[News] 'Nature has spoken': A forest fire to kindle Palestinian dreams of return

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/jerusalem-forest-fire-kindle-Palestinian-dreams-return> 



  'Nature has spoken': A forest fire to kindle Palestinian dreams of return

Johnny Mansour - August 28, 2021
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During the second week of August, Some 20,000 dunams of land were 
engulfed by fires across Jerusalem’s mountains.

It was a natural disaster of the first degree. However, no one could 
have expected the sight that unfolded after the fires were extinguished. 
Or rather, no one had imagined that the fires would expose what followed.

After the flames were put out, the resulting landscape was terrible for 
the human eye in general, and for the Palestinian eye in particular. For 
the fires had revealed remains of ancient Palestinian villages and 
agricultural terraces; terraces built by their long-dead ancestors to 
enable them to cultivate crops and plant olive trees and vines on the 
slopes of the mountains.

    Photographs taken before the Nakba of 1948 show that olive trees and
    grapevines were the two most common plants in these areas

Across these mountains, which make up the natural environment on the 
western side of the city of Jerusalem, ran the Jaffa-Jerusalem road, the 
road that linked Jaffa’s historical port with the Holy City of 
Jerusalem. This route across the mountains was used by pilgrims from 
Europe and North Africa to visit Christian holy sites. They had no 
choice but to use the Jaffa-Jerusalem road, through valleys and ravines, 
and across the mountaintops. Over the centuries, it would have been 
touched by the feet of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, soldiers, 
invaders, and tourists.

The agricultural terraces - or platforms - that Palestinian farmers 
constructed have an advantage: their durability. The terraces are up to 
600 years old, according to estimates by archaeologists. But I believe 
they are even older than that 
<https://www.wmf.org/project/ancient-irrigated-terraces-battir>.


      Working with nature

The Palestinian farmer’s hard work is visibly clear on the surface of 
the earth. It has been proven through many studies that Palestinian 
farmers have always invested in the land regardless of its form; 
including mountainous land, which is very difficult to cultivate.

Photographs taken before the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, when 
Palestinians were evicted by Jewish militia, and even dating back to the 
second half of the 19th century, show that olive trees and grapevines 
were the two most common plants in these areas.

Olive trees

Israeli soldiers stand before Palestinians trying to plant olive 
saplings on Palestinian land near Salfit in the occupied West Bank, 22 
December 2020 (AFP)

These plants maintain soil moisture and provide a livelihood for local 
people. The olive trees, in particular, help prevent soil erosion. Olive 
trees and grapevines can also create a natural barrier to fire because 
they are leafy plants that retain humidity and need little water. In the 
south of France, some forest roads are lined with vineyards to act as 
fire barriers. The Palestinian farmers who planted them knew how to work 
with nature, how to treat it with sensitivity and respect. It was a 
relationship formed over the centuries.

But what did the Zionist occupation do? After the Nakba and the forced 
expulsion of large parts of the population - including the ethnic 
cleansing of every village, town, and city on the route of 
the Jaffa-Jerusalem road - Zionists began planting large areas of these 
mountains with non-native and highly flammable European pine trees to 
cover and erase what the hands of Palestinian farmers had created.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-settlers-uproot-olive-trees-west-bank>

Israeli bulldozers and settlers uproot Palestinian olive trees in West Bank

In Jerusalem’s mountainous region, in particular, all that is 
Palestinian - with its 10,000 years of history - has been erased in 
favour of everything that suggests the place’s Zionism and Jewishness. 
As a result of the European colonial mentality, there was a transfer of 
the European “place” to Palestine, so that the settlers would be 
reminded of what they had left behind.

The process of concealment was aimed at denying the existence of 
Palestinian villages. And the process of obliterating their features 
aimed to eliminate their existence from history.

Note that residents of the villages that shaped human life in the 
mountains of Jerusalem, and who were expelled by the Israeli army, live 
in camps and communities close to Jerusalem itself, including the 
Qalandiya and Shu’fat refugee camps and others.

Such pine forests are found in other locations, concealing Palestinian 
villages and farms that were demolished by Israel in 1948. International 
Israeli and Zionist institutions also planted European pine trees on the 
lands of the village of Maaloul, near Nazareth, Sohmata village near the 
Palestine-Lebanon border, and the villages of Faridiya, Kafr Anan, and 
al-Samoui on the Akka-Safad road, among others. They are now hidden and 
cannot be seen by the naked eye.


      Huge significance

The villages were not even spared their names. For example, the village 
of Suba has become “Tsuba,” while Beit Mahsir became “Beit Meir”, Kasla 
became “Ksalon”, “Shoresh” instead of Saris, etc.

But if Palestinians have not yet been able to resolve their 
confrontation with the occupier, then nature has now spoken in the way 
it deems appropriate. The fires revealed a glaring aspect of the 
well-planned and engineered components of the Zionist project.

    The terraces assert that the Palestinian cause is not over, that the
    land is awaiting the return of its children

To Palestinians, the discovery of the terraces on the mountains affirms 
their narrative that there was life on this land, that the Palestinian 
himself was the most active in this life, and that the Israeli expelled 
him so that he could take his place.

In this regard alone, the terraces carry huge significance. They assert 
that the cause is not over, that the land is awaiting the return of its 
children; people who will know how to treat it in the right way.

/The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not 
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye./

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