Facing bombardment and water shortages, Palestinian farmers are clinging on to a livelihood that has long symbolized and been a source of resilience.
Over the past several weeks, Palestinian olive farmers in Gaza have been desperately trying to salvage what remains of their crops. For many of them, that’s not much at all: over three-quarters of olive trees in the Strip have been destroyed by Israel’s attacks over the last year. Many trees that were not directly bombed or bulldozed shed their fruits as a result of the force of nearby explosions, which have also limited the ability of farmers to safely access their groves. Some farmers have even had to take the devastating decision to cut down their trees for fuel.
The olive harvest has long been a vital cultural practice that reinforces Palestinians’ connection to their land, bringing together all generations of the family each year as the fruits become ripe. It is also important economically, constituting the majority of agricultural income for farmers who sell the olives cured or pressed as olive oil or soap.
The physical labor of harvesting is often punctuated by singing traditional songs and dancing dabkeh. Harvesters prepare a communal breakfast, usually some combination of saj bread dipped in oil, zaatar, and duqqa. Later, they take a break from work to gather kindling for an open fire, where dishes like fatteh or maqluba are cooked for lunch.
Yet in Gaza, for the second year in a row, what was once an annual celebration of culture and community has become a lonely and dangerous endeavor, accompanied by the sounds of artillery shells, warplanes, and ambulance sirens.
According to Mohammed Abu Ouda, director of the tree horticulture department at Gaza’s Agriculture Ministry, only one-fifth of the Strip’s olive trees are still standing after more than a year of Israel’s onslaught. And of the 40 olive presses that operated across Gaza before the outbreak of the war, only six remain: one in the north, four in the central region, and one in the south.
Fayyad Fayyad, director of the Palestinian Olive Oil Council, told +972 that predicting how much olive oil will be produced this season in Gaza is “impossible,” but the amount is likely to fall below 10 percent of the annual average. “The productivity per dunam of land planted with olives in the Gaza Strip was among the highest in the world before the war,” he lamented.
‘Last year, I lost the entire crop’
Khalil Nabhan, a 52-year-old farmer from the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, moves swiftly among the branches of his olive trees, gathering their fruit. Despite Israel’s repeated attacks on his land, Nabhan has tried to salvage what remains of his crop. “Unlike every other year, I started picking the olives before the rains came in an attempt to save what’s left,” he said.
Before the war, Nabhan would pick olives together with his whole family every morning during harvest season. This year, fearing for his family’s safety, he has had to harvest by himself.
Nabhan owns 3 dunams (about 0.75 acres) of olive-planted land. Since the start of the war, he has only been able to access one of his plots, while the rest — 2 dunams containing more than 500 olive trees — were entirely destroyed by Israeli bulldozers.
“This land used to yield 600 kilograms of olives before the war,” he said. “Today, the yield won’t exceed 200, which is barely enough to feed my family, with no surplus to sell.”
In addition to Israeli airstrikes causing many olives to fall before they had a chance to ripen Nabhan explained that the blockade and lack of access to water have made it impossible to properly tend to his groves. As a result, many of the trees spared by Israel’s bombardment simply dried up.
“In the past, the olive season was much better, with the availability of fertilizers and water,” he explained. “This year, there’s nothing, which has affected the fruit, making it small and dry.”
Shawqi Mhana, a 61-year-old farmer from the Al-Tuffah neighborhood east of Gaza City, also rushed to harvest his olives early. “Last year, I lost the entire crop because of the war,” he told +972. “I couldn’t harvest the fruits because of the intense Israeli shelling.”
This year hasn’t been any better. Most of Mhana’s olives fell prematurely as a result of Israeli bombardment of his land and nearby agricultural areas. Like Nabhan, he points to the lack of water and fertilizer as further reasons for his inability to sustain his trees.
The proximity of Mhana’s land to the Israeli fence that encircles Gaza to the east makes it especially difficult to access his groves, while also exposing them to airstrikes. Despite the severe damage to his trees and the ever-present threats to his safety, however, Mhana endeavored to gather as many olives as he could. “It’s better than leaving them,” he said.
Mhana’s harvest from his 113 olive trees this year was insufficient for pressing, as it would only produce a few liters of oil. Neither is his harvest suitable for curing and subsequent sale. Since the olives are unusually small, they can only be used for personal consumption.
Although the war has all but ruined this year’s harvest and left Mhana uncertain about the future of his land and livelihood, he remains defiant. “We harvest because it symbolizes holding on to the land and refusing to be displaced from it.”
