Zaytuns in the trees, blood in the fields and tears in my eyes

Final Essay

Introduction

“The land you have to kill for is not yours, the land you have to die for is”

أشجار الزيتون Ashjar al zaytun or olive trees are very important to Palestine and the Levant in general. Olive trees were first cultivated in the Middle East 6000 years ago by the Phoenicians (Nadir,2023). The tree’s robust underground roots, which are capable of surviving in dry regions, make it one of the oldest and earliest plants that were cultivated in the Islamic world. (Majed,2023). It takes roughly 20 years for a tree to grow and another 20 years for the tree to bear fruit. Some of the olive trees in Palestine date back 1000 years.

Despite the presence of foreign conquerors such as the Romans, Crusaders, Byzantines, Muslims, and Ottomans, the relationship between olive trees and Palestinians was never destroyed (Simaan, 2017). The fall of the British Mandate resulted in the Nakba of 1948. The Nakba devastated over 400 Palestinian communities and displaced over 750,000 Palestinians. As a result, the majority of Palestinians abandoned their treasured olive trees, some of which were 800 years old.

However, this research aims to challenge the assumption that olive trees are merely subalterns throughout the occupation stage. The olive trees are displacing the human from occupation narratives and relocating agency to non-human agents within the Palestinian assemblage, resulting in a posthumanist approach. Posthumanism attempts to decentralise the human by humbling the anthropocentric world view in an attempt to traverse both human and non-human worlds (Braidotti,2013), which disseminates the division between the human and non-human species, erasing the division between self and other. To comprehend the utmost severity of the Zionist occupation, this essay seeks to comprehend the role of olive trees in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT) as actors and companion species in the multispecies entanglement of the olive tree’s assemblage, which can be seen as an attempt at decolonization. Multispecies entanglement raises the question of how human lives, experiences, symbolics, and accountability are integrated into the assemblage (Van Dooren, Kirksey, and Münster, 2016).

The paper will be broken down into two parts. Initially, this essay explores the connection between olive trees and the occupation, highlighting their shared humanity with Palestinians and the diaspora through solidarity and the trauma of the occupation and how international consumers also interact with the olive tree through this transnational network of solidarity. It uses Donna Haraway’s literary works, such as When Species Meet and The Companion Species Manifesto, to look at the connection between Palestinians and olive trees. Subsequently, the significance of the olive trees will be reexamined by utilising Jane Bennetts theory of vital materialism, and agential materialism by Karen Barad will be employed to comprehend the active role that the tree plays in the assemblage of spatialities, both in terms of symbolics and as a diplomatic actor for not only Palestinians but for the diaspora and the international community.

This paper will then examine how Israelis have been untangling the multispecies entanglement of the olive tree, not only through violent means like settler violence and expansion of land but through appropriation as well. All of this will be examined through the works of Anna Tsing and Jairus Victor Grove.

Bound by Occupation, forged in solidarity

“If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears” — Mahmoud Darwish.

The cultivation of the olive tree is essential to the Palestinian economy since agriculture is the national identity and is critical for cementing the Palestinians’ relationship with their land (UNDP,2023). This is known as Sumud. Sumud is the act of remaining steadfast (Larkin, 2014). Palestinians believe in the concepts of a’wna and a’wda as well. Both of these phrases refer to teamwork and reciprocity (Ibid). Palestinians think that the greatest way to retain their steadfastness is to “maintain the traditional life of the land” (UNDP,2023).

In the Holy Quran and the Hadith, the olive is considered a blessed fruit and is seen as a gift from heaven to mankind (Mohammad,2023). The olive serves as not only a fruit of health and nutritional benefit but contains the ayah (spirit) of Allah SWT (Ibid). As mentioned in the Quran, olive oil is also used as a simile for Allah for his “oil so luminous it seems to shine, though no fire has been touched to it. A light upon light.” (Malik,2023). The olive tree is also seen under the concept of توحيد‎ tawhid which is the unification of Allah (Sasa,2022).

The olive is a Christian symbol of peace, prosperity, and reconciliation. As a result, the Palestinian tradition of harvesting olives coincides with the Reign of the Cross, as indicated by the proverb: When September arrives, olive oil flows into olives (Sharkawi, 2019). Many Palestinian families in the Occupied Palestinian Territories regard this as a cultural marker because it is a practice that has been carried down through generations in Palestinian culture (Raik,2023).

