Olive trees preceded all things in this land, you can even find some older than 10 000 years. I haven't come across any yet but mainly because i haven't had the time to look for it.They are so important that some settlements pay an enormous amount of money to have one transplanted into its entrance as a sort of proof of belonging, of connection to this land. It must be an odd thing to feel the need to show you belong, like the transplanted tree most were also born, growing and living elsewhere before.
From dawn to dusk under the sun, with a pause for breakfast and lunch, farmers families gather in the fields to harvest the olive. Throughout generations they've been doing this and they shall continue to. Harvesting is no easy task, it is a long hard work even when rakes are available to comb the branches.
Unfortunately the difficulty of the harvest is not what farmers consider the most troubling, settlers and their "security zones", restriction on access to their fields and trees enforced manu militari by the Israeli Army are their main concerns and not without reason.
Some of them are granted access once a year to pick their olives, with no other possibility to come and prun the trees or plow the fields necessary to improve the quality of the soil and consequently of the harvest.
Settlers yearly arson the groves, interfere violently in the harvest, steal the crops under the complicit gaze of the Israeli Army yet with an impressive resilience this farmers keep on returning to the place where their trees are. Until the day they won't be there no more, either ones or the others.
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