Stolen Trees and Broken Hearts
“They steal my trees, my land, my everything!” a woman shouts with a desperate voice. Her name is Grace Napoleon Abu Mohor and she owns 18 dunums of land to cultivate olive trees in Beit Jala outside of Bethlehem. Or rather she ‘owned’. Today, a private Israeli company came and started cutting down the 400-500 year old trees. Trees which have belonged to Grace and her family for generations. “They came without warning” Grace says upset. “They came with soldiers, who should defend their criminal acts. I almost had a heart attack when I saw it. I just screamed and screamed. But nothing helps. No one listens to us”, she continues. “We paid a lot to hire a lawyer, but for no use. The Israelis get what they want in the end anyway. They have the power.”
Beit Jala is a town with 15,000 inhabitants, situated west of Bethlehem. The town is the next victim in the construction of the Wall. 45% of the town’s land will be isolated on the other side of the Wall, which means 62% of all cultivated land. Grace’s family’s olive grove lies exactly on the land where the Government of Israel has planned to build the Wall. “The building of the Wall is not about security”, Grace says harshly. “It is about confiscating as much Palestinian land as possible in order to enlarge Israeli settlements.” 11.9 % of the Westbank, East Jerusalem included is confiscated by Israel in the building of the wall. www.btselem.org In 1967, Israel started to build the settlement of Gilo on land belonging to Beit Jala. By building on land which will be confiscated with the building of the Wall, the Israeli Government is able to join up Gilo with the smaller settlement Har Gilo – both of which are illegal under international law.
Cautiously, I approach the around 100 mutilated olive trees. It strikes me that the building of the Wall and the occupation not only implies an ethnic isolation, but also an ecological catastrophe. Since the second intifada started in 2000, almost 1 million fruit trees have been destroyed, among them 400, 000 olive trees. “My father used to be here every day, from six in the morning to six in the evening. He treated the trees as if they were his own babies and now there are hardly any left,” Grace says with sorrow in her voice. “This land is our life. 47 family members live from what the trees produce. Often we used to gather under the trees, for barbecues and laughter”, Grace says with nostalgia, as if it were old times she was talking about, when she in fact is talking about yesterday. But the process of breaking down started much earlier than that. With the destruction of the olive trees, the process really got under the skin. “When they destroy our olive groves they do not only cut down our trees”, Grace says, “they also cut off our heads and cut our hearts into pieces.”