In light of this indigenous and religious connection. coexistence occurs not just between the people and the trees, but also between the tree and the people. Aya Ghanameh, a Palestinian author and illustrator, describes a family who was ejected from their house during the 1967 war in her children’s book These Olive Trees. The protagonist, Oraib, speaks about her and her family’s connection to their land using the metaphor of olive trees (Essa,2023). This association proposes that olive trees are a companion species of Palestinians. Haraway defines companion species as the web of bio-social technological apparatuses of humans, animals, artefacts, and institutions through which specific modes of being originate and are sustained, rather than them being only actors and not recipients of action (Haraway 2008, p.134).

This is demonstrated by the Gaia Theory. According to the Gaia theory, biological creatures on the planet interact with their inorganic surroundings, causing it to behave as a single entity (Boston, 2008). Haraway would refer to this as being kin with kind since she interprets this theory via the theory of symbiosis, which states that nothing can form itself and is exclusively autopoietic in nature, but it relies on cooperatively produced systems (Žukauskaitė,2020). These cooperatively generated solutions promote self-sufficiency through the appreciation of the olive tree through consumption and even cultivation of the tree.

In this symbiotic relationship, the ways that the olives are used date back thousands of years. The Palestinians have been consuming olive oil for centuries with traditional Palestinian bread and Nabulsi cheese. This indicates that the Palestinians and the olive trees depend on each other not only for survival but also for sustaining each other through community, through the traditions that have been passed down from generations.

“My olives and green almonds

And sage, and let’s not forget thyme

And omelette discs when they brown

How delicious it tastes with olive oil

Melted bread and soft cheese

A food that keeps us warm in the winter”

As noted by Tsing (2015), new assemblages emerge as the existing one untangles, growing in size and altering the multiplicity of its expansion (Deleuze, Massumi, and Guattari, 2008, p.8). The olive tree’s multiplicities encompass its ever-expanding role as a companion species, despite the importance of addressing this relationship, as well as its meanings. The olive tree is not just “a representation or a binary representation; rather, it is a material-semiotic node or knot with diverse bodies and meanings that shape each other” (Haraway, 2008, p4). These traditions and through the religiosity that the olive tree possesses are what allows the olive tree to be rooted-resistance companions to the Palestinian people.

It is also consequently critical to recognise that olive trees serve as more than just companions in the complicated web of interspecies entanglement; they also work as agents, mediators, and liberators in the context of Palestinian liberation. As a result, the olive trees are depicted not only as quasi-agents in the assembly of Palestinian occupation, but also as political actors in decolonising the land. Vital materialism explains this sort of diplomacy since the trees reveal their ability to not only survive in the built settings of occupied Palestine, but also to exert self-control and build and sustain connections with non-state actors.

Liana Chua (2020) proposes, using the concept of vital materialism, that non-human actors can serve as ambassadors and actors, representing both the villages and their ability to represent themselves to the rest of the world. As a result, olive trees, like durians, serve as Palestinian ambassadors and actively connect with the global community. The simple act of Palestinian olive farmers hugging their olive trees, for example, can be regarded as an act of diplomacy. Mahfodah Shtayyeh, a Palestinian olive farmer, did this in November 2005 after Israeli settlers attempted to cut down her olive tree, prompting her to cry and hug her tree. She went on to say “I hugged the olive tree… I’d raised the tree like my child.” (Al Jazeera, 2023). Chua (2020) claims that non-human actors, such as durians, act as “spatio-temporally detached fragments” in her scenario. The olives, like the durians here, are capable of mediating relations not only through commodification but also by simply being there (Ibid).

The olive trees also act as a symbolic bridge to the material world through the meanings that the trees bring. These meanings do not form tracings, they form maps (Deleuze, Massumi and Guattari, 2008). Like the maps shown in Haraway and Jim’s Dog, the different interactions and meanings that come with the olive tree are also an act of diplomacy.

Mahmoud Darwish was well-known in literature for incorporating the olive tree in his work. Darwish employs vital materialism to personify the olive tree in his poem, The Second Olive Tree, and like (Guattari in Bennett, 2012) believes that “if we have a humanistic interest in a richer kinship, marital, or civic life, we had better pursue a more ecologically sustainable relationship with nonhuman nature.” He portrays the olive tree as a persistent force in the Palestinian resistance movement, more specifically, as a significant player not by fighting on the sidelines but by just existing; it is an act of decoloniality and indigenous resistance.

“The olive tree does not weep and does not laugh.

The olive tree is the hillside’s modest lady.

Shadow covers her single leg, and she will not take her leaves off in front of the storm.