Skyrocketing costs
In southern Gaza, 36-year-old Majid Abu Daqqa and his wife have been trying to sort the pressable olives from the rest of the crop. Since the beginning of the war, he and his family have been displaced from the Abasan area east of Khan Younis to Al-Mawasi in the west, where he owns 2 dunams of land containing dozens of olive trees.
When the Israeli military invaded the town of Hamad, close to Abu Daqqa’s groves, on Aug. 11, tank shelling destroyed several of his trees. “We tried to collect the olives that were scattered on the ground and sort them after the army withdrew on Aug. 24, but we lost more than half of the crop that we hoped would improve our financial situation,” he lamented.
Since then, his problems have only multiplied. “After sorting and cleaning the olives, we were shocked by the cost of transporting them to the mill on Salah Al-Din street in the center of Gaza, as well as the high price of grinding and pressing them,” he said.
The gallon containers needed to transport the oil, which used to cost NIS 10, now cost NIS 70. The price of production per kilo, meanwhile, has risen from 3 agorot (around 0.01 cents) to NIS 1.5 (40 cents).
Even as farmers struggle to salvage their olives in impossible conditions, these skyrocketing transportation and production costs have rendered olive oil completely unaffordable for most Gazans. Muhammad Al-Astal, head of the Khan Younis Agricultural Cooperative, noted that the price of a 20-liter tin rose from NIS 450 ($120) to NIS 1,200 ($320) over the past year.
Al-Astal, who is a farmer himself, explained that the cooperative’s agricultural lands are within an area designated by the Israeli army as a “humanitarian zone,” yet they have still sustained significant damage from Israel’s attacks. These lands depend on submersible pumps for irrigating crops, which require substantial energy to operate. However, with no electricity, and fuel prices being too high to consider generators, farmers have resorted to using solar energy, which is insufficient to run the pumps efficiently.
Since it is not a relief organization, the cooperative has been unable to assist Gazan farmers. “We have not found any local or international institution attempting to offer support to farmers in the western area of Khan Younis, despite the fact that much of this land is cultivated,” Al-Astal explained. He emphasized that financial support would help farmers lower prices for vegetables and fruits, including olives and olive oil.
‘We finished picking all the olives within one week’
For farmer Ahmed Shatwi, 46, the past year has been the worst he’s ever experienced for olive harvesting. He owns 6 dunams of land located near the Netzarim Corridor — a 7-kilometer zone in the middle of Gaza that Israel’s military has taken over and leveled to the ground — which contained more than 1,600 fruit-bearing olive trees. But over the course of the war, Israel has uprooted two-thirds of these through airstrikes, artillery fire, and bulldozing, while the trees that remain have shed prematurely.
Israel’s attacks have killed, wounded, or displaced many of Shatwi’s family members. For the second consecutive year, he remarked somberly, “the olive harvest did not unite our family.”
For Shatwi and other Palestinian farmers, the harvest is more than just a livelihood: it has come to symbolize his people’s resilience and steadfastness in the face of occupation and war. “All the people of Gaza love the olive tree, and despite the war escalating daily, we remain determined to harvest the fruits,” he said.
A little further south, Hazem Mousa Shaheen, 30, stands among his olive trees that extend over a large tract in the Al-Baraka area in the city of Deir al-Balah. “Within one week we finished picking all the olives,” he told +972. “I tried to collect what I could, as there is an extreme shortage of olive oil and most people cannot afford to forgo picking the few olives they have for nutritional reasons. But we could only pick during very specific hours for fear of being targeted or issued evacuation orders.”
Shaheen and his family rely on the olive harvest for many of their needs, including the income from selling any surplus. This year, however, there will barely be enough for their personal consumption. Apart from the sheer physical destruction of groves as a result of Israeli attacks, he noted, the bombs and artillery shells release chemical substances that are toxic to the olive trees.
While the harvest season used to feel like a holiday, today it carries a heavy weight. “We constantly look at the sky and listen for the sound of nearby shelling,” Shaheen explained. “All we talk about is those who used to be with us and were martyred or wounded during the past year.”
Yet for some farmers in Gaza, even accessing their land has become impossible. Hajj Jamil Al-Kafarna, 64, had to leave behind hundreds of olive trees in Beit Hanoun, in the far north of the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military has been systematically emptying the land of its Palestinian residents and demolishing or burning the structures left behind. “I heard that my trees were uprooted and the well I dug to irrigate the land was sealed shut,” he told +972.
Over half of his 25 dunams of land was planted with olive trees, but thinking about this causes his heart to sink. “The most difficult days are when I recall the small details of the harvest season,” Al-Kafarna said. “Today, I am living in a classroom in one of UNRWA’s schools west of Deir Al-Balah, and I cannot do anything for my land or the harvest.”
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