IN STEREO

We do a few programmes per year, set around the olive harvest, Christmas, olive planting, and Land Day, which is a day of protest against land theft [at the] end of March. The main theme in our work is land because we want to show people the connection of Palestinians to the land: how they are rooted in the land, how they are so native to the land. But over the past decades, after the West Bank was occupied and especially after more and more settlements, the more radical Jewish-Israeli settlers started to attack people during the olive harvest. Every year, we hear lots of stories of Palestinian families being attacked during the harvest. Not only physically attacked, but also stopped from doing their work by Israeli soldiers saying that areas are closed military zones. Olive groves have been set on fire. And a whole lot – like almost a million olive trees in the past decades – have been cut down by the Israelis.

[This is] because of construction of the wall, settlements, military camps, [and] military practicing zones. Or became inaccessible because the land became on the other side of the wall. It seemed very relevant to bring foreigners as a protective presence during the harvest, because we realised that when you are on the field with twenty [or] thirty foreigners, the settlers will not easily come and attack the group [and] the Israeli police will be much friendlier with a Palestinian family if they want to stop them from harvesting. We have, on a few occasions, been able to harvest olives on the other side of the wall where the family did not have access anymore, through coming from the Jerusalem side to go and harvest the olives for them. And of course, when foreigners come and do something that is so much part of the local tradition and culture, they will also much better understand the culture itself. – Kristel