Photo courtesy of PENGON (the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network)

A Story of the Wall

‘Abdallah Ibrahim al-‘Araj from Ad Dab’a village used to cross the Green Line to earn a living in construction. Since al-Aqsa intifada, closures have forced him to turn to farming to make ends meet. For the last two years he has been making about two hundred shekels a day selling his crops in Nablus. This income has met his family’s basic needs, including health and education costs for his eight children.

But in January 2003, the Israeli military confiscated all of his land. They leveled ten dunums to make way for the wall, which left the other twenty-five dunums isolated on the other side, inaccessible except by one gate opened at the whim of the Israeli army.
Since the intifada began, many Palestinians like Mr. Araj have increasingly been relying on agriculture for income. In Qalqilya, agriculture now accounts for 45 percent of the economy, up from 22 percent. The wall is now cutting off many of these family farmers from their land and their wells at a time when farming is their last remaining source of income. As a result of the wall, six hundred out of 1,800 shops in Qalqilya have closed due to lack of business, unemployment has reached 80 percent, and as many as four thousand residents have moved elsewhere to find economic opportunities. The wall is also preventing thousands of children and teachers from reaching schools and hundreds of the sick and elderly from reaching hospitals.

For over ninety miles, Israel’s wall snakes through some of the West Bank’s most fertile agricultural land, from the Jenin area past Tulkarem and Qalqiliya towards Jerusalem. When the wall is complete, over 95,000 Palestinians will be isolated between it and the Green Line. As the mayor of Qalqilya, Mahrouf Zahran, has said, “If Israelis had wanted security, they could have built it on the Green Line. But the aim is to strangle us economically, to force us to leave.”

Helping Farmers Recover

Many farmers in the northern West Bank affected by the wall are now helping one another harvest their remaining land and cooperating to rescue and replant uprooted olive trees. And they are desperately seeking ways to bring their crops to market. But these are small family farmers with limited resources. Fortunately, Palestinian NGOs such as the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) are rallying to their side.

UAWC and UPA have long worked together to improve the lot of Palestinian farmers. UAWC teaches farmers how to maximize crop production and how to market their products in both local and foreign markets. With UPA support, they have funded training for farmers in various planting and marketing techniques for family farms and shown farmers how to develop and preserve water resources for drinking and agriculture.

UAWC has a long track record of showing family farmers how to use their limited resources to turn farms into viable, income-generating businesses that can support families during hard times. With their experience working in the northern West Bank, UAWC has the expertise necessary to assist farmers in the current crisis.

UPA and UAWC are working together on strategies to assist these farmers in the coming months, including methods for maximizing crop production, salvaging uprooted olive trees, husbanding water resources, and bringing crops to market. But the work cannot begin without you.
Please donate to UPA today so that the farmers do not have to struggle alone.

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