Fayez Shikri lives in the village of Bayt Liqya, west of the city of Ramallah. He owns agricultural land located about 500 meters from the wall that separates the West Bank from Israel, which makes him constantly exposed to daily inspection campaigns and as well as tear gas fired at him by Israeli soldiers. Unfortunately, his situation is similar to that of farmers in the area, who also get their equipment destroyed.

Shikri also faces attacks by settlers protected by the Israeli army.

“I have land, and I used to grow plants and crops on it for fun because I love the land. But after I stopped working inside the Green Line, I immediately turned to agriculture. I own a dunam of land and rented two more dunams. I am a father of six children and I want to provide for them. After October 7, I immediately started cultivating my land, benefiting from my experience in the field,” said Shikri. 

Shikri suffers from limited market access, as the marketing of his products is limited to the Ramallah area. This is due to the difficulty of movement between areas in the West Bank because of Israeli barriers and obstacles, in addition to the scarcity of water sources. However, he insists on staying on his land, which he describes as sacred, noting that he spends his entire day in it.

Bayt Liqya, Ramallah’s Green Basket

Khader Assi, president of the Bayt Liqya Cooperative Association, told Daraj that “as an association, [the Bayt Liqya Cooperative Association] immediately took it upon ourselves to help the workers who stopped working in the lands of 1948, encouraging them to farm and providing them with agricultural inputs such as equipment and seedlings to plant, because Bayt Liqya is an agricultural area that must be exploited. We try to cultivate varieties that are not found in other areas.”

Assi added that the association, which was conceived in late 2016 with 53 members, now has 121 members. Its last meeting was held one month before the war, only for meetings to stop after. However, the association now includes hundreds of farmers and is considered the green basket of Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate today.

Assi pointed out that the people of Bayt Liqya mainly rely on work inside the Green Line, and after the Israeli closures and the decision to prevent workers from entering, the association encouraged workers to farm and establish plastic houses as private projects for them, stressing that returning to farming is considered one of the positives of their work stopping inside Israel. However, they face major difficulties, including closures and barriers, preventing access to lands close to the Israeli separation wall, settler attacks, and the issue of marketing products, as most of the production used to go to restaurants and hotels, but due to the decline in tourism, demand from these sectors has decreased.

Supporting National Products

Ahmed Lafi, director of the Ramallah and Al-Bireh Agriculture Directorate, told Daraj that Bayt Liqya is an agricultural area that produces vegetables and enjoys suitable weather conditions for producing various agricultural crops different from other areas, such as figs and all types of vegetables. It is a rural community that also owns vast areas of olive trees, in addition to poultry.

Lafi pointed out that the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture provides all possible guidance to farmers and, as part of the “Palestine Greening” project, distributed olive seedlings and orchards, with plans to distribute vegetable seedlings soon, noting that the ministry adopts policies that prohibit the entry of Israeli products into the Palestinian market in support of local products.

It is worth mentioning that the town of Bayt Liqya is located about 21 kilometers southwest of Ramallah, with a total area of about 8,500 dunams, most of which are suitable for agriculture. It grows grains, legumes, vegetables, and other fruit-bearing trees, with vast areas planted with olive trees.

Bayt Liqya’s lands are included in the third phase of the construction plan of the Israeli apartheid separation wall, which began in 2003 as part of a repressive expansionist policy based on confiscating and controlling lands, including annexing settlements and besieging Palestinian areas, leading to the confiscation of a large part of its lands.

Despite ongoing international criticism against the construction of the wall, the most prominent of which was the United Nations General Assembly’s decision to refer the wall issue to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and the court’s decision on the illegality of this wall, the Israeli government has continued completing additional parts of the wall at a rapid pace to consolidate facts on the ground, especially in the wall being built east of Jerusalem.

Construction in the wall is divided into three stages, each with its own specifications, in addition to construction in Jerusalem’s vicinity.