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Nurturing Seeds of Freedom in Palestine
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Surrounded by a 26-foot-high separation wall, barbed wire, and a watchtower, a group of young Palestinians prepares a 3.5-acre piece of land for the growing season in spring. The noise of their hoes shaping the soil mixes with the humming of construction cranes from the nearby Israeli settlement of Modi鈥檌n Illit. Established in 1996 on land appropriated from Palestinian villages, the Israeli settlement is illegal under international law but continues to expand.
The Om Sleiman farm in the village of Bil鈥檌n is part of a growing agroecology movement in the occupied West Bank that is turning to sustainable farming as a way to resist the Israeli occupation and stay rooted to the land. Established in 2016, Om Sleiman鈥擜rabic for 鈥渓adybug鈥濃�攁ims to connect Palestinians to the produce they consume and to promote food sovereignty.
鈥淲e share the yield of the farm with 20 to 30 members, depending on the season,鈥� explains Loor Kamal, a member of Om Sleiman, as she prepares raised beds where eggplants, tomatoes, watermelons, peppers, and beans will be sown. The farm operates on a community-supported agriculture, or CSA, model in which members pay for their share of the produce at the beginning of each season, sharing both the yield and the risks of production.
One day in April, Kamal shows us around the property, which is located in Area C of the West Bank, under full Israeli military control. Here vegetables are grown alongside olive and fruit trees, but Kamal, who works at Om Sleiman with a team of five other women, mentions that a part of the land is inaccessible. 鈥淚n March, we were walking around the farm, checking the carob trees inside our land, and suddenly soldiers started shooting at us,鈥� she recalls.
Growing food under military occupation has become increasingly dangerous as settler violence and repression escalate. Even with the world鈥檚 attention focused on the war in Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed since October.
Despite the dangers, Om Sleiman鈥檚 team is determined to continue their work. 鈥淲e have to go on, even when there is fear, because our presence here is important,鈥� says Kamal as she picks eggplants, apples, and mulberries from the farm.
The land on which they grow organic produce has special significance. The concrete wall that cuts through the West Bank expropriated hundreds of acres of Bil鈥檌n鈥檚 agricultural land in 2005. After years of protest and legal action, residents managed to regain about half of the lost farmland, a victory that turned the village into a symbol of popular resistance.
A part of the reclaimed land was donated for the establishment of this agroecology farm. For members of Om Sleiman, growing food in defiance of the encroaching wall and settlements is a way of continuing the struggle for freedom.
Agroecology As a Tool for Liberation
鈥淚f we want to be free, we need to plant our own food,鈥� says Angham Mansour, who is from Bili鈥檌n and joined Om Sleiman two years ago. The farm aims to promote independence from the occupier鈥檚 economy but also to reconnect Palestinians with the land. 鈥淔arming is part of our heritage. Going back to the land is going back to our roots, to our identity,鈥� she says.
Palestine is part of the historical region of the Fertile Crescent, seen as the birthplace of agriculture, where people started cultivating grains and cereals as they transitioned from hunter-gatherer groups to agricultural societies.
For Saed Dagher, a farmer and agronomist who started working with agroecology in Palestine in 1996, sustainable farming is a crucial tool for liberation. 鈥淎s a farmer I am free when I don鈥檛 depend on outside inputs, when I produce the food in my land the way I see fit, with my own seeds, and the inputs that are locally available. I am not dependent on seed and chemical companies. And I don鈥檛 depend on the occupation,鈥� he says.
Dagher is one of the co-founders of the Palestinian Agroecology Forum, a volunteer group aiming to spread ecological farming in Palestine. In the past decade he has noticed a growing interest in, an approach that tries to minimize the environmental impacts of farming by using local, renewable resources. This method reduces dependency on purchased inputs and prioritizes soil health and biodiversity.
