Permaculture in the West Bank

http://www.olivecoop.com/info/permaculture.html

by Sarah Irving

Trees for Life, a project of Manchester's Olive Co-operative, London's
Zaytoun and the Palestinian Fair Trade Association, based in Jenin, gives
people in the UK the opportunity to sponsor the planting of new olive trees
in order to replace those destroyed by the Israeli army and settlers in the
course of building settlements, roads and the Separation Wall. The Applied
Research Institute Jerusalem, a Palestinian agricultural NGO, estimates
that half a million such trees have been uprooted or cut down since the
beginning of the second Intifada in 2000.

The renowned peace activist and permaculturist Starhawk commented of the
rural Palestinian villages that she visited in 2002:

"Now, looking at the land from the perspective of permaculture and
ecological design, I find myself impressed by the elegance of Palestinian
agriculture, so integrally suited to the land and climate, frugal in its
use of water, making use of the plants native to or adapted to this region,
somehow preserving enough fertility in this stony soil after ten millennia
of cultivation to produce figs and grapes and oil and bread. The
"scientific" agriculture practiced in some of the settlements, with
profligate use of water, energy, and chemicals, seems to me another form of
assault on the land. And the Israeli side of the border was green, I now
know, because they'd taken all the water, as the Sharon government is now
confiscating the aquifers."

The Trees for Life project is part of a wider movement to explore
sustainable ways of making a living for the rural population of Palestine.
Unemployment in the West Bank is as high as 60%, and for many families the
products of their olive groves are key to their economic survival.

Efforts to bring Palestinian and Israeli farmers together at the village of
Budrus illustrate how important permaculture can be in providing a common
language for people on different sides of the conflict.

According to Lucy, a British-Israeli woman living in Jerusalem and working
for a joint Palestinian-Israeli NGO the Alternative Information Centre,
"permaculture has taken off big time out here, with a very active email
list - although not all of it engaged with the political situation." In
Budrus, however, Palestinians and Israelis have gathered to learn
sustainable agriculture together. The Awad family are Palestinians who lost
much of their land to the building of the Israeli Separation Wall, and as a
result of injuries sustained in Israeli army raids were deprived of other
ways of making a living. After friends introduced them to an Israeli
permaculture activist they worked together to devise courses in traditional
Arab farming, called Falcha, with accompanying lectures from leading
Israeli permaculture experts. The courses now attract around 15 people per
week - a combination of international visitors, Israelis and Palestinians.

The Budrus courses are remarkable for being a long-term joint project
which, according to Lucy Michaels,

"is building connections between Israeli permaculture folk who have never
been to Palestine, Israeli activists who have never done any permaculture,
a family that has really suffered from the Occupation and a small Hamas
village that is being strangled by the Wall. It has a fantastic atmosphere,
although it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the two years of
connections, trust and respect built up over the weekly non-violent
demonstrations against the Wall in Budrus."

She also points out that the woman who initially brought the Awad family
and Israeli activists together has since been sentenced to jail in Israel
for her involvement in the demonstrations against the Wall.

Other Palestinian permaculture projects have not fared so well. Villagers
in Marda, a village in the Salfit region of the West Bank, set up a
permaculture and sustainable agriculture centre in 1993 in order to develop
'local resources for local needs.' The centre became a valuable hub for
training on subjects such as composting, organic pest control, irrigation
methods and grey water recycling, with senior agriculturalists from all
over Palestine visiting to expand their knowledge of sustainable methods.
Over 300 varieties of native seeds were cultivated and conserved, many
plants, seeds and trees distributed, and a range of other resources
offered, including training for women in literacy, English and computer
skills. However, such a demonstration of self-sufficiency incited the
hostility of the Israeli army, who raided the centre in November 2000,
destroying the computers, files, seed banks and plant nursery. According to
Maggie, a worker at Ma'an, a Ramallah NGO which supported the centre,
no-one was allowed to enter the site for four years, and although some of
the activities started there have managed to continue, the building itself
remains unused and inaccessible.

However, within Israel itself increasing numbers of people are also
interested in exploring new ways of relating across communities, and using
permaculture and sustainability projects as a way of working together.

At Lotan, a kibbutz in the Arava Desert south of the Dead Sea, interest in
organic agriculture and permaculture has been part of the settlement's
radical Reform Jewish history. This has blossomed in recent years with the
establishment of a Centre for Creative Ecology and regular courses such as
the 10-week Green Apprenticeship and a permaculture design certificate.

Mark Naveh of Kibbutz Lotan describes its organic gardens as growing

"a fairly wide range of vegetables and herbs: tomatoes, carrots, broccoli,
lettuce, onions, mint varieties, basil to name a few. We have lots of
companion planting. The main environmental constraints come with being in
an extreme desert region with only 25 mm rainfall a year and high
temperatures. We produce mainly from November through to May. The garden is
pretty much dried out over the summer, except for a few hardy herbs. All
our water in the region is pumped up from the water table which is a big
sustainability challenge in the wider context. Also it is fairly salty, so
we have to mainly go for relatively salt-tolerant plants."

As well as organic and permaculture production for kibbutz consumption and
at times a vegbox scheme, Lotan also engages with marginalised Bedouin
communities in the area, many of whom live in unrecognized villages which
are under constant threat from the Israeli authorities. Mark Naveh explains:

"The story behind the connection with Wadi el-Naam is that Devorah Brous,
the main force behind the organisation Bustan and a long-time friend and
associate of ours, approached us to help with a project she was initiating,
the building of a straw-bale medical clinic for the village. We ran a
one-day building workshop for a few of the adult residents who came to
Lotan, then some Lotan residents supervised the on-site construction over
the period of a week in 2003 with around 60 volunteers from the village and
outside. There have been several additional trips since then when we've
taken up a team to help finish the work."

As well as its associations with experimental building in Wadi al-Naam,
Kibbutz Lotan has also run workshops in alternative building and
agriculture for Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian youth through its
connections with Friends of the Earth Middle East and its 'Good Water
Neighbors' project, which focuses on the water problems facing all the
communities of the region and seeks creative solutions.

Buyers of organic fruit and vegetables in Britain's supermarkets will be
familiar with Israeli produce. Israel, unfortunately, is perhaps the
epitome of how organic agriculture can become industrialised and divorced
from its environment. Much of its produce is grown under intensive
conditions, often on settlement land illegally appropriated and using water
taken from aquifers under Palestinian soil. But the projects at Budrus and
Lotan show that Israeli agriculture can be different, and that
relationships between the peoples of this troubled land can also transcend
ingrained stereotypes and hostility.
Further information

For information on the Trees for Life project and on Olive Co-operative's
fair trade and travel projects in Palestine and Israel, see
http://www.olivecoop.com, email info [at] olivecoop.com or call 0161 273 1970. The
Palestine Fair Trade Association is at http://www.palestinefairtrade.org and
Zaytoun http://www.zaytoun.org

For information on the Marda Centre and other sustainable agriculture
projects in the West Bank and Gaza, see http://www.maan-ctr.org

For more information on the Budrus permaculture/Falcha project, see Lucy
Michaels' article in the forthcoming August 2006 issue of News From Within,
the Alternative Information Centre's magazine, http://www.alternativenews.org or
http://www.newsfromwithin.org

For details of Kibbutz Lotan's permaculture courses and eco-tourism see
http://www.kibbutzlotan.com, and http://www.bustan.org for Bustan's work with
unrecognised Bedouin communities. Information on the Good Water Neighbours
project is at http://www.foeme.org/proje