Home > Olives & Thorns > Archives > 2008 > November > 11 > Entry
My olive harvest
My olive harvest proceeded this past weekend without incident. I filled a large stainless steel bowl with black olives from the tree outside my office window. A neighborhood orange cat joined me.
This contrasted from the experiences of many fellow olive pickers these past few weeks. As every year, olive harvesters have been beaten, and olives stolen. This season, according to Israeli police, is the worst in years.
There have been at least 20 clashes between Jewish settlers and Palestinians, while harvesting their olives, according to police. The violence has become ritual. As sure as the olives will ripen with the turning of summer to fall, settlers will confront Palestinians as they harvest them.
Many settlements were built atop terraced Palestinian olive groves and their boundaries often abut trees that are reached once a year by their Palestinian caretakers.
Palestinians fight back, usually with rocks.
The harvest has become a proxy war over land, which more than religion or ideology, many people on both sides will tell you, is at the heart of the conflict. To Palestinians, olive trees represent an ancestral bond with the land and for some villages, they are a lifeblood. The Romans planted the oldest trees, Palestinians believe, and they call them Romaneeyah.
My olive tree isn’t contested, however — at least not for now. I was left alone, with my ladder and the cat.
I waited for the olives to turn black, as I prefer black to green, and started curing them with salt yesterday, closely following the recipe from the old Palestinian lady who lives next door.
God willing, she said, they’ll be ready in two weeks.
Comments