Gaza olive harvest shrinks to a fraction as groves are razed

The Gaza olive harvest has nearly vanished this autumn, as Israeli bulldozers and closed zones leave families with little of their old groves.

Local farm officials believe only about 150,000 olive trees survive out of some 2 million. They expect around 5,000 tonnes of olives this season, against a normal crop of 40,000.

That would yield just 700 tonnes of olive oil. In a typical year, by contrast, Gaza produced about 5,000 tonnes. One year on from the ceasefire that halted the heaviest fighting, bulldozers have levelled nearly every orchard.

One family’s grove in ruins

Haidar Abu Middain, 60, once shared a huge orchard in central Gaza with his brothers and uncles. It stretched across 900 dunums, roughly 220 acres.

Every autumn, the whole clan gathered to pick 1,100 to 1,500 tonnes of olives. Part of the crop went to market as fruit, and the rest became oil, enough for up to 900 drums.

Now, close to half of that land sits behind the “yellow line”, where Israeli soldiers keep Palestinians out. Under that line, Palestinians cannot set foot in about two-thirds of the strip.

Bulldozers have flattened most of the remaining half. Just 20 or 30 trees survive, and Abu Middain expects only two drums of oil, too little even for his own household.

In the past, he said, the harvest was enough to support the families who owned the grove. It also supplied oil and olives to the whole central area.

Gaza olive harvest prices soar

Before the war, the Gaza olive harvest stood at the heart of local farming. They provided a daily staple for local families, and a little oil even went abroad.

Moreover, shaded groves gave people a calm escape in one of the world’s most crowded territories. Today, however, markets that once filled with olives and fresh oil at harvest time sit nearly bare.

The little oil that reaches stalls costs roughly three times its pre-war price, close to $500 a drum. Imad al-Ajrami, 33, who was shopping in Deir al-Balah, said few families can pay that much.

Of the roughly 40 olive presses that worked before the war, only seven still run. “Compared to years before the war, there’s zero,” Fawaz Zidan said at his press in Deir al-Balah, one of the few still running.

In his words, the olives are gone because bulldozers destroyed the trees. Nearby, a handful of residents waited with plastic jerrycans for fresh oil.

A rare day in the shade

In Deir al-Balah, a small number of groves still stand. There, Khalil Mansi and his family gathered green olives onto a white sheet, as boys climbed ladders and girls sorted the fruit.

For day labourer Ahmed Khader, 38, the season once meant two or three months of steady work. Now, he said, a single day’s wage felt like a blessing.

“We still have to provide for our children,” Khader said. For families like his, the vanishing Gaza olive harvest means losing both an income and a treasured tradition.