About the narrative of oil and olives

author

Issam Bakr

Addressing the attacks that the Palestinian farmer is exposed to in the current olive season is no longer linked to the number of attacks compared to previous years. The big jump in the quality and size of what is happening goes beyond the traditional description, as was the norm previously, and the setting of indicators regarding them cannot be measured on a geographical scale. Throughout the Palestinian land in the countryside in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the scale of the disaster resulting from the racist unrest at the hands of settler gangs against humans, trees, and people’s lives becomes apparent to the viewer without difficulty.

Even international diplomats were attacked while they were on a field tour to see a picture of some of what was going on, even from afar. They were not spared from these attacks, which have become a harsh and continuous daily scene experienced by the occupied Palestinian territories. They expanded relatively with the start of the season, from harming farms, striking crops, and preventing harvesting of fruits. These practices were part of a plan that was announced on settlers’ websites since the middle of last month, amid fatwas of senior rabbis that analyzed “the theft of olives.” A number of different qualitative observations can be made. Recording it this year is one of the most important, in addition to the expansion and extension of the attacks at almost the same time, and attacking farmers in vast areas, which means the presence of directives and organized sponsors managing the process of the ongoing attack and movement on the ground, but what is also striking here is the settlers’ initiative to establish and open oil presses in many settlements, and this is for the first time since the occupation, and threatening Palestinian presses with force to press what is stolen from their olive fruits after storming them, and preventing them from seizing quantities of oil by force under threat. The third issue is perhaps in this. The context is that settler groups sell the looted oil product and announce a (discounted) price list. This is also not a coincidence, as it is an attempt to imitate what was customary among the Palestinian ancestors in the sixties and seventies of the last century by Palestinian farmers who were and still are relying on the season to carry out many life issues such as teaching children, getting them married, or other social obligations. Another issue is burning, smashing, breaking and uprooting large numbers of trees in this regard.The year is truly a massacre that befalls the land, even those close to homes in dozens of villages and towns. An example of this is the plains of Turmus Ayya, Al-Mughayir, and Abu Falah, east of Ramallah, in addition to large areas in Jenin, Wadi Al-Shaer, east of Salfit, and even Masafer Yatta in the south. That is, the criminal act went beyond everything known so far in preventing access to the olive fields, to include this year the erasure and uprooting of the tree from existence. This is not a coincidence or mere incidents of violence, but rather its goal is to strike the farmer’s dependence on the season, impoverish the people, and rob them of their livelihood. Their livelihood or what remains of it and making reality unlivable and erasing existence. The other issue is the process of complete and integrated coordination with the occupation army, which not only provides protection and guarding, but also prepares plans and implementation, prevents movement and movement, and closes areas to prevent access to the lands, not to mention preventing permits and declaring fields as covered military zones. These observations are only the tip of the iceberg of daily aggressive behavior experienced by the farmer, who has become completely exposed and powerless.

One of the implications of the olive season and what is happening this year, and a lot can be written about that, about practices that have become very dangerous, is that this year is the actual “establishment” of a coming stage within the de facto plan to empty the land of its inhabitants. This year, despite the valiant challenge and insistence by the farmers to stay and reach their land and reap the fruits of olives, despite the unparalleled stability of the Palestinian’s attachment to his land, it was also a bloody year, a season drenched in blood and pain, and the cries of the people filling the mountains and making their way to... The sky, after blocking the paths in front of it, is a year that will have its successors, as it is preparation for years that take on other forms of aggression that are more brutal and cruel, including that we may witness a complete ban on access to the remaining fields, and perhaps amid more ferocious measures, which is the laying of the foundation stone for tightening control and turning people’s lives into almost impossible within the voluntary and forced displacement plan to force people to leave specifically the countryside towards the city or outside Palestine. It is also a year of declaring a comprehensive economic and life-related war that will not stop with the end of the current olive season. Or the end of the Israeli elections. Rather, they will extend beyond that, regardless of who wins them. But the lesson of everything that is happening lies in the fact that a people sees the olive tree as a son or daughter to them and a farmer who instills the meaning of good fruit in their peers. It cannot be defeated or the imprinted image in its mind of what is happening, no matter what happens, and it is not capable of submission because it simply sees in the narrative of oil and olives the origin of the story and sees in it the succession of generations and the forehead and garden of the grandfather who commanded it. It is a tree that will not be for decoration or home gardens, it is engraved with consciousness. Long history and it is notIt can be erased and annihilated as long as an entire people preserves it, even if tomorrow is near.