Israel: Making the Holy Land burn

A month into this year’s olive harvest season, Israeli settlers and soldiers have already damaged or uprooted 4,500 olive trees in the occupied West Bank. Since January, they have destroyed 100,000 olive trees. In Gaza, since October 2023, 97 percent of Gaza’s two million olive oil trees have been wiped out.

Between 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank, and the 2010s, it had destroyed more than 800,000. The destruction of olive trees is just one aspect of Israel’s broader war on the Palestinian land, from its vegetation and soil to its water and ecosystems. Since the Nakba of 1948, Israeli colonial policies have extended beyond land seizure and the displacement of its inhabitants to reshaping the natural landscape, undermining its capacity to sustain those who have lived on and cultivated it for generations.

When the first Zionist settlers started coming to Palestine in the late 19th century, what they found was “a desert” that was already blooming.