Despite the ugliness of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, it revived humanitarian concepts in the souls of many peoples of the world and produced various methods of sympathy and solidarity with the Palestinians.
Some of these methods date back to the beginning of the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian Strip 17 years ago, as is the case with the Arab Society for the Protection of Nature in Jordan.
The association considers what it is doing towards Gaza as “green resistance,” as it uses agricultural seeds and seedlings to restore and rehabilitate the farms of the Strip with the aim of sustaining basic crops and increasing the Palestinians’ attachment to their land.
The association’s role is not limited to Gaza, as it has contributed to planting 3 million trees since 2001 throughout Palestine, replacing what the Israeli occupation army uprooted and bulldozed during its repeated attacks.
Given the damage caused by the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, the association, through its partners inside Palestine, found it necessary to revive the farms of the Strip.
Last March, the association launched the first phase of its efforts targeting about 400 dunams (one dunam equals one thousand square meters) in Gaza.
Food sovereignty
Anadolu Agency quoted Razan Zaiter, the association’s president, as saying, “The idea we are working on is related to achieving food sovereignty. In addition to supporting the Palestinian farmer and helping him hold on to his land, we call ourselves the Green Resistance. Achieving sovereignty can only be achieved by sustaining our resources, and we hope that the Arab world will have food sovereignty so that it can become politically independent.”
Zaiter stressed that “controlling food means controlling people. The occupation is doing this in a blatant and rude manner towards the people of Gaza, and is using starvation as a weapon.”
The Israeli war forced about two million of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinians to flee in catastrophic conditions, with severe and deliberate shortages of food, water and medicine.
Political character
“Since last March, we have been working on a project aimed at reviving the lands of Gaza. We have reached 162 farmers there, and their work covers about 400 dunams that have been rehabilitated and are currently productive. Our main mission is to provide those farmers with seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation equipment. This role was somewhat available before the war,” Zaiter said.
She added, “But in light of the current stifling siege, the matter has become difficult, but it is continuing through our partners inside,” without specifying the means for doing so.
Zaiter added that the Arab Society for the Protection of Nature seeks, through its political projects, to achieve a tangible impact on global policies. Agriculture here is trying to replace political roles that the countries of the world have failed to perform, according to her.
She cited as evidence of the difficult conditions of the people of Gaza, “an Israeli study in 2007 that aimed to measure the calories from the amount of food entering the Strip, so that it would be below the level of satiety and keeping them alive in a way that sought to cause them a slow death.”
3 million trees
Confirming the principle of independence, Zaiter said, “Our work is based on donations from individuals and Arab and Islamic organizations, and we reject any foreign funding from any organization. The value of the donation is only 5 Jordanian dinars ($7), which is the price of the seedling, and the name of its owner is recorded in our bulletins.”
As for their work areas in Gaza, Razan Zaiter said, “The beginning was with planting vegetable seedlings on land belonging to the municipality, then with 500,000 seedlings of various vegetables, including tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, and other types, in an area of 200 dunams in the central region of the Strip, and we replanted 170 dunams in the northern part of the Strip with various types.”
Zaiter added that the association’s work in Palestine dates back 23 years, and Gaza is part of the “They Uproot a Tree, We Plant 10” project in 2001.
Through this project, “we contributed to planting 3 million trees across the Palestinian territories to replace what the occupation uprooted and bulldozed,” Zaiter concluded.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a war on Gaza, with American support, which has left more than 131,000 Palestinians dead and wounded – most of them children and women – and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that has claimed the lives of dozens of children, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.
Israel continues its war on Gaza, ignoring the UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate halt and the International Court of Justice’s orders to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and to improve the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.
In conjunction with its war on Gaza, the Israeli army escalated its attacks in the West Bank – including East Jerusalem – killing 619 Palestinians, wounding 5,400, and arresting about 10,000. It also destroyed the infrastructure and property of citizens, including agricultural areas, according to official Palestinian sources.
