Growing Olives, or Not
At Tuwani, Palestine
2006 January 6
The village men stood in a line, just staring at the orchard in silence. The family to whom it had belonged sat near by, grieving. Last night someone had cut every branch off of every tree in the entire orchard. The branches, still green, littered the ground.
The orchard was 30 years old. It consisted of 102 olive trees at the bottom of the hill on which stands the village of At-Tuwani. Nothing else grows with in a half mile of the orchard in any direction. The land is too dry and too rocky. If the family chooses to replant, they will have to work ten years before they harvest their next crop.
Several IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) soldiers were walking through the orchard, presumably looking for hard evidence of who did it. A soldier standing near us mentioned that he is from a kibbutz which now raises grain but used to have orchards. We asked how he would feel had this happened to his kibbutz. “I would feel…” He paused, “…really angry.”
I sat down to meditate and pray – my normal response to witnessing evil. Some minutes later I realized a serious argument had broken out among the Palestinians. I looked up to see several men swinging fists and rocks at other men. Immediately a number of other Palestinians began to move between and calm the combatants. Several CPTers simultaneously began to engage the Israeli soldiers and police, so they would not escalate the conflict, and to give the Palestinians time to resolve it nonviolently. Palestinians, in their pain and frustration after four decades of occupation and colonization and increasing oppression and violation and powerlessness, sometimes explode at each other.
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