Olive Trees in Gaza Among Conflict's Collateral Losses

Olive trees in Gaza are caught in the spi­ral of the ongo­ing Israeli inva­sion, with peo­ple in the Palestinian enclave sourc­ing fire­wood from their fam­ily groves for cook­ing and heat­ing.

“To make bread, you need a fire,” Khaled Baraka, a Palestinian from Bani Suhaila, a city of 41,000 peo­ple in Gaza, who had to flee the city with his fam­ily, told Al Jazeera. ​“How else was it sup­posed to hap­pen?”

Before leav­ing, Baraka cut down half of the trees in the fam­ily orchard, includ­ing olive, lemon and orange trees, to pro­vide fire­wood for his fam­ily and neigh­bors in need.

“I was dis­placed… when Israeli tanks entered the city of Khan Younis, we were already hav­ing a hard time,” Baraka said. ​“My orchard and fields were next to our house, and we had already started burn­ing branches.”

“These trees lived through my moments of joy and sad­ness,” he added. ​“They know my secrets. When I was sad and wor­ried, I would talk to the trees, take care of them… but the war killed those trees.”

Ahlam Saqr, a 50-year-old woman liv­ing in Gaza City, was dev­as­tated when her sons had to chop down the four olive trees in their back­yard to source the wood needed to cook and heat their home.

“The house felt so empty,” Saqr told Al Jazeera. ​“The trees had their place in the house, and it became dark when they were gone. We have beau­ti­ful mem­o­ries with them. I used to tell every­one that my trees have been my life com­pan­ions.”

The Israeli inva­sion of Gaza came in response to the October 7^th attack when mil­i­tants from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups killed 1,143 Israelis. Health offi­cials in Gaza esti­mate at least 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s incur­sion.

The start of the war coin­cided with the begin­ning of the har­vest, and as a result, some locals did not gather their fruit in the strug­gle to secure their day-to-day liv­ing.

“Instead of [har­vest­ing] olives, we are cut­ting any tree we can find to sur­vive,” Shahd al-Modallal, a res­i­dent of Rafah in south­ern Gaza, told The Guardian. ​“We’ll build a fire and announce to every­one in the fam­ily that we have a fire, so any­one who has food they want to cook should bring it. That’s our daily rou­tine.”

Olives are a major agri­cul­tural crop in Palestine and have been cul­ti­vated for thou­sands of years on the east­ern shores of the Mediterranean.

Nearly half of the cul­ti­vated land in the West Bank and Gaza — an area of almost 41,900 hectares — is planted with more than 10 mil­lion olive trees, mostly local, drought-resis­tant cul­ti­vars such as the Souri and Nabali. Around 100,000 fam­i­lies in Palestine are esti­mated to rely on olive trees for their liveli­hoods.

In 2017, Palestine became the 14^th mem­ber of the International Olive Council (IOC). According to the coun­cil, Palestine, includ­ing the West Bank and Gaza, pro­duced 23,000 tons of olive oil in the 2022/23 crop year. Ahead of the Israeli inva­sion, the IOC esti­mated that Palestine would pro­duce 12,000 tons of olive oil, which will almost cer­tainly not be obtained due to the con­flict.

Meanwhile, burn­ing large quan­ti­ties of wood and solid waste has led to res­pi­ra­tory ill­nesses being on the rise in Gaza due to the smoke released. The World Health Organization reported 129,000 res­pi­ra­tory infec­tions in the area in a sin­gle week last December.

According to the World Food Program, a United Nations orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides food and other assis­tance to peo­ple in dire need, 70 per­cent of the dis­placed peo­ple in south­ern Gaza depend on fire­wood for fuel.

“We are liv­ing with sick­ness,” Ali Daly, a man ousted from Rafah who set­tled in Gaza City, told The Guardian. ​“From the smoke of cook­ing, the smoke of the airstrikes, from the cold.”

• Al Jazeera
• The Guardian
• NPR