The rolling hills around Hebron have a distinctly
Mediterranean feel; a beautiful sun beats down on gentle slopes of olive groves
and rocky ground which is far from the dust and sand of the typical Western
image of the Middle East. But sadly this is no free Mediterranean state of
southern Europe, but a land under Israeli occupation.
While Palestine is a land rich in resources, the
strategies employed by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza are attempting to
replicate what was done in the land occupied in 1948; an almost total
eradication of Palestinian farming, both for self-sufficiency and exports.
Without agriculture there can be no possibility of a viable Palestinian economy.
Tackling Years of Systematic Decline
Technically, around 40% of the West Bank has yet to be
confiscated. However, as Jamal Talab, director of the Land Research Centre (LRC),
explains, land confiscation is not the only reason causing the collapse of the
Palestinian agricultural industry. “In 1967, about 70% of Palestinians were
farmers, but after the occupation, Israel created incentives to encourage
agriculture workers to become manual wage laborers in Israeli industry,” he
said. This trap threw a devastating blow to Palestinian agriculture and an
independent future.
The system provided an instantaneous cheap labor force
for Israel, and one which would return home through checkpoints at night. For
the Palestinians, becoming a manual labor force for the Israelis provided an
immediate income, not requiring the long-term commitment of farming the land
becoming increasingly dominated by settlers. There was no Palestinian Ministry
of Agriculture to provide technical expertise and support for farmers; Israel
was running the occupied civil administration with a specific agenda of
weakening existing Palestinian infrastructure. Prior to the Israeli civil
administration, the Jordanians and Egyptians maintained control (1948-1967), and
development of the Palestinian agricultural sector was neither priority nor
interest.
Although remaining at the very bottom of the Israeli
employment pile, a ready income was a clear incentive for many Palestinians, who
found they could get cash quicker to support their families through Israeli
industry than could be earned in the neglected Palestinian agricultural sector.
However, even this second class system for Palestinians fell apart when Israel
started to deny permits to workers during the First Intifada and the Oslo
‘peace’ years. Today, during the Second Intifada, Palestinians are not given
permits to cross out of the West Bank, so problems have increased tenfold.
It is this emergency employment situation, twinned with
the urgent necessity for long-term development of a sustainable Palestinian
agricultural industry that the Land Development Project team is seeking to
address.
As the crisis of land and employment are intertwined, so
is the solution. The aim of this project is twofold, to strengthen the
agricultural sector by reclaiming agricultural land from stony uncultivated
hillsides, and to create a labor intensive process to provide for those left
devastated by loss of jobs in Israeli industry. Since 1997 the project has
reclaimed thousands of dunams of agricultural land for destitute farmers,
channeling millions of dollars of external aid directly where it is needed most.
The initial cost of reclaiming land is something beyond
the capacity of most individual farmers, but once the land is prepared the
community can support itself. The team of eight agricultural NGOs provides
technical support both at the initial point of reclaiming the land and as an
ongoing service. The project not only offers support in reclaiming land, but in
buying seedlings, digging water cisterns and laying irrigation systems. In the
eight years of the project so far, hundreds of thousands of fruit trees have
been planted; olives, grapes, stone fruit and citrus. In order to provide an
income in the years in which it takes for trees to bear fruit, the project
encourages intercropping; growing vegetables and medicinal herbs between the
tree seedlings to bring a more immediate income.
The Secret of Successful Coordination
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Israel selectively uses laws established under the Ottoman and the British occupations to justify land confiscation
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“The key to our future is development, innovation,
science and technology”
Jad Isaac, Director of Applied Research Institute,
Jerusalem (ARIJ)
So how is it possible to manage such a project over such
a widespread area, coordinating between eight NGOs and even more offices,
especially when the occupation prevents physical meetings between staff on a
regular basis? Such a project cannot be carried out without coordination. It is
here that IT comes into its own.
Ra’ed Azmi, an IT specialist, is developing the
interactive GIS database storing information gathered by different partner
organizations, from research and planning to implementation stages. Expert
research is essential in supporting land reclamation; the database shows
elevation and slopes of every single dunam, necessary information for selecting
appropriate land. Geographic data on climate, rainfall, soil types and aerial
images using remote sensing can be accessed. Every geological feature is
documented, maps reveal Palestinian populated areas and Jewish settlements,
types of crops already grown in different areas, and political data such as if
the land is slated by Israel for demolition or confiscation.
Another important part of the data stored on the central
system concerns land ownership. In 1948, the British authorities were in the
process of registering all land of Mandate Palestine using Ottoman
classifications such as private land, public land or waqf land (held by the
Islamic or Christian authorities), but the process had not been finished. There
has never been a complete and centralized system organized to demonstrate land
ownership (although there is no expectation that Israel would respect one if
there were). Israel selectively uses laws established under the Ottoman and the
British occupations to justify land confiscation; it does not recognize the
documents that clearly register Palestinian land ownership. A regularly
exploited bylaw refers to “uncultivated land;” if Israel deems that the land
has been uncultivated for a certain period of time, it declares the land
government property.
The database keeps information about all applications
made by farmers, how much has been spent on each plot of land, and can be
filtered into separate areas, donors or organizations at the press of a button.
The project started with a donation from the Japanese government in 1997 and is
currently receiving money from European donors and the Islamic Bank. A
sophisticated system such as this database helps make spending transparent for
the donors, and to all those outside the project.
IT allows the team to save time through using the
research of others, all entered in a consistent system to create comparable
data. Research stored on the database is not only useful for the specific land
reclamation project, but for all aspects of work challenging environmental
degradation. Soil maps for example are essential for the work of tackling
pollution from sewage systems from settlements and the salination of the soil in
the Jericho area. “In a world in which different organizations often compete
for influence, it is a real success that we have been able to work together and
coordinate,” said Jamal Talab. “This can be a model for other sectors of
society to duplicate.”
The Wall: A Barrier to Living
