Jul 11, 2023
FoE Scotland’s 2023 motion at the AGM to support Palestinian land rights by engaging with the Plant a Tree passed unanimously. The motion noted that this campaign is “supporting indigenous, sustainable, farmer-led tree-planting in order to support Palestinians in areas under attack from settler and Israeli military violence, to remain, steadfast, on their lands and resist the settler colonisation of their lands.”
This move is timely. Israeli settlers, all of them living illegally on occupied Palestinian land, are habitually carrying out pogroms against Palestinian farmers and village communities: Plant a Tree offers practical support and political solidarity.
During these attacks, the Israeli Occupation Forces either stand back and support the outrages – or they protect the settlers. These settlers’ attacks are nothing new but are an intensification of established practices and policies of making life unbearable for Palestinians on the land – in reality the settlers are agents of the government’s drive to take Palestinian land by uprooting Palestinian people– an age-old Zionist tactic of erasure of the indigenous people.
Stop the JNF applauds Friends of the Earth Scotland for this decision and urges other FoE and environmental groups to follow suit by taking this practical step to show solidarity with the men and women of the land of Palestine.
Just as we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people resisting Zionist colonisation, so we extend solidarity to all peoples fighting for environmental justice as supported by our Friends of the Earth comrades. (The full text of the FoE Scotland motion is below).
Background: Friends of the Earth International and Friends of the Earth Scotland have a distinguished history of supporting Palestinian land rights:
In 2012, an International Friends of the Earth delegation led to the publication of “Environmental Nakba: Environmental injustice and violations of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” This report documents some of the environmental injustice, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing that the delegation observed across historic Palestine.
In 2020, the AGM of FoE Scotland overwhelmingly supported a motion in advance of COP 26 which threw a spotlight on the glaring error of allowing the JNF/KKL to have observer status in this important environmental conference. Friends of the Earth Scotland’s resolution that year (“Stop the JNF Greenwashing Ethnic Cleansing”) recognised that the JNF played a major role in the colonisation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine from its inception in 1901 to this day.
As well as challenging JNF’s observer status at COP 26, FoE Scotland committed itself to offer support to the Sumarin family who face eviction at the hands of Himnuta, a JNF proxy, and to call on MPs to sign EDM 529 in support of the family. The organisation also agreed to support a future challenge to the charitable status of the KKL in Scotland.
Full text of the 2023 FoE Scotland Resolution:
Friends of the Earth Scotland notes that:
2023 marks the 75th anniversary of the Palestine Nakba (catastrophe), when Zionist militia, empowered by the Balfour declaration and trained and supported by British mandate administration, drove 750,000 Palestinians from their lands in a project of ethnic cleansing in order to control the ecological resources of Palestine free of its indigenous population;
The Nakba (catastrophe) of ethnic cleansing has continued, not least through environmental degradation of Palestinian land and water by settler colonisation, which has been documented by Friends of the Earth Palestine and International;
The Jewish National Fund has played a key role in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians for over 100 years, but today presents itself as an environmental organisation, including through its subsidiary branch JNF/KKL Scotland, registered as an environmental charity in Scotland;
The Stop the JNF Plant a Tree in Palestine campaign is supporting indigenous, sustainable, farmer-led tree-planting in order to support Palestinians in areas under attack from settler and Israeli military violence, to remain, steadfast, on their lands and resist the settler colonisation of their lands.
Therefore, FoES agrees to:
Support and promote the Stop the JNF Plant a Tree in Palestine campaign.
Feb 8, 2023
Our partners in Palestine work with farmers on the ground to identify the best strategic locations for tree planting which both support those battling to hold on to their land by cultivating it and specify the most ecologically suitable trees/plants for that area: usually olives or vines are chosen, depending on the circumstances.
Our latest contribution: We recently sent £2000 across to Palestine to secure olives and vines. This sum has been generated over a period of time and one particular event hosted by a Palestinian hotelier raised over £1000 pounds.
Plant a Tree as a Gift: This aspect of the campaign was launched over Christmas but is equally valid all year round. We encourage people to make their donation as a special present for someone, (£5 per planted tree). Gift donations receive a certificate which can be passed to the person in whose name the donation was made. The launch of the Plant a Tree as a Gift raised over £900. This is currently held in reserve towards our next planting project, Masafer Yatta.
