Plant a Tree in Palestine was launched in 2011 as 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.
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.
Today, Palestinians are resisting an escalation of Israel’s land theft, settler violence and relentless destruction of Palestinian agriculture and way of life.
The Plant a Tree in Palestine, a project of Stop the JNF and grassroots Palestinian partners including the Land Defense Coalition and Stop the Wall, is a powerful tool of Palestinian resistance and serves three key functions:
- Building Solidarity: Planting trees within affected communities conveys a strong sense of international solidarity, of people not being alone and forgotten, building Palestinian sumud.
- Reclaiming the Land: Farmers being supported to plant trees counters the Israeli drive to detach people from their land.
- Benefiting the Environment: The trees planted are natural to the region, unlike many JNF trees, alien to the land. The trees planted as part of the project benefit the environment and have deep cultural and historic significance.
LANDMARK DATES IN THE TREE-PLANTING CALENDAR
- The Olive harvest, mid-October: the symbolic culmination of Palestinian tree planting and nurturing.
- November, start of the tree-planting season: with the rains, we enter the right time to plant trees
- January 26th, the day when the JNF was established – a day of resistance to Zionist settler colonialism
- March 30th Land Day, end of the tree-planting season and a day of commemoration and protest.
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