Rooted Resistance: The Palestinian Fallah
“The fallah [peasant] is a master tuner; he coordinates his living with the land, plants and climate.” – Abu-Nedal
The semi-arid lands of the Levant cradle a deep connection between people and their environment. This bond is particularly resilient in Palestine, where generations of farmers, known as fellahin, have cultivated the land using traditional practices honed over generations. Their story exemplifies how resistance can be rooted in the act of tending the land, becoming a powerful symbol of place-based identity and a challenge to dominant pressures.
During the First Intifada (1987-1992), the olive harvest in Palestine transcended its traditional role. The closing of public institutions and schools facilitated widespread participation, transforming the harvest into a national act of expression. This collective endeavor served to strengthen individual bonds with the land and fostered a sense of community through shared traditions, transcending divisions of class, generation, and location, fostering a unified Palestinian cultural identity.
This transcendent cultural identity is broadened through the concept of bioregionalism, which emphasizes the interconnectedness between a place and its inhabitants. In Palestine, this translates to a profound relationship between the fellahin and the semi-arid landscape. Their traditional practices, like rain-fed terrace farming and using indigenous seeds, are not merely agricultural methods – they are expressions of a deep understanding of the land’s delicate balance, shared with kin of the bioregion in the Levant – an antithesis to Modernity, large-scale agriculture that disrupts ecosystems and erases traditional knowledge.
Through a Modern ecology perspective, the land of Palestine as a semi-arid region is a subtype of dry land with an aridity index between 0.20 and 0.50. Through the Fellahin perspective, this land is a life source, a tangible link to their ancestors, their responsibility, their identity, their defiance of the occupation.
Symbols of Resistance: The Olive and Beyond
The olive tree (al-zaytouna), with its ability to flourish in harsh environments, embodies the spirit of the fellahin and Palestinian indigeneity – directly contradicting the colonial rhetoric of terra nullius weaponised by powerful nations to displace indigenous communities. Not only do the trees endure the physical challenges of a hot climate, but also the violence and disruptions caused by settler colonialism. Deeply embedded in the land, these trees stand as a testament to the Palestinian struggle for decolonization and self-determination. As such, the act of cultivating olive groves becomes an act of resistance, a defiance against attempts to uproot or erase Palestinian identity. The resilience of the olive trees and the ongoing resistance of the fellahin are a collective effort, a kinship forged through shared experience and a mutual struggle for survival.
Nasser Abufarha explores these place-based connections, embracing other symbols like the cactus (saber) – with its prickly exterior protecting its sweet core – which represent the Palestinians’ resilience in the face of adversity, inspiring a renowned Palestinian proverb; ‘saber as-sabbar (the patience of the cactus)’. The shared ownership and communal harvesting of this cactus further reinforces the message of unity and collective resistance, fruiting even throughout drought and necessitating a communal ritual for consumption. Similarly, the poppy is explored as a representation of sacrifice and resistance, embodying the martyrs’ blood and the fusion of Palestinian peoplehood with the land.
Olive trees, orange groves and cactus (among many other species) all foster cross-generational reciprocity reliant upon relationality. Palestinian farmers are guided by a proverb; “Gharasu fa-akalna wa-naghrosu fa-yaekolun” (they planted so we ate and we plant so they eat). This highlights the concept of reciprocal stewardship across generations. The current generation feels a responsibility to the past for the land and trees they inherited, and they fulfill this obligation by planting new trees for future generations. In this way, the tree acts as a conduit for a continuous cycle of reciprocity, reinforcing the connection between the Palestinian people, their land, and their history. Through this intergenerational exchange, the tree becomes more than just a crop; it assumes a sacred quality, symbolizing the interconnectedness of past, present, and future.
As Yara Dowani says;
”To be able to produce, despite the minimal resources the Israeli occupation has left us, and to offer a space for community knowledge sharing, is to resist and combat an oppressive system which wants to erase our existence”.
Juman Simaan employs decolonial ethnography, a methodology that centers the experiences and knowledge of marginalized groups. This approach critiques the imposition of Western-centric frameworks and seeks to understand Palestinian realities on their own terms. The study focused on four families living in the southern West Bank, identifying three key themes/daily-forms-of-resistance which challenge Modernity and contribute to awareness and response;
- Sutra (sustenance): Olive cultivation is linked to