Farming is not fun in Gaza by Littlebird

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Farming is not fun in Gaza

POSTED BY: LITTLEBIRD
UPDATED: Tuesday, March 2, 2010 08:40
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Monday, March 1, 2010 2:19 PM

Farming is not fun in Gaza
by joti2gaza
Viva Palestina, March 1, 2010
http://joti2gaza.org/2010/03/01/farming-is-not-fun-in-gaza/
[Many photos at site.]

Report by Radmila Stojanovic in Gaza

Gaza did not have its usual rainy season in November and December. The situation got quite desperate about a month ago and special prayers were said in the mosques asking for the rain as the were farmers where running out of time to sow their wheat.

Then, luckily, there were two welcome heavy rain downpours over the last month in time for the wheat sowing. Now another one is badly needed to get it growing.

In the past, the farmers did not rely on the elements and prayers so much. Instead, until very recently, they had irrigation systems, with concrete reservoirs collecting rain water and being topped up from the water mains. This water was than distributed via a network of plastic pipes through the fields.

Gaza has a 1,500-year recorded tradition of farming and many travellers and conquerors have described it through the centuries as a green oasis packed with trees and planted fields.

It is hard to imagine it now, but in the middle ages Gaza was famous for its wines, which were exported to France.

Nowadays, because Israelis have destroyed almost all concrete ‘pools’ on the border areas, farmers had to come up with alternative solutions.

In the areas further away from the border, they have dug big holes and lined them with the heavy plastic to collect the rain water. Near these reservoirs, they only plant the ‘thirsty’ crops such as courgettes, beans, cucumbers etc.

This was not an option for the fields near the border because those are dangerous places and even the briefest of visits can cost farmers their lives. Israelis have declared a couple of miles on the Palestinian side of the border to be a buffer area, a no-go zone where shooting down anything that moves is a fair game. Last year,
there were 166 such attacks, in which 37 people were killed, 69 were injured and 26 properties were destroyed.

The 1993 Oslo Accords defined a buffer zone as a 50m security area, while Israel has air-dropped leaflets warning Palestinians against crossing the 300m mark. But in reality, according to the farmers and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Israelis shoot at Palestinians as much as 2km away from the border.

For many farmers, giving up on their buffer-zone land, even to avoid death and injury or being kidnapped, is not an option. And not only because Gazan agricultural land is speedily disappearing due to the housing demands of a growing population.

In 2005, with the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the strip, 30 percent of the most fertile land was reclaimed by Gazans, but now another 30 percent has been ‘lost’ to the buffer zones.

“We must farm our fields or we will give them up bit by bit and the next generation will not know how to work the land and will abandon it. We owe it to our children, regardless of dangers,” said a farmer who I met recently in the border village of Khuza’a, near Gaza’s second biggest town, Khan Younis.

He also told me that, 12 years ago, he had many fruit trees near the border, and that he used to get 20 boxes of fruit from each of his plum trees. He also grew vegetables in greenhouses which Israelis have since destroyed. “I used to sleep in the tent with my family in this very field,” he said with the nostalgia and sadness.

He cannot do this any more. Like many others, to minimise the chance of being shot at, on land near the border, he now plants only crops, such as wheat, that need very little water and almost no tending between sowing and harvesting. And he always asks the ISM to accompany him if he is farming there.

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Monday, March 1, 2010 6:05 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Ain't so fun in Iraq or Afghanistan either.

One of my buddies and original EOD instructor was killed removing unexploded american ordinance from an Iraqis field so he could get a crop in, but he knew the job would eventually do that, and he went the way he wanted to.

Bonus for him (and he would have found it amusing and satisfying) was that when it blew, it did chain-detonate everything else and clear the field successfully.

-F

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Monday, March 1, 2010 6:36 PM

BYTEMITE

Aw. Well, at least no one will stumble into that field and accidentally blow themselves up. I bet unexploded ordinance will remain a problem for an entire century after combat ever ends.

Can't really say much to the original story. What else can you say, pushing people off farmland they'd cultivated for centuries, destroying their water storage, it's bad.

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Monday, March 1, 2010 8:11 PM

LITTLEBIRD

Yeah, it's bad over there. The abuses never seem to stop.

Sorry to hear about your buddy, Frem. When you described his attitude it reminded me of a movie called The Hurt Locker. It's about an EOD unit. It's up for an Oscar this year. It certainly takes a certain type of personality to do that sort of work.

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Tuesday, March 2, 2010 8:34 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

My feelings about Israel's actions have been expressed before; I wish to hell we'd deal with them, instead of backing them so unilaterally. I just feel

when I think about the situation. So I try not to, coward that I am.

"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10

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Tuesday, March 2, 2010 8:40 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Forget farming and go work in the mustache factory.

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