Olive Farmers Flee Southern Lebanon as Conflict Escalates

The milling and stor­age facil­i­ties oper­ated by the award-win­ning olive oil pro­ducer Darmmess in Lebanon were destroyed by an Israeli airstrike.

The attack on the company’s facil­i­ties hap­pened a few days before the start of the Israeli Defence Force’s ongo­ing ground oper­a­tion in south­ern Lebanon.

According to Lebanon’s health min­istry, Israel’s bom­bard­ment has killed at least 1,336 peo­ple since Israel ramped up its attacks against Hezbollah, a polit­i­cal party and mil­i­tant group with links to Iran, on September 20^th.

Twenty coun­tries, includ­ing the United States, con­sider Hezbollah to be a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. However, the European Union and sev­eral other coun­tries accept the polit­i­cal wing as a legit­i­mate orga­ni­za­tion.

Along with the ris­ing death toll, Israel’s inva­sion has dis­placed one mil­lion peo­ple from the south of the coun­try. Satellite data ana­lyzed by the Financial Times show that more than 3,100 build­ings have been destroyed.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund antic­i­pates the con­flict will severely dam­age the coun­try’s frag­ile econ­omy.

“In Lebanon, the recent inten­si­fi­ca­tion of the con­flict is exac­er­bat­ing the coun­try’s already frag­ile macro­eco­nomic and social sit­u­a­tion,” spokes­woman Julie Kozack said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence. ​“The con­flict has inflicted a heavy human toll on the coun­try, and it has dam­aged phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture.”

For Darmmess founder Rose Bechara Perini, the war arrived squarely on her doorstep four days into the esca­la­tion when an airstrike destroyed the com­pany head­quar­ters.

“On September 24, 2024, our pro­cess­ing and stor­age facil­ity, relo­cated in a vil­lage sup­posed to be safer as far from the bor­der, was struck by an airstrike, result­ing in the total destruc­tion of our equip­ment and sup­plies,” Bechara Perini wrote in a mes­sage to cus­tomers and part­ners on October 1^st.

“The whole facil­ity has been reduced to just one meter of ashes, leav­ing us in a dev­as­tat­ing sit­u­a­tion,” she added.

Bechara Perini sent a video of the dev­as­tated facil­i­ties to Olive Oil Times.

Darmmess is a com­mu­nal project ded­i­cated to organic olive oil pro­duc­tion. Bechara Perini said it pro­vides income for many grow­ers in Deir Mimas, sit­u­ated a cou­ple of kilo­me­ters from the Israeli bor­der.

“Most of our farm­ers fled to Beirut,” Bechara Perini told Olive Oil Times, adding that many Lebanese have strug­gled to find safe places to shel­ter amid the con­flict.

“Those who did stay in Deir Mimas are those who do not have a place to stay in the cap­i­tal,” she said. ​“Adding to that, you do not really know where it is safe and where it is not.”

Reaching the olive groves in Deir Mimas is cur­rently ​“too risky,” she said. As a result, Darmmess will not be able to har­vest olives and pro­duce olive oil in the 2024/25 crop year.

Many of the farm­ers of the eco­nom­i­cally depressed region have invested time and money in the cur­rent olive sea­son, which will yield noth­ing.

“In an area of eight square kilo­me­ters, Darmmess cul­ti­vates approx­i­mately 150,000 olive trees, its pri­mary agri­cul­tural activ­ity rep­re­sent­ing the inhab­i­tan­t’s most sig­nif­i­cant, and often, only source of income each year. Our olive trees rep­re­sent sub­sis­tence, cul­ture and income,” Bechara Perini said.

“The farm­ers can­not pro­ceed to the har­vest. That means that they will not be able to feed their fam­i­lies this win­ter,” she added. ​“The coun­try is already bank­rupt and peo­ple are becom­ing poorer and poorer.”

Other Lebanese pro­duc­ers have told Olive Oil Times that fight­ing in the south has led most farm­ers to aban­don their olive trees. Israeli airstrikes and fight­ing on the ground have also resulted in olive groves burn­ing, the dam­age from which is impos­si­ble to quan­tify.

In the lat­est esca­la­tion, the FT analy­sis of satel­lite data indi­cated that 530 build­ings had been destroyed along Lebanon’s south­ern bor­der.

However, one year of cross-bor­der fire between Hezbollah and Israel has already caused con­sid­er­able dam­age.

“Almost 80 per­cent of the farm­ers in south­ern Lebanon will not be able to reach their farm­land and to har­vest their olive grove,” said Walid Mushantaf, founder of Bustan El Zeitoun. ​“For the olive oil mills is the same, no way to oper­ate.”

Located in the vicini­ties of Sidon, 40 kilo­me­ters south of Beirut, Mushantaf’s olive farm is still active.

