An Olive Harvest Under Bombardment in Southern Lebanon

RMEICH, Lebanon – ​“Sorry for the late meet­ing, but you know, it’s the olive har­vest sea­son, and I need to go there before the end of the day. Otherwise…” Father Nagib’s speech is inter­rupted by the sound of a bomb­ing.

On the top of a nearby moun­tain, smoke rises. The sur­round­ing of Rmeich, a Christian vil­lage in south­ern Lebanon, has been under con­stant bom­bard­ment since October 7^th, the day Hamas attacked Israel.

Hamas is the polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion gov­ern­ing Gaza and is des­ig­nated as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion by the United States, the European Union and seven other coun­tries.

So far, nearly 18,000 Palestinians and at least 1,200 Israelis have died in the con­flict, accord­ing to the Associated Press. In Lebanon, about 20 civil­ians and nearly 100 mil­i­tants have died.

Father Nagib’s hands are col­ored green and black as he spent the after­noon pick­ing the fruits of his trees. His grove is right on the bor­der with Israel.

Like him, many vil­lagers in this part of Lebanon have olives in their fields for domes­tic con­sump­tion or to sell for a liv­ing.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture’s fig­ures, the olive sec­tor in Lebanon counts more than 110,000 olive grow­ers and about 200,000 plots with 12 mil­lion trees. The local farmer’s union esti­mates that 20 and 30 per­cent of the national pro­duc­tion comes from south­ern Lebanon.

The olive sec­tor is impor­tant in Lebanon, not only eco­nom­i­cally but also cul­tur­ally. More than half of the trees are more than 500 years old, accord­ing to at least one esti­mate.

While the eco­nomic and social cri­sis, ongo­ing in the coun­try for the past four years, has impacted the country’s olive oil pro­duc­tion, con­flicts in the south of Lebanon between Hezbollah, a polit­i­cal party and mil­i­tant group with links to Iran, and Israel’s army are mak­ing it even more dif­fi­cult this year.

The Lebanese gov­ern­ment said 40,000 olive trees have burned down since the begin­ning of the con­flict.

If some peo­ple decided to stay to save their har­vest, more than 50,000 peo­ple flew south. Some of them we met at a dis­placed camp in Tyr (north of Rmeich) were agri­cul­tural work­ers. Olives stay on the trees in some fields because no one can pick them.

In Deir Mimas, north of Rmeich but still close to the bor­der, the sound of air­planes is nearly con­stant.

Syrian work­ers come back from the olive groves, where they try to rush to har­vest as much as they can.

This vil­lage needed 400 work­ers in the field dur­ing the past sea­son. However, this year, many have already left because of the con­flict. Even though Deir Mimas was not hit directly, it was in the mid­dle of the fights.

Sitting down at her table in her gar­den, Hanoune, who declined to give her full name, fin­ishes her lunch. Despite her smile and warm wel­come, the vil­lager can not hide her wor­ries about this year’s sea­son.

“Sometimes, when we are in the fields, we can hear the bomb­ings. It’s scary. But some­times, we can’t,” she said while peel­ing a man­darine.

Hanoune relies on her olive groves and a guest­house for her fam­i­ly’s liveli­hood. She knows this year will not be a good one for either.

“We are wait­ing for the olives, and then we sell them,” she said. ​“Every year it’s like this, but what about this year? I made soap out of the oil, the pack­ag­ing, and stuff, it cost me a lot of money.”

“But, now I can’t sell them,” she added. ​“It can wait until next year, but how am I sup­posed to live in the mean­time?”

Hanoune fears an esca­la­tion at the bor­der, sim­i­lar to what hap­pened in 2006. During the 34-day con­flict between Hezbollah and Israel, nearly all the local infra­struc­ture was bombed.

It would add another chal­lenge to this year’s har­vest sea­son, more col­lat­eral dam­age of humankind’s fury.

• The National News
• Al Jazeera