Plant a Tree: Next Funding Target
Masafer Yatta: The situation in Masafer Yatta is rightly causing international outrage: another “Firing Zone” initiated; another round of ethnic cleansing as a prelude to replacing the indigenous population with illegal settlers.
The background to this forcible eviction is here on our website, as is the story of Hajjah Fatima al Huraini . We celebrate the fortitude of people like Hajjah Fatimah of Masafer Yatta. She survived the Nakba and remained committed to the nurturing of Palestinian life on the land until her death. Her descendants have given us permission to share her story and – around her central narrative – we have built a contextual frame, showing how she is emblematic of so many Palestinians who will not surrender their legitimate claims to their homeland.
- Download the leaflet here or get in touch to ask for some copies to be sent to your group.
- For more information and to make a donation see this page.
- Date for your Diary: March 30th, Land Day. We aim to stage a fund-raising webinar on this special day.
Feb 8, 2023
An initiative of Stop the JNF (Britain), Middle East Children’s Alliance (USA) and Stop the Wall (Palestine), Plant a Tree was re-launched after lockdown as a campaign that encourages international supporters, both individuals and organisations, to donate funds to enable Palestinian farmers to buy and plant trees in the occupied West Bank.
There are many projects encouraging tree planting in Palestine – so why is Stop the JNF involved in another?
Tree planting in Palestine is political. In the hands of the Palestinians it is an act of resistance to the occupation of the West Bank and the settler colonisation of Palestine. Trees, whether vines, olives, almonds or any other indigenous woody perennials that are cultivated for their produce, enable Palestinians to have a permanent occupation of their land in defiance of the Zionist colonisers’ acts of eviction and ethnic cleansing. That is why trees are targeted by settlers and subject to vandalism – uprooted, burned, poisoned and damaged as part of the persecution of Palestinians. And Palestinians re-plant, cultivate and reclaim their land as resistance. Plant a Tree helps support this material form of Palestinian resistance.
Tree planting in Palestine is also political when carried out by the Jewish National Fund.
Throughout its history, the JNF has planted trees in Palestine as part of its project of ethnic cleansing, to erect barriers, ‘Judaise’ the landscape, displace Palestinian communities, prevent refugees returning, erase depopulated villages and generally greenwash the crimes of colonisation. These trees have often been alien species and ecologically damaging. Moreover, the JNF has used tree planting as a propaganda tool to promote Zionist ideology amongst international Jewish communities who are encouraged to donate to the colonial enterprise, and through the duplicitous naming of their Parks and Forests: British Park; Coretta Scott King Forest; Canada Park; Ambassadors’ Forest.
- By supporting Palestinians planting and cultivating indigenous trees, Stop the JNF is exposing the JNF propaganda as greenwash for ethnic cleansing.
- Internationally, Plant a Tree provides the opportunity to support Palestinian resistance materially and politically.
- It is attractive to solidarity activists as well as to environmentalists, gardeners, horticulturalists and farmers.
- It provides an alternative to the JNF for concerned Jewish citizens and an opportunity for people of good will everywhere to stand in solidarity with Palestinian grassroots resistance.
Jan 5, 2023
Posted January 2023
In this article, Manal Shqair provides an account of the brutalization of the Jordan Valley by Israeli settler-shepherds who, along with the violent Hilltop Youth and the Israeli military, are ranged against pastoral Palestinian communities
The paper was originally published in the journal “Transactions of the JNF” . Read the full text here.
May 1, 2011
Launch of Plant-a-Tree in Palestine
We are pleased to announce a joint project of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (Stop the Wall), the Palestinian Farmers Union, and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.
Please honor the 2011 commemoration of the Nakba by planting a tree in Palestine.
The project is part of the Stop the JNF campaign. It is not possible to replace what is lost when people are displaced, land and a way of life is destroyed, 1,000 year old olive trees uprooted. In Palestine scores of 2,000-year-old cities and historical sites are buried under JNF planted forests and parks. Rebuilding and replanting are acts of daily resistance in Palestine.
This project seeks to support the on-going struggle of Palestinians to sustain and rebuild their land by providing resources for villages to plant trees that are indigenous to Palestine’s natural environment and agricultural life.
Over time, the project will expand to collect funds for gardens in schools, playgrounds and community spaces that the JNF and State of Israel have also attempted to destroy.
