Body donates 4,000 almond trees to Palestinian growers whose border-adjacent fields were damaged in recent fighting
The Red Cross on Wednesday began distributing thousands of almond trees to growers in the Gaza Strip whose fields along the border with Israel were ravaged in successive wars.
Mamadou Sow, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the coastal Palestinian territory, said the organization would give “4,000 almond trees of different varieties to farmers along the border (whose lands were) particularly exposed in the wars.”
Grower Marwan Abu Mharreb, one of the beneficiaries, described life in the border zone, hit by three conflicts with Israel since 2008 and run by Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
“Every day we put our lives in danger by going to our land,” says the 45-year-old who grows eggplants, zucchinis and other vegetables in greenhouses, in addition to the plot where he is now planting the almond trees.
“We are 700 or 800 meters (yards) from the border,” he said.
“(Israeli) military patrols pass near our fields, every day we hear shots from their training areas” on the other side of the border fence.
As he spoke, shots rang out in the distance sending a flock of frightened storks into the sky.
Palestinian farmers on the border are nervous too.
“Who can say if an Israeli plane will not come and destroy everything anew,” another grower said, referring to Israeli aerial spraying of defoliant along the border.
The Israeli military spokesman’s office told AFP that the spraying was carried out to deny cover for the planting of roadside bombs and other “destructive purposes”.
“The substance sprayed does not harm the environment,” it added, before going on to say that it “will cause the surrounding vegetation to wilt and prevent its growth.”
Sheep farmers along the border believe the aim is to kill foliage on which their flocks graze.
Sow said that the Red Cross had discussed the spraying with the Israeli military.
“We hope this will not happen again,” he said.
Mohammed Abu Mharreb, also planting almond trees donated by the Red Cross, says that war wipes out harvests but farmers’ debts remain.
“I still owe $4,200 to my fertilizer dealer and I don’t know how I’m going to pay,” he said.
The United Nations says that half of cultivable land in the Gaza Strip and 85 percent of fishery resources are inaccessible because they are adjacent to borders under Israeli blockade for the past 10 years.
In 1968, agriculture accounted for more than half of Palestinian gross domestic product, today it represents about 4-5 percent.
Reconstructing the coastal enclave following Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza has moved slowly because pledged donations have been slow in arriving, and, according to international aid organizations, because of delays due to Israel and Egypt closing off Gaza’s borders.
Land crossings in and out of the coastal enclave are strictly controlled by Israel and Egypt. Israel says it maintains the blockade to prevent Gaza’s Hamas rulers from obtaining materials to fortify its military positions, dig tunnels and build rockets to fire at the Jewish state.
The Egyptians are concerned that Gaza-based Palestinian groups are providing military support to Islamic fundamentalists who are behind a spate of attacks on Egyptian security forces and tourist sites in the Sinai Peninsula that have claimed hundreds of lives.
Israel allows small quantities of construction materials into the Strip as part of the rebuilding effort in the wake of the war, but says that in Hamas’s hands, large amounts of concrete and piping would be diverted to military projects.
Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007 from the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas. An Islamist terror group, it is committed to the destruction of Israel.
As reported by The Times of Israel