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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2006, pages 68-69 Waging Peace Beyond the Olive Branch
JENNIFER BING-CANAR, national coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)’s Middle East Peace Building Program, brought one of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization’s many current projects, Ziyarat az Zeitoun (Visiting the Olives), to the Ritual Café in Des Moines, Iowa on Friday, May 19. “The idea behind Ziyarat az Zeitoun is to reach out to people who otherwise wouldn’t necessarily be interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, wouldn’t attend a demonstration or a conference, wouldn’t pick up a book to read about it, but who are curious about it,” she explained. “They could be people who are curious about Palestinian culture, people who want a place to ask questions about the conflict, the culture, the history.” AFSC is selling two brands of Palestinian olive oil obtained through the Palestinian Fair Trade Association (PFTA) and the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) as a means of benefiting Palestinian farmers and informing Americans about the importance of olive oil in the Palestinian economy, and about the impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian farmers. “The impact of the separation wall on farming communities is tremendous,” said Bing-Canar. “A lot of people haven’t thought about how it impacts a family whose olive grove has been in that family for generations, and all of a sudden now they have to get a permit to go through the Wall to reach their olive grove,” she added, noting that the crisis is worsening in the West Bank and Gaza as the Israeli blockade of Palestinian areas takes a terrible toll in human suffering. Ziyarat az Zeitoun is also a way of highlighting the developing cooperation between various Israeli, Palestinian, and international organizations and communities that come together in acts of peaceful resistance to the occupation. Individual groups unite in support of the Palestinian olive harvest, of young Israeli conscientious objectors, and in nonviolent protest of Israel’s construction of the Wall and the demolition of Palestinian homes. “It’s a wonderful model of what can be done when people work together,” said Bing-Canar. With Bing-Canar was Miryam Rashid, director of AFSC’s Middle East Peace Building Program in Chicago. Rashid, a Palestinian-American who lived for five years in the West Bank, described her experience living in an occupied land. “To a lot of people, military occupation sounds abstract,” she began. “It was to me before I went to Palestine. [Israeli] occupation is a complex system of control that pretty much inserts itself into every aspect of Palestinian life.” Rashid spoke of some 700 roadblocks and military checkpoints in the West Bank that are a central part of the occupation that limits and seeks to define Palestinian life. “My sister actually went back with her kids to live in our village,” she said. “It was important to her that she have access to a hospital, in Ramallah, which was only about a 25-minute drive. But because of constant roadblocks and checkpoints, she never knew whether roads would be open or not. She packed up and left. She couldn’t take the risk of her children getting sick with something treatable and then it getting out of control because she couldn’t take them to a hospital.” According to Zatoun, the trade name of Palestine Peace Awareness, Inc., a Canadian registered non-profit organization that supplies AFSC with PFTA olive oil, Israel has destroyed an estimated one million olive trees in occupied Palestine since 1967. The destruction of the trees is a devastating loss for some 75,000 farmers for whom olive oil is the primary source of income and who produce about 20 percent of the national agricultural output, nearly 5 percent of the Palestinian GDP. Thus far, the construction of the separation wall has destroyed some 240,000 olive trees along its route. “A further 2,128,000 trees on 133 square kilometers of land will be on the ‘other’ side of the Wall and for all practical purposes lost to Palestinian farmers,” Zatoun writes. “The agricultural sector and hopes for peace are being wiped out as most of the world watches silently.” Zatoun supports Project Hope, a non-profit volunteer organization that provides humanitarian relief, education, training, and recreational opportunities for children and young people in the Near East living in conflict zones or under conditions of deprivation Bing-Canar described Ziyarat az Zeitoun as a remarkable success, both as an educational and as an economic initiative. Palestinian olive oil is selling increasingly well through churches here in the States, she said. “It has really caught on. We can’t keep enough in stock,” added Bing-Canar, who notes that the Canadian supplier is doubling his order each year, and that the price Palestinian farmers are getting for their olive oil also is increasing significantly. Bing-Canar hopes to organize a delegation of Americans from farming communities in the Midwest to participate in an AFSC program that takes Americans to Palestine to help with the olive harvest. “Those are lasting relationships that can be built,” she concluded, “and let’s not forget the opportunity for advocacy.” For more information, visit <http://www.afsc.org/israel-palestine/default.htm>, Zatoun olive oil can also be purchased at the AET Bookstore, while supplies last. —Michael Gillespie |
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