MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The Palestinian olive harvest is a celebratory tradition. It goes back hundreds of years. Today, the annual harvest is risky. Palestinian farmers are facing intensified attacks by the Israeli military and settlers, fueled by tensions over the Hamas attack last October and the ongoing Gaza war. NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi visited an olive harvesting community in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
(SOUNDBITE OF TARP RUSTLING)
HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, BYLINE: Ali Zeidat lays mesh tarp underneath his olive tree. He rakes the branches.
ALI ZEIDAT: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: Small black olives fall like raindrops. This land has been in Zeidat's family for over a hundred years in a village called Faqu'a. Rolling, green hills are dotted with cacti, flowers and bushy olive trees.
ZEIDAT: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: Seventy-one-year-old Zeidat loves olive season.
ZEIDAT: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "Land and honor are the same thing," he says.
ABBAS MILHEM: It's a celebration, you know?
AL-SHALCHI: Abbas Milhem is the head of the Palestinian Farmers' Union.
MILHEM: They enjoy spending, like, two months in the farmland every day, going and coming back and singing while collecting the olive harvest. It's a symbol of identity. It's a symbol of love.
AL-SHALCHI: But this year there is fear.
ZEIDAT: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: Zeidat is harvesting alone. Workers he'd normally hire are afraid for their lives. That's because his neighbor was killed picking olives this year, a 59-year-old woman named Hanan Abu Salama.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken, crying).
AL-SHALCHI: At their home in Faqu'a Village, Abu Salama's mother is inconsolable.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken, crying).
AL-SHALCHI: We met Abu Salama's family a week after they say she was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers, unprovoked, while harvesting olives on her land. She was a mother of seven. Her widower, Hossam Abu Salama, gently wipes away his own tears.
HOSSAM ABU SALAMA: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "We were inseparable," he remembers. It was early on October 17 when the couple headed to their land. Israeli authorities had just given Palestinian olive harvesters instructions. Stay 100 meters - that's just over 100 yards - from an Israeli barrier wall which separates the West Bank from Israel.
ABU SALAMA: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "We stayed 100 meters away the whole time," Abu Salama says. He says Israeli troops monitored them the entire time. Just as they wrapped up their olive harvesting, the shooting began.
ABU SALAMA: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: He was confused. "Why were they shooting?"
ABU SALAMA: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: Abu Salama waved his hat. Maybe they'd stop the shooting. He began to run away with his wife, dragging his tarp of olives behind him.
ABU SALAMA: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: But as Hanan reached the car, she screamed, I'm injured. I'm injured. He found her bleeding and crying.
ABU SALAMA: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: They sped to the hospital.
ABU SALAMA: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "There was still breath in her body," Abu Salama says. "I laid her on my lap."
But the doctors couldn't do much, and the love of his life was gone.
ABU SALAMA: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: The Israeli military launched an investigation and, in a rare outcome, suspended the female commanding officer overseeing the troops in the incident. The olive harvest has always been a time of friction in recent years. But since the war in Gaza, the violence has escalated dramatically. The United Nations documented a large increase in Israeli attacks and restrictions against olive harvesters this year - 25 incidents by soldiers and over 100 attacks by Israeli settlers.
MILHEM: They want farmers to leave behind their lands.
AL-SHALCHI: Milhem from the Palestinian Farmers' Union says it's a strategy.
MILHEM: It becomes like easy hunt for annexation and for more control of Israeli settlers and Israeli occupation on the land.
AL-SHALCHI: Israeli far-right, ultranationalist leaders and government say Israel should claim this land permanently.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken, crying).
AL-SHALCHI: This recent video offers a rare glimpse of the perspective of the Israeli settlers waging this battle. It's the funeral of Shuvael Ben-Natan. The Israeli man was briefly detained last year in connection with the killing of another Palestinian olive harvester, and he himself was killed as a soldier fighting recently in Lebanon. Ben-Natan's family and friends spoke at the funeral.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Hebrew, crying).
AL-SHALCHI: "I was so impressed with you," his father says in the video.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Hebrew, crying).
AL-SHALCHI: "You were shooting. You were driving them away," he said about the Palestinian olive harvesters.
At the time, Ben-Natan claimed self-defense, and Israeli authorities investigated but never pressed charges.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: His brother went on to say that he served in Gaza after the Hamas attack last October, seeking revenge against Palestinian women and children. Still, like every year, the olive harvest goes on.
(SOUNDBITE OF BRANCHES RUSTLING)
AL-SHALCHI: Ali Zeidat rakes his olives alone in his quiet grove.
ZEIDAT: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: He says, "we have to take care of this land."
(SOUNDBITE OF BRANCHES RUSTLING)
AL-SHALCHI: Hadeel Al-Shalchi, NPR News, Faqu'a, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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