settlers against harvesters collecting the bright green, rock-hard olives that are a staple of the Palestinian diet and economy. On several occasions, Palestinians complained that after driving them from their groves, the settlers collected the olives for themselves.
"They are trying to uproot us from our lands, and without our land, we will have no attachment to Palestine," said Lufti Azzam, 54, as he sat with his family in the shade of an olive tree eating bread and chicken with spicy peppers. "But we are not going to be as simple-minded as our parents and grandparents. We are not going to leave our land like they did. We are not going to Jordan and Syria. We are going to resist them and harvest our olives."
Settlers say their fight is primarily preemptive and defensive against Palestinians who might use olive harvesting as a ruse to sneak up to Jewish settlements and attack them. Palestinians have mounted numerous attacks on Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Palestinians see the settlers as illegal occupiers of Palestinian lands.
In areas near Jewish communities, "The army has set a certain distance to be a sterile zone, and no one is allowed into this area because of the fear of terrorists," said Ezra Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Yesha Council, which represents Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
When Palestinians enter the zone, a buffer area that is a different size for every community, depending on the topography, settlers are allowed to fire warning shots, he said, so "if an unknown Palestinian were to approach, I'd be careful."
But according to Azzam Tubaileh, a top official in the Agriculture Ministry of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, the attacks on the olive harvest have "nothing to do with security. It's a kind of stealing. It's economic warfare."
Tubaileh said that in the two years since Palestinians began their uprising against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- which prompted the Israeli military to impose strict curfews and close access to numerous towns and roads -- the Palestinian economy has suffered about $700 million in agricultural losses, about a third of that from olive trees and crops.
He said that about 18,000 olive trees have been destroyed by Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers. This year's crop, if fully harvested and turned into olive oil, would be worth about $250 million, he said.
A recent report by the international development organization Oxfam estimated that a quarter of the Palestinians' agricultural output is olive production and that this year's production "is at risk of being wiped out" because of Israeli security measures that have blocked many roads and prevented Palestinians from traveling between towns and from their homes to their farmland. The report said 7,000 olive trees were uprooted by Israeli soldiers in the last two years "as punishment for Palestinians throwing stones" at troops.
The Azzam family's two-mile commute to their grove today illustrated the problem.
"We usually start at 5 a.m., but it took us three hours to walk here today because every road we took, [Israeli soldiers] told us to go back," said Lamya Azzam, 40, Lufti's sister-in-law.
Shortly after they arrived, Lufti Azzam said, Israeli soldiers came by in a jeep and told them it was illegal to harvest olives today. Israel Radio repeatedly broadcast reports that the Israeli military had banned further olive harvesting because of the threat of violence, but a military spokesman said the report was untrue.
"It's the other way around," he said. "Palestinians are authorized to do their harvest work in the olive fields in the West Bank, within certain distances from certain communities."
The Azzam family plot lies along the main road between the Israeli settlements of Ofra and Shiloh and is about three miles from each. Two other settlements, Eli and Male Levona, are also nearby.
The Azzams said they have never had any conflicts with local settlers, but that numerous other farmers in the area have. They said more than 1,500 trees have been destroyed on three hills surrounding their town of Mazraa Sharqiya, a farming community of about 4,000 people carved out of the rocky, arid mountains 15 miles north of Jerusalem.
Their family lost about 35 mature trees in the recent burnings, they said, adding that each tree typically would yield about $150 worth of olives during the harvest, which occurs every two years.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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