“Few farm­ers, includ­ing myself, are exert­ing utmost efforts to max­i­mize their daily labor force to col­lect their har­vest as soon as pos­si­ble once we can secure safe instances,” he said.

“Commuting for work­ers to get to our farm daily is dif­fi­cult because of the lack of fuel,” Mushantaf added. ​“And it is unsafe, con­sid­er­ing the air raids and the num­ber of civil­ian casu­al­ties con­tin­u­ously grow­ing.”

After a poor har­vest in the 2023/24 crop year, Mushantaf said many pro­duc­ers had antic­i­pated a sig­nif­i­cant yield.

“Farmers and olive grow­ers worked all the year around wait­ing for the har­vest,” Mushantaf said. ​“Unfortunately, they are going to lose that har­vest. Therefore, they will not be able to cover their daily finan­cial needs because many farm­ers do not have any other source for liv­ing other than farm­ing.”

Meanwhile, in the Bekaa Valley, an east­ern Lebanese region home to the country’s first high-den­sity olive grove, Israeli airstrikes are com­ing closer.

“They [the airstrikes] are very close, but we are okay,” said CBio Jaode owner Charbel Jaoude. However, he warned that ​“not all groves and mills are secure, and har­vest­ing is dif­fi­cult at this time due to a lack of work­ers and safety con­cerns.”

The FT analy­sis of satel­lite data showed that 210 build­ings across sev­eral vil­lages have been destroyed across the Bekaa Valley.

Further north of Lebanon, near the vil­lage of Kour, some work­ers are still prepar­ing for the har­vest.

“We are so for­tu­nate to be able to har­vest our olives,” said Karim Arsanios, the owner of Solar Olives. ​“Aside from the con­stant war­planes fly­ing over our heads and hear­ing the occa­sional dis­tant bomb­ing, it’s pretty calm.”

“We are in our first week [of the har­vest], and despite new daily issues, we’ll keep going until and if it’s unsafe,” he added.

Despite being away from the airstrikes and active com­bat, the sit­u­a­tion has never been so com­plex.

“Because of the cur­rent geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, costs asso­ci­ated with the har­vest are at their high­est, and I think all-time high since I started doing this, about four years ago,” Arsanios said.

“The south has been dev­as­tated, and more than 35 per­cent of the local olive oil pro­duc­tion comes from there,” he added. ​“The coun­try will have a short­age, and prices will prob­a­bly increase.”

“The sit­u­a­tion is very bad,” added Ibrahim Al Kaakour, the owner of Genco Olive Oil. The com­pany, which mills in the north of the coun­try but pur­chases olives from farm­ers across Lebanon, has not sus­tained any dam­age to its facil­i­ties.

However, Al Kaakour con­firmed that most trees in the coun­try’s south would be left unhar­vested. He offered his sup­port to those who were able to har­vest. ​“We offered our ser­vices to other pro­duc­ers in the south free of charge,” he said.

Arsanios accused the Israeli army of inten­tion­ally using white phos­pho­rous bombs to destroy agri­cul­tural areas in the south of the coun­try, refer­ring to one spe­cific episode of Israeli shelling to which the Lebanese gov­ern­ment attrib­uted the destruc­tion of more than 40,000 olive trees.

“The land will take months, if not years, to get rid of these chem­i­cals,” Arsanios said. ​“We are all los­ing a piece of our shared her­itage by killing olive trees, and it breaks my heart.”

The wors­en­ing con­flict in the region is not only caus­ing deaths and mass dis­place­ments, it is also zero­ing in a coun­try plagued by a pro­longed eco­nomic cri­sis.

“The gasp­ing eco­nomic activ­ity that we had started to see has, once again, com­pletely stopped,” Arsanios said. ​“When this dark chap­ter is over, Solar will offer all the help it can offer.”

“The only thing keep­ing this coun­try together after all the medi­a­tion incurred by exter­nal coun­tries over the years is the sol­i­dar­ity between its peo­ple,” he added. ​“That’s the back­bone of our coun­try, and noth­ing will be able to break that.”

Despite the tragedy unfold­ing in Lebanon, Becahara Perini said Darmmess’s mill in Deir Mimas and the olive trees remain intact, and she will return to rebuild as soon as pos­si­ble.

“We promise we will rise again,” Bechara Perini added in her note. ​“In pre­serv­ing this ances­tral her­itage, we cel­e­brate not just the fruit of the olive tree but the endur­ing spirit of our com­mu­nity.”

Olive Oil Times con­tacted the Israeli author­i­ties for com­ment, but no response was received as of pub­li­ca­tion.

The Israeli Defence Force has said the bomb­ing cam­paign and ground inva­sion are meant to push Hezbollah north of the Litani River and allow 60,000 dis­placed Israelis to return to their homes in the north of the coun­try.

• Financial Times
• Reuters
• Reuters