"According to Fayyad Fayyad, the head of the Palestinian Olive Council, Gaza’s olive sector is “almost completely destroyed.”
“There is no olive season this year,” Fayyad told Drop Site. “We estimate that nearly one million of Gaza’s 1.1 million olive trees have been destroyed.” In 2022, Gaza produced about 50,000 tons of olives. This year, Fayyad said, the total will be well under a thousand. “The destruction is deliberate,” he said. “Israel aims to eliminate the agricultural sector, including olives. What remains are scattered trees—not groves, not production.”
Fayyad’s olive council is preparing a plan to rebuild the olive sector if the ceasefire holds and the war ends—beginning with soil testing to detect contamination from munitions and rebuilding irrigation networks. The government of Tunisia has pledged 180,000 olive saplings to Gaza once conditions allow.
But replanting will take years. “The olive tree is slow to grow,” Fayyad says. “It takes patience—and peace—for it to bear fruit again.”
Despite the devastation, Gaza’s farmers are returning to their olive groves—to water, to prune, to salvage whatever life remains.
“The olive tree is the story of Palestine,” Abdel-Nabi said. “Even when it burns, it still stands in our hearts.”"
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-olive-groves-oil-farmers-israel-war
#Palestine #Gaza #OliveTrees #Genocide #EthnicCleansing #Israel
