Fair Trade in an Unfair World: The case of Palestine

Fair Trade Fortnight, Manchester 2009

“Palestine is the natural home of the olive tree” explained Nasser Abu Farha, in Manchester for the launch of the world’s first Fair Trade certified olive oil.  The olive groves of the West Bank, cultivated by traditional methods and with much biodiversity, have a particular air flow and sunlight, which improves the taste.  “Slightly peppery”, he told audiences around the city, from the dizzying heights of the Co-op tower.

Nasser is the Director of the Palestine Fair Trade Association (PFTA), an organisation based in the West Bank which has been working with the Fair Trade Labelling Organisation to develop the criteria for Fair Trade olive oil for about five years.  Each Fair Trade certified product has a set of product-specific criteria which producers must meet in order to gain accreditation.  Once they have been established, they can be transferred to other producers and areas of the world.  Working in Palestine has been a lengthy process.

For Palestinians, the olive tree is crucial to both their cultural heritage and their economic livelihoods.  The land and the groves provide a link between generations of families, families which have harvested the same trees for hundreds of years.  Some olive trees in the West Bank have been estimated to be more than 2,000 years old.  The Palestinian economy is rooted in olive oil, it provides perhaps more than 50% of GNP.  Nasser explained that its economic importance was increasing.  The Israeli occupation and annexations makes it more and more difficult to access land, sometimes or permanently impossible, but olive trees are rain fed and don’t require irrigation, so those that remain will survive.  Furthermore, the difficulties faced by Palestinians to find employment, due to the checkpoints, curfews, restrictions of movement and destruction of markets, means that people are returning to the land.

I first went to the West Bank in 2002, shortly after the Wall began to be constructed.  I participated in a demonstration at a village that was to lose more than half of its land behind the Wall.  The demonstration attempted to block bulldozers from digging up olive trees.  Some of the trees had branches cut off and were lying on the side of the track created by the military vehicles.  I asked someone what would happen to them and was told they were taken away in open-backed trucks.  And then what?  “They will be sold… in Tel Aviv or the settlements”.  Some years later I saw a couple of replanted trees in a settlement, in a raised bed with pansies on the corner of a roundabout.   I also went back to the village, Jayouus.   A farmer took me to his land, through the gate in the Wall (in that area a fence, which you can shoot through).  I saw an entire crop of lemons that had fallen from the trees and were rotting on the ground.  There was no point harvesting them.  They couldn’t get them through the gate, the soldiers would not permit it.

PFTA olive oil has had organic certification for about four years, but it is not possible for them to sell produce from behind the Wall as organic.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  The Wall(s) have surrounded villages so that the people are not able to get to the groves.  Permits are required for people to get through, and the gates are only opened by the young Israeli soldiers at certain times.  Over the years I have heard many stories about the permits that are issued: to dead relatives, to elderly people that could not attend the land; to 5 year olds.  If the family is lucky, an adult male will be issued a permit that will enable him to go through the gate in the early morning, usually 6am, and dusk (this is, however, dependent on the day, the soldier, their orders…).  The relationship between the people and their land has therefore alerted.  The family are not able to participate in the annual olive harvest, which is usually communal affair that takes a few weeks.  The farmers are not able to come home during the hottest hours of the day to eat and take a rest.  Such conditions, along with the fact that the people certifying the produce may not be able to get through the gates in order to assess the land, renders both organic and Fair Trade accreditation impossible.  PTFA olive oil is therefore either organic and Fair Trade, and from an area within the Walls, or neither.

Since 2000, around a million olive trees have been destroyed in the West Bank.  Settlers account for a significant portion of this: it is not uncommon to see acres of trees burnt.

Under these conditions, the PFTA have made some incredible achievements.  They provide the biggest source of organic certified olive oil anywhere in the Middle East, more than Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, even Israel.  Their programmes go beyond certification schemes to women’s micro-finance projects, an Access to Education project, and an annual Olive Harvest Festival that welcomes people from around the world to participate in this event, which is both traditional and horribly contemporary.

Olive Co-operative runs the Trees for Life campaign in partnership with the PFTA, which enables people in the UK to sponsor the planting of new olive trees in the West Bank.  These are either given to farmers that have lost land or are planted in areas that olive groves have been destroyed.  Since 2006, we have raised over £43,000 for Trees for Life.