Paradise lost: How Israel is making war on West Bank farmers

Amal Slaibi, 58, averts her eyes whenever she passes the remains of her family’s small but profitable orchard in the occupied West Bank, which she has managed since her father became too old to tend to the crops 25 years ago.

Amal has fond memories of growing up among the grapevines and peach trees of the farm in Beit Ummar, north of Hebron. The fruits provided the family with a generous source of income, while the leaves cast a pleasant shade over the land.

That was until 1984, when the illegal Israeli settlement of Karmei Tzur was built, the iron fence demarcating the outpost eating into the Slaibis’ land. Last November, Israeli bulldozers arrived at the village, uprooting their grapevines. Their seven-dunam orchard and about 30 dunams of land belonging to Slaibi’s uncle were levelled by the Israeli military.

Soldiers ordered the family not to come within 500 metres (546 yards) of their grapevines, claiming the land lies too close to the illegal Karmei Tzur settlement, despite her family having owned the land for generations.

“They prevented us from even passing near it, then they bulldozed it all … They left us with nothing to live on,” Slaibi told Al Jazeera.

Lost land

The harvest, in May and June, used to provide the Slaibi family of 12 with at least 10,000 shekels (approximately $3,300), a modest but adequate sum.

After the plants were uprooted, they tried to compensate their losses by picking grapes and vine leaves from distant farmland they owned, but this was inferior to their most treasured and profitable orchard, which now lies ruined.

“The land that was bulldozed has moist, rich soil, excellent for growing grapes and other crops, but the other land is dry and unsuitable,” Slaibi said.

Since the beginning of the war against Gaza in October 2023, the Israeli army, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, has tightened restrictions on thousands of Palestinian farmers accessing their farms.

When Israeli authorities allow Palestinians onto access their land for a brief few hours a month, families rush to their olive groves or grape vines – often their sole source of income – to prepare them for the harvest season. The few days they have over the year to tend to their crops is rarely enough time for the farmers to guarantee a proper yield.

“One time last year, they allowed us to enter our land to plough [it]. We were so happy, and I went with my elderly father, but as soon as we arrived, the settlement’s security guards opened fire on us, and we miraculously escaped.