Standing, she is seated, and seated, standing.

She lives as a friendly sister of eternity, neighbour of time

That helps her stock her luminous oil and

Forget the invaders’ names, except the Romans, who

Coexisted with her, and borrowed some of her branches

To weave wreaths.”

Not only does Darwish implore the usage of vital materialism, he also uses agential materialism in his work. Agential realism which was proposed by Karen Barad posits that realism is not fixed but rather has ‘intra-active agentiality’ (Barad,2007). Like Bennett, Barad posits that everything in this world has the capacity to be an actor. In his final poem: Earth Presses Against Us, he depicts it as an amaranthine tree, a Palestinian symbol of regeneration, demonstrating that olives do not perish but rather reborn. Therefore, like the olives, him as a Palestinian will never end and the culturenature marker that is crucial to the Palestinian resistance against the occupation of the land

“Where should plants sleep after the last breath of air?

We write our names with crimson mist!

We end the hymn with our flesh.

Here we will die. Here, in the final passage.

Here or there, our blood will plant olive trees.” (Darwish,2003)

By attempting to make kin with nature and eliminate the dualisms that has been placed in the assemblage of Palestinian spatialities, this is seen as a tangible way to mourn the homeland and the loss of life in it, not just human life but biodiversity in it, in this case the olive tree, as well as indigenous symbiosis between both nature and culture, because the olive tree is a cultural signifier (Cohen, 2021). Cohen (2021) states that the olive tree is centred as a dual-foci work to reposition kinship at the hub of the human rights struggle. This is an act of diplomacy in and of itself, as it asks for the attention of the disenfranchised and the preservation of indigenous kinship to the soil of Palestine that the trees have.

The metaphor of the olive tree also carries through song. For example, the song, غصن زيتون (Ghosn Zeytoun) or Olive Branch by Elyanna who is a Palestinian-Chilean singer can be seen as a sign of diplomacy. The song was featured at the El-Gouna Film Festival recently as a response to the current bombardment of Gaza. While she is singing about her people being bombarded, the lyrics feature the olive branch. She portrays the olive tree as a symbol of peace and hope, suggestive of doves bearing olive branches and the ubiquitous phrase: to extend an olive branch.

Words aren’t enough, what else can I say?

My tears have dried out, and my heart is broken

I’m far away, but I’m praying for you

And I’m sending peace, on an olive branch

I’m far away, but I’m praying for you

And I’m sending peace, on an olive branch

In the land of peace, peace is dead

And the world is sleeping on a hurt child

These metaphors are not only seen as metaphors for peace but are also seen as an attempt to displace the human in the attempt to decolonise. Both Darwish and Elyanna do not just use the olive tree as a metaphor, they become the olive tree. They displace themselves as humans and strip themselves of their bones and skin and place themselves as the roots and leaves of the olive tree.

The olive tree is not only seen as a connection by Palestinians living in Palestine but also by the diaspora. The recent shooting of Hisham Awartani, a Palestinian-American boy who was shot for wearing the keffiyeh in Vermont was described by his mother to be ‘as strong as an olive tree’ (Democracy NOW,2023) as he is still thriving and resilient, despite him being unable to walk again. This is also a display of this marshalling of support as not only do Palestinians hold on to the metaphor during times of suffering but also as a site for strength, rootedness and hope and using agential materialism, it makes Hisham and his sumud, like the olive tree to both be participatory and performative by not reducing him to his disability but by placing his body: both physical and metaphysical in the olive tree.

This act of diplomacy through symbolisms is also seen through commodification of representations and through the literal commodification of olive based products. For example, the keffiyeh or kufiya, the national symbol of Palestinian liberation. The keffiyeh was used by Palestinian farmers to protect their heads and shoulders from the sun (Aweinat,2023).The keffiyeh includes olive leaves that line the bottom. This reflects the economic and cultural importance of olives (Sara and Hirbawi,2023). Hirbawi recently added the Saoirse (Freedom) Keffiyeh and the Mandela Keffiyeh. According to Aweinat (2023), both of these keffiyehs are designed to reflect oppressed communities such as the Irish, who have had an 800-year history of colonisation, and South Africa, which had apartheid similar to what the Palestinians are experiencing.This act of solidarity manifested by the inclusion of the olive tree in these keffiyehs, despite the differences, can be regarded as an act of decoloniality and a diplomatic gesture, as it demonstrates an engagement with the world through the symbolic significances that oppressed individuals and the olive tree evoke.