According to Dagher, Palestinian farmers have practiced forms of agroecology long before the term was invented. 鈥淭raditionally, Palestinian farmers would plant olive trees with wheat, barley, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and garlic. In the same field, we would have fig trees, grapes, almonds. It was diverse,鈥� he says. Palestinian farmers used to rely mostly on local resources and rain-fed agriculture, helping preserve local varieties in the fields, orchards, and terraced hills.
The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948鈥攖hrough a violent process that entailed the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages and the forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians鈥攎eant farmers lost most of their lands and livelihoods.
Since the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967, the remaining Palestinian territory became a for Israeli products. The local food system was transformed from a food-producing to food-buying one, deepening Palestinian dependence on the occupying forces.
In the decades since then, Palestine鈥檚 diverse agricultural heritage has been in decline, as Palestinian growing traditions have been increasingly displaced by monocultures and industrial agriculture, which are reliant on agrochemicals and genetically modified seeds, particularly after the Oslo accords signed in 1993.
鈥淚srael wants to destroy Palestinian agriculture, so [Palestinians] become dependent on them and on humanitarian assistance,鈥� says Moayyad Bsharat, project coordinator at the Union for Agricultural Work Committees, or UAWC, an organization supporting Palestinian farmers. 鈥淚f Palestinians are food secure and don鈥檛 depend on Israeli products and Israeli markets, they will dream of freedom, and Israel doesn鈥檛 want it. It wants Palestinians as slaves working for them.鈥�
The importance of food sovereignty has been highlighted by the catastrophic situation in Gaza over the past 10 months. According to human rights reports, Israel has been using starvation by deliberately blocking the delivery of food and by destroying farmlands.
As dependence on Israeli produce and agribusiness grows under occupation, so does the land grabbing. This year, Israel has 2,743 acres of land in the occupied West Bank to be state-owned鈥攁 move that paves the way for continued settlement construction.
鈥淭he occupation keeps trying to take the land from us, to restrict our access to it, and prevent farmers from reaching it,鈥� Mansour says. 鈥�The goal is to make our lives here impossible, to make us leave. They want to uproot us.鈥�
The systematic appropriation of land and water resources by expanding Israeli settlements, the separation wall, and the military have all alienated Palestinians from the land and caused the loss of native seeds and traditional practices.
But despite farmers鈥� continuous dispossession and the widespread destruction of agricultural land, Bsharat says farmers haven鈥檛 been defeated. 鈥淲e will rebuild again. We will support farmers with local seeds and continue our projects to build food sovereignty. We will use all our efforts to dismantle the colonial project by sowing local seeds, taking care of the land, and teaching our children not to forget.鈥�
The Union for Agricultural Work Committees is collecting and distributing 60 varieties of heirloom seeds and is working on the rehabilitation of agricultural land in Gaza and the West Bank. In recent years, it has helped establish agroecology projects and trainings in some of the villages most affected by settler violence.
鈥淲e are still present in the land, despite the restrictions imposed on us and the violence of the settlers,鈥� says Ghassan Najjar, who manages an agroecology cooperative in Burin, a village surrounded by extremist Israeli settlers who regularly attack Palestinian farmers, burning orchards and uprooting olive trees.
鈥淎griculture is resistance,鈥� says Najjar, standing in a greenhouse where members of the cooperative grow cucumbers and tomatoes using agroecology techniques.
Despite the growing settler violence and repression, Dagher says he is motivated to 鈥渄o more and more.鈥� He considers the fact that many Palestinian workers have lost their Israeli jobs since last October to be 鈥渁n opportunity to encourage more people to work in agriculture.鈥�
The farmers at Om Sleiman will keep sowing the land, spring after spring. 鈥淭hese days when the situation is so difficult, we feel this project is even more important. We feel we have to continue, we have to be present,鈥� Mansour says.
鈥淓very day we come and we work the land because we have hope,鈥� adds Kamal. 鈥淏ecause we believe that we will be free.鈥�
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Marta Vidal
is an independent journalist focusing on environmental and social justice across the Mediterranean. Her work has been published in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, and the BBC, among other outlets.
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