A Green Palestine

An ecological project has taken root on an abandoned olive grove outside Ramallah. As well as restoring the land, its deeper aim is to nurture ancient links between Palestinian people and nature, and rebuild a culture of steadfastness in the soil of their country, writes  Mashjar Juthour.

We are passionately enraged that Palestinians have to endure Israeli military bulldozers tearing down homes, fruit trees, forests and groves of ancient olive trees - the acts of atrocious men sitting in offices in Jerusalem playing destructive Gods. We’re enraged that we must fight to salvage our lives, heritage and identity. And we are full of love for our land. Force us to fight and we will – but we’ll do it the Green way. We will grow, and grow more.

Our name is Mashjar Juthour – Arabic for ‘a place of trees’ and ‘roots’. We started as a community organisation in the West Bank of Palestine one year ago, when we poured our life savings into the purchase of 10 dunams (2.5 acres) of heritage land atop Thaher al Oghda, a hill on the outskirts of Ramallah.

It was a crucial space, overlooking the centuries-old Palestinian village of Ein Kinya. Views extend to the illegal Israeli settlement of Dolev, all the way to the cityscape of Tel Aviv, a pillar of the enormous power structure that Israel maintains through a regime of fear and the wipe-out of Palestinian villages and histories. It had been 18 years since the land had been cared for: withering olive trees were overgrown with root suckers, taking nutrients and water from the fruit-bearing branches and rendering them barren, while what little fruit remained was stolen.

The centuries-old stone walls that sustain the terraces were crumbling. Ramallah itself lies in Area A, an enclave or ‘Bantustan’ under Palestinian Authority civil control – so long as Israel chooses not to invade. But Area A Palestinian cities are so tightly enclosed within their borders that green space hardly exists within them.

Juthour is no exception. The Oslo Accords allocated Juthour to Area C – under complete Israeli military jurisdiction. But the existence and survival of this land gave us hope. The land was unspoilt by building or other development, and with hard work and dedication it could be restored.

But so long as it was run down and empty, it was vulnerable to being grabbed by a settlement, or turned into an illegal ‘outpost’ to further hem us in, and cut Ramallah off from its surrounding countryside. We felt we had no choice – we had to assert our own Palestinian ownership and sovereignty on Thaher al Oghda.

But what could such a small measurement of ground do for the Palestinian community? We thought about how we are made to live every day through the plant and land that has been seized and taken from us under the Occupation.Thus we eat Israeli produce whose purchases support the military infrastructure. Our orange trees in historical Yaffa confiscated and become Israel's Jaffa oranges’ so popular in export markets. We learn the names of plants indigenous to Palestine by their newly-endowed Hebrew name – that was the ultimate insult. We are barred from our homeland with checkpoints, our families in Gaza are bombed, our olive trees ploughed and torched. 

Reclaiming land, culture

So we say: that is a kaykab tree, that spice on your bread is called za’atar! And we are going to grow these trees, fruits, crops and spices at Juthour and remind our community about their unending, myriad uses. So many of our native plants and wildlife have the word ‘Palestine’ in their names – the Palestine buckthorn (Rhamnus Palaestinus), Palestine oak (Quercus calliprinus), the Terebinth (Pistachia Paelestina) the Mastic Tree (Pistacia Lentiscus), the Palestine gazelle, etc. Their names mark their place in our heritage and we must make them ours once more. Not only will we re-establish in our community’s heads the names, hues, smells, tastes, touch, but it will be done through the spirit of activism, insisting on a sustainable future for our people and land.

Environment is, understandably, put on the back burner in the scale of human rights issues concerning the Occupation. But Juthour proclaims that land and people are inextricable from one another.

Resistance and the inherent right to rise up against Israel’s violence to our people and our land – this is what can never be taken away, and why we’re still here.

Surrounding the tenderness, innocence, playfulness and hard work of families – children scampering up and down our rocks, mothers sinking their hoes into our dirt, fathers working in groups to hoist rocks onto terraces – is the fierce refusal to witness our land being confiscated.

In Palestine, indigenous as well as foreign powers have abused our natural resources. Yes, Israel is confiscating natural areas, springs and farmland to raze for illegal settlement, running sewage into our farms and dumping their waste in our valleys. But before they came, the Ottoman empire destroyed the oaks of Palestine to build railways. And even today Palestinian authorities are failing to prevent the dumping of construction waste to the detriment of trees, farms and river beds, and offenders go unpunished.

Many people in Palestine today see nature’s value only for its economic outputs, for example, fruit trees. Thus it makes sense that the remaining oaks are often cut down for firewood, leaving only the olives and other fruit and nut trees to serve our needs.

If we do not educate our community, the little nature left to us – especially native trees like oaks, kaykabs, carobs, maples and pines – will be relegated to history. In learning the importance of conservation and sustainable living, we will begin a shift in our community's sense of responsibility to nature and its trees, and thus contribute to ensuring our futures.

Through workshops, lectures, parties, hikes, volunteer days, day camps, and more, we invite families, university students and primary schools, local artisans, craftspeople, and all members of our community to become activists for the land.Our vision is a nature reserve, highlighting the native trees of Palestine, where people engage and become activated for environmental justice – hiking not only around the grounds, but also the ‘green belt’ which we are working towards, connecting Juthour to a network of ravines, rock paths, olive groves, and a bounty of native botany. And so we keep our methods local, organic, green, sustainable. We collect ash from local restaurants and bakeries to use as a natural pesticide, we buy organic goat manure from a local farm and we plant fava, alfalfa, legumes as 'green manure' for the land.

We compost from a local restaurant's green waste and we use rain water harvesting. Our grey water recycling system allows us to water gardens with the water from our showers – and we hope it will show others how to grow fruit and vegetables in home gardens, instead of being forced to buy Israeli produce.We are still here because of our Sumud, our ‘steadfastness’. This has become our major Palestinian national trait. That's Juthour right at this second, and forever: nature, trees and people rooted to the land of Palestine. Perseverance. Holding firm.