The consumption of Palestinian olive oil by international consumers also acts as a bridge of solidarity. Menley(2011) mentions that the pain and suffering of the Palestinians is the reason why Palestinian olive oil is consumed. While Palestinian olive oil is expensive, “This is very expensive oil. Expensive because a farmer risked being shot by an Israeli settler to pick his olives. Expensive because the farmer may have been kept from his land by the Separation Wall. Expensive because of what we had to go through to export it. (Palestinian olive oil producer,2006 in Meneley,2011)”. It could be claimed that Palestinian solidarity activists are looking at olive oil not only from the standpoint of the farmer, but also from the perspective of the olive tree.

In this respect, the olive trees and the associated symbolisms and meanings that people ascribe to them are more than just companion species or co-pilots in the assemblage of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The olive trees have proven to be autonomous agents capable of diplomacy and engagement with the rest of the world, not only through their physical presence but also through the personification of the tree through symbolics, making it a crucial actor in the assemblage of Palestinian spaciality. Their kinship and agencies are not only tied by occupation, but also created in solidarity amid a landscape of destruction.

All That is Left to You; the severing of ties

“Wait for me. One day, when we’re older, I’ll return to you for harvest,” (Ghanameh, 2023)

The Zionist movement rode the coattails of British colonialism in its effort to establish the state of Israel. Zionism has always been a settler colonial movement. Settler colonialism strives to eradicate natives and establish a colonial society on expropriated land (Wolf, 2012). Settler colonialism attempted to eradicate anything that represented the Indigenous population through physical displacement, damage, and ecological change (Salih and Corry,2021). As Teodor Herzl put it, “If I wish to substitute a new building for an old one, I must demolish before I construct.” (Ibid).

This rationale was crucial to the narrative of “making the desert bloom.” This was based on the idea that Palestine was an inhabitable desert: a place without a population for a people without a land, and how Israel transformed the “swamp plains” into a lovely and vibrant environment. This does not reflect the reality of the region’s geographies, because the region, like the rest of the Levant, has a Mediterranean climate. This is a form of green colonialism in which a “green veneer is utilised to contrast the brutal landscapes of the undemocratic Middle East, which has been critical to greenwashing its settler colonial and apartheid framework” (Shaqir,2023). This is a form of savage ecology in which Grove (2019,p7) posits does not seek control’s total victory but seeks total control.

Israelis have a kinship with the olive tree based on appropriation. This attempt at appropriation is not one of coexistence, but rather of antagonism, as Israelis endeavour to claim land indigeneity. Israelis have adapted olive oil into their cuisine.According to Abunimah (2012), the Matteh Regional Council lodged a claim for olive oil commercialization, noting that “to the mountains of Binyamin and Shomron, Hebrew farmers returned, to grow olive trees lovingly as per the traditions of their forefathers, which are thousands of years old.” This is then utilised in Israeli cuisine, such as hummus and Israeli salad (Salata Falahiyeh) and olives for mezze platters.

Settler violence is a more violent method used by Israelis in order to destroy the connection that Palestinians have to the olive tree. The luscious olive orchards of Kafr Qasim, a modest community in the West Bank, were transformed into a pool of deoxygenated scarlet in 1956, following the slaughter of 50 farmers within their olive fields. Mahmoud Darwish composed the aforementioned poem as a form of mourning art, which was written from the perspective of one of the dead farmers whose wedding was supposed to take place several days later (Braverman, 2009).

“The olive grove was once green,

At least it used to be… and the sky

was a blue forest… at least it used to be, my love

What changed it that evening? The olive grove was always green.

At least it used to be, my love. Fifty victims, at sundown

Turned it into a red pool… fifty victims.” (Darwish,1999)

More than 800,000 trees have been uprooted by both violent settlers and the IDF since the Six Day War in 1967. After the Second Intifada of the 2000s, greater restrictions on Palestinian movement had an impact on their livelihood (Raik,2023). This resulted in Palestinians losing their livelihoods, which led them to solely rely on their produce as a source of income (Ibid). This is best illustrated by the Amer family in the film Color de los Olivos (The Colour of Olives). In the film. The Amers who work only as olive pickers. Unfortunately, the Amers confront numerous obstacles in harvesting their olives and producing regional olive oil as a result of the West Bank Wall’s erection.

With movement limitations, olive farmer massacres, and the construction of the West Bank Wall, this enclosed environment, both physical and non-physical, provides precedent for the racialization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT). This demonstrates how new spatial and political patterns of occupancy are emerging, fundamentally threatening an ever-expanding region with imperialist borders (Li and Pujo,2019). These colonialist borders result in marginalisation. Marginality can be defined as “standing outside the state by tying themselves to it; they constitute the state locally by fleeing from it.” (Tsing,1997,p.55). In this sense, the olive trees are tying themselves to the already marginalised Palestinian state, but unlike the Meratus Dayak people of Indonesia, about whom Tsing writes, the olive trees, which are rooted both physically and posthumously to Palestine, cannot and will not leave the land with which the tree has developed a kinship.

The encroachment of pine trees to replace olive trees in the West Bank exemplifies this marginalization. As these trees were employed to eradicate any evidence of Palestinian indigeneity and redeem the land, the pine trees transformed from a global emblem of virtue and abundance into a weapon of annihilation (Sharif, 2016). While this can be interpreted as an alienation of Palestinian indigenous peoples and the severing of groves that form borderlands. Tsing notes that while borders produce a specific type of margin, they also have an imagined ‘Other side’ (Tsing,1993,p.21). The issue of contention is the significance of the trees as symbols of customary Palestinian land ownership, which interferes with their concept of an empty land that is theirs to occupy.

Similarly, this marginalisation is being addressed by the establishment of protected areas and national parks. The absence of substantial archaeological finds or natural assets in these parks not only destroys the land, but also erases the linkages that both Palestinians and worldwide consumers rely on. Through the establishment of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), Palestinian land could be easily purchased (Braverman, 2006). According to one JNF member, “all I know is that it can only be good to plant trees… and [that] it will help the country become a more ecological success.” (Possen in Braverman, 2006). The irony is that the process of creating patterns of unconditional coordination that develop in assemblages (Tsing, 2015 p.23) like the divisions of pine trees and olive trees in the West Bank is based on the concept of destroying Palestinian identity

Many people have been affected by the recent strikes in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in response to the events of October 7th. The Saleh family, who rely on olives to survive, has had their lives interrupted since then. According to Mahmud Saleh, the family patriarch, “this goes beyond safeguarding anyone.” Burke and Taha (2023) claim that “it is a collective punishment for October 7th.” A Palestinian man named Wally Rashid reported how the Yitzhar, a group of Jewish settlers, burned down his olive trees (Rashid,2023). He added that the Jewish settlers believed that “God gave them the land but would not let them harvest the olives” (Ibid).

With the involvement of the United States in the bombing of Gaza, this is seen as the Eurocene in action (Grove,2019,p.61). Farmers have been even more devastated by not being able to see their olive trees. The Israeli far-right Finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich banned Palestinians from farming their olives close to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. He also created “sterile no-go” areas which prohibits the presence of Palestinians (The Times of Israel, 2023). Farmers like Samaher Abu Jameh, who currently lives in Khan Younis, are unable to see their crops. This sentiment echoes: “I have no idea what state they are in. I just want to reach my land to see what has become of it,” .

Another government policy is the consolidation of water resources and water-related resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT). The controlling of rainwater is also impacting the olive trees. This restriction of the basic needs that the tree needs and the elimination of the symbolics that the trees have is an attempt by Israel to rip the umbilical cord of indigeneity that tethers the Palestinian olive tree to their land through the disruption of the assemblage that the tree needs to survive, which eliminates the process of becoming with the olive tree.

These olives are clearly under jeopardy since the Zionist project. Precarity is defined as the state of vulnerability that exists in our period (Tsing, 2015, p20). This vulnerability is brought about not just by the Zionist project and Israel’s military ecology, such as the rise of settler violence, greater restrictions, highway building, and orchard demolition, but also by nonviolent measures, such as the takeover of the olive tree. This precarity of the olive tree affects Palestine not only economically, but also culturally and politically .Despite attempts to destroy the olive trees or the severing of relationships, the link between the tree and the power struggle over land, autonomy, identity, and power remains stronger than ever.

Conclusion

This essay has highlighted how occupation and solidarity bind the Palestinian and the international community to the olive tree and how Israelis and Zionism is severing this connection; not only through violence but also through non-violence. One may imagine how the quiet tears of the trees dropped to the earth, while the blood of their protectors fell to the ground. Both yearned for a place where their people could live in peace and the trees could bloom on a free Filastin. “Like these olive trees, we are still here” (Ghammeneh,2023) and will remain so.

This essay was for a module: Approaches to Theory which was a module convened by Dr Gaik Cheng Khoo