On Harvesting
We leave Tulkarem before six, as Rabbi Achermann has asked us to get to Huwwarra checkpoint before seven thirty. Huge nimbus clouds tower across the light-blue morning sky as we zoom off in a sleepy Mercedes. The diesel engine rumbles and the weight of the heavy German vehicle gives a sense of comfort. It has rained tonight, and the farmers will be happy, now the olives will be clean in time for harvest.
Rabbis for Human Rights contacted us yesterday evening, as they were a few volunteers short in the northern West Bank. Many Palestinians with olive groves close to aggressive settlements had requested accompaniers for the olive harvest this year.
Ten minutes outside of Tulkarem we come to a stop. We leave our taxi and walk along the queue of waiting cars at the Anabta checkpoint. Two young soldiers lean against a huge concrete block in the middle of the road. Their bulletproof vests and backpacks in combination with tight rifle straps make their oversized rifles hang diagonally over their chests. A third soldier sits in a booth to the side of the road, behind him a 20-foot tower with a massive Israeli flag at the top. He looks unenthusiastic to say the least. His rifle points towards the queue of waiting pedestrians who, just like us, hope to find transport on the other side of the checkpoint. Many are on their way to Ramallah to work, others are heading for the university in Nablus, and some may even be going as far as Hebron or Bethlehem. Very few, if any, are going to Israel. One by one the waiting people approach the soldiers, present their IDs, display the content of their bags, and then, hopefully, pass.
One and a half hours and two checkpoints later we have covered the 20 miles to Huwwarra. Above us to the West, the settlement of Har Bracha rests like a medieval castle, with guard towers, barbed wire, and fences. The family whom we have come to assist have their land on the slopes below these aggressive and ideologically motivated settlers. On our way up we cross blackened fields. The settlers set fire to them last week. Fortunately, it never spread to the trees further up. Dark grey clouds hover over the peak above. I can feel a light trickle on my forehead.
When we reach the first terrace, the rain starts pounding down. My colleague Kimendrie slips in the mud. We seek shelter under tiny olive trees and realize that we have climbed quite far up. Below us in the valley, the massive Huwarra checkpoint has become visible. There are hundreds of cars on both sides and hoards of tiny dots moving around or queuing in long lines. Car horns are constantly honking and different sirens compete for airtime with each other. All the sounds are weak and distant, but very clear. The light has become surreal in the way it often does with sudden rains. The sky is heavy, but the roads winding across the Samarian Mountains create shining streaks of silver in the landscape. The rain eases up and we move into the olive grove. Soon we find the family, giggling under a big sheet of plastic. In there with them, we also find a chirpy man from Switzerland with foggy glasses. He is from Rabbis for Human Rights and arrived about an hour before us. He has been coming here all week. Together we begin picking.
A while later I need the loo. I am just about to do my thing further down the olive groove when I notice a large group of soaking wet people moving among the trees on the terrace below. “Hello up here!” They are a group of Israeli volunteers who have come from other olive groves in the area, where farmers chose to go home because of the rain. They have been bussed up here in the early morning from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to help Palestinian farmers harvest their olives. Several of them are older; one is even struggling through the rubble and mud with a cane.
Soon branches are rustling and trees sway to and fro as people of all shapes and sizes join the harvest. One big bubbling symphony of Hebrew, Arabic, and broken English. The rain has stopped and we begin to dry. Ahmed, the oldest son of the family in whose olive grove we find ourselves, sports a baseball cap and continuously sings some song about Ramallah. Picking olives from a ladder, Yov’ha, a middle-aged man tells me about his childhood in a kibbutz in northern Israel. “They were different in those days,” he says. “For each according to their need was easy when there was little to distribute. Food and something to wear. But how do you define need in times of plenty? Why does she need a piano more than I need an electric train set? Immediately it becomes difficult to put yourself in the shoes of others. If people were better at that, you and me wouldn’t have to be here today.” Now Dalia shouts from the neighbouring tree, “Should I pick here?” Achmed does not understand her. His sister Samar intercepts from somewhere below us, “aywa aywa, yes yes, you can pick!”
Thunder rolls over the hills and it starts raining again. The sirens are still wailing in the valley below. Now and then crackling bursts from a distorted megaphone are heard, as the checkpoint continues to “control” the ebb and flow of people in and out of Nablus and the occupation mundanely trudges on. But up here, in the moist olive grove where fine dust has turned into clay and olives shine an entirely different process is under way. I look around me at all the people among the leaves and feel tears come to my eyes. I let them come.
A few hours later when Rabbi Aschermann himself has arrived I hear him talking to two Canadian journalists “…maybe we manage to restore some hope. To let Palestinians and Israelis pick the olives of this land together. To let these Palestinians families see that there are other Israelis than the settlers who take their land and cut their trees and the soldiers who passively let them do it.” His bright blue eyes have dark shadows around them. However, they burst with intensity and his greyish orange beard moves reassuringly when he speaks. The Canadians listen in silence and make those little nods that journalists often do.
On our way home the same afternoon we come to a stop at the Jit checkpoint. Thirty vehicles wait in the sun that has now come out; they have been there for an hour. When one of the soldiers eventually chooses to acknowledge me and trudge the 20 meters to the fence blocking our half of the road, I ask him whether anything special has happened. “War. War in Israel”, he answers bluntly. “Go back to your car”.
As I walk back to our car, I think about the people in the olive grove today. I think about Yov’ha from the kibbutz. I think about Samar, Ahmed, and their olives. I think about Rabbi Aschermann and his struggle. I think that the young soldier I just left at the fence should have been there.
