Dear friends

There’s so much going on these days, such tremendous destruction, loss and fear. But for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the most important thing happening right now is the olive harvest. This is both a major cultural event and a principle source of livelihood for many. But for communities that HaMoked supports, the olive harvest is in real jeopardy. This is because Israel has closed off access to all the lands beyond the Separation Wall.

These areas (referred to as the Seam Zone by the Israeli military) constitute nearly 10% of the West Bank. Some 150 Palestinian towns and villages have olive groves in these very fertile areas. If you follow HaMoked’s work you know that even in “normal” times, farmers face endless restrictions and bureaucracy to reach their lands beyond the Wall. Since October 7, 2023, they have been completely banned.

Since then, HaMoked has been waging a battle to re-open the Seam Zone. Israel may conduct security checks before granting permits to individuals to access these areas, but it cannot completely bar all farmers from accessing their lands. In the past, Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled repeatedly that the route of the Wall, inside the West Bank rather than on Israeli territory, is only legal if it does not disproportionately harm Palestinians (this in contrast to the International Court of Justice that opined in 2004, and again this year, that all parts of the Wall inside the West Bank are unlawful and must be dismantled).

After multiple HaMoked petitions to Israeli courts over the past year, the military opened five gates in the Wall and granted a few hundred permits to farmers with large, commercial agriculture. In May we filed a new petition demanding that all farmers be granted the necessary permits and all the gates be re-opened. This petition has grown more urgent with the impeding olive harvest.

Our litigation combined with diplomatic advocacy seems to have compelled the military to begin issuing permits for olive harvesting in the Seam Zone. But these permits are useless if the military does not open the gates. While the harvest should have begun in mid-October, so far virtually all of the gates remain closed. We are very concerned that the military will allow only a minimal olive harvest in the Seam Zone, as was the case last year, opening the various gates for just a few days. This would be disastrous for Palestinian families and communities, and for the struggling Palestinian economy as a whole. 

The olive harvest is also threatened by violence. Palestinians with olive groves near extremist settlements have been terrorized by settler violence. And 59-year-old Hanan Abu Salameh was killed by the Israeli army while she was harvesting olives on her own land, 200 meters from the Separation Wall.

The international community should actually be demanding that Israel dismantle the sections of the Separation Wall inside the West Bank, in line with the ICJ advisory opinion. Instead, we are compelled to argue about the number of permits issued and the number of days the gates will be opened. In fact, we at HaMoked will continue to do both: to work for urgent solutions for the farmers and communities that rely on us, while raising a principled voice to ensure Palestinians’ basic rights.

May we see a speedy end to this horrible war,

Best regards,

Jessica Montell
Executive Director of HaMoked