by Maher Abukhater
January 18, 2001

Israeli aggression against the Palestinian land and agriculture sector, said Minister of Agriculture Hikmat Zeid on January 11, aims at either turning the Palestinian people into manual laborers in Israel or force them to abandon their land and migrate.
 
Zeid accused the Israeli government of carrying out a policy of eradication of the Palestinian people by attacking their land and their main livelihood.
 
“They (the Israelis) do not want us to cultivate our land,” he said. “They want us to become workers for them or leave our country. They want to destroy the Palestinian people, to eradicate the Palestinian people in an indirect way.”
 
Zeid was referring to the uprooting and cutting down of thousands of trees in the West Bank and Gaza in the past four months and the destruction of land, which Zeid described as the most dangerous thing Israel could do to the land.
 
He said trees could be replaced, but when the land is destroyed, land reclamation will take time, effort, expertise and lots of money. This is a long and arduous process, he said, and for this reason Israel’s aggression against the land is seen as an effort to force the Palestinian people, who primarily live of farming, to leave their land and eventually their country.
 
The land, said Zeid, is the most important thing in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel wants the Palestinian land and therefore proceeded to build Jewish settlements on it while restricting cultivation and reclamation of barren land. It also banned Palestinians from digging water wells after preventing them from using the wells they already had. Without water, Palestinian farmers will not be able to cultivate their land.
 
According to Zeid, Israel was not happy to see Palestinians reclaim their land and start competing against its own agricultural products. This, he explained, showed the Israelis how the Palestinians care for their land and how they can make it productive.
 
All the Palestinian-Israeli talks were over land, he explained. They concentrated on how much land to withdraw from. But what they left they would come back and retake.
 
Agriculture, explained Zeid, “is the backbone of the Palestinian economy and it makes an important part of its national product. It also employs 13 percent of the Palestinian labor force and makes 23 percent of the overall Palestinian exports that total $253 million a year.”
 
Israel has targeted the agricultural sector since its 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, said Zeid. It confiscated the water, destroyed wells and uprooted trees. But with the arrival of the Palestinian National Authority in 1994, the Ministry of Agriculture was able to rebuild the devastated infrastructure and build agricultural stations to help farmers reclaim their land and build new livestock farms.
 
Since the outbreak of the Intifada (uprising) against ongoing Israeli occupation at the end of September of last year and with the Israeli restrictive measures on movement and siege against cities, towns and villages, most of the ministry’s ongoing 41 projects have stopped in spite of the fact that money for these projects was available, said the Minister of Agriculture.
 
“We had to stop treating important matters that deal with infrastructure, such as planting forest trees to make Palestine green,” said Zeid. “We cannot deliver the seedlings to the places where they are supposed to be planted. This whole project has been interrupted, even though making forests is good for the environment that would also benefit Israel since we live on the same land, besides being a form of civilized behavior.”
 
Palestinian agricultural losses from Israeli measures have been big. “Our losses are great,” said Zeid.
 
Total losses until December 31, 2000 have been estimated at $127 million, said the Minister. Some saw this figure as low, he explained, mainly because annual agricultural output is estimated at $800 million. However, he added, that it is difficult to give an accurate estimation of the losses.
 
“How much would the cost of each olive tree that has been destroyed be estimated?” said Zeid. “For some people, the olive tree is their life, it is more important that the son.”
 
The Ministry estimated cost of each olive tree or almond or similar tree at $100. But a palm tree, for example, is worth $1000. How would one also estimate the losses caused to plundering of the land to make it hard to cultivate? Reclaiming this land will need experts and money, which the Palestinians lack. France has promised to help, said Zeid, but not until all military activities in the Palestinian areas come to an end.
 
And what about losses to livestock? Many livestock farms, mainly poultry and bees, have been hit hard. Animals have died for lack of food or proper care because of restriction on movement and shortage in animal feed.
 
Greenhouses have also been destroyed and many farmers were unable to reach their land to plant it and cultivate it. Besides, the main agricultural season in the Palestinian areas and the season for exports starts in the fall, such as olive and olive oil, citrus and strawberries, and it was at this time that Israeli has imposed the closure and prevented people from moving to cultivate their crops or market it locally and abroad.
 
As a result, farmers faced some serious losses. For example, a truck load of cauliflower was sold for $15 in the West Bank. “The owner of this product has been devastated,” said Zeid.
 
The Palestinians have been able to overcome about 50-60 percent of the problems caused by Israeli measures by telling the Israelis that unless they facilitate the movement of Palestinian agricultural products and open the borders for them, they will also close their market to Israeli products.
 The Israelis need the Palestinian market for some of their products, said Zeid, because they cannot market them anywhere else. In addition, this happened to be a leap year for Israel and some in the community would not eat from what they plant. According to some Jewish tradition, people will have to eat from imported products and export their products.
 
The Palestinians, said Zeid, took advantage of this fact. Knowing that import of certain agricultural products from abroad will be more costly than importing them from the Palestinians, and also that the Israeli products that will not be sold in Israel cannot be marketed abroad for lack of interest but only in the Palestinian areas, the Palestinians decided to play Israel tit-for-tat.
 
If Israel wants a certain Palestinian product or wants to market some of its own products, the Palestinians would tell it fine but they also want something in return, and mainly allowing some products out of the country for export. This process worked but not at full rate. Palestinian trucks, for example, were not allowed to carry loads to Jordan but had to unload them at the Jordan River bridge where they would be reloaded on Jordanian trucks. But when Jericho was closed, the trucks were not allowed to leave Jericho and therefore the Palestinians asked Jordanian trucks to be allowed to cross the bridge and reach Jericho to load the products.
 
In addition, Palestinian farmers were often obliged to hire Israeli trucks to carry their products to Israeli ports for export. All this process in the end has become very costly to the farmer and consumer and many preferred not to go through with cultivating their land.
 
Even though trucks would be allowed to move between cities as part of the deal, one Israeli soldier at an army checkpoint in the West Bank or Gaza can decide on his own not to let the truck through, said Zeid. All these matters, he added, compound the problem and make life very difficult for the farmer in the first place. He said the PNA has asked for international assistance in this area but little has come and that it has established emergency committees to look into farmers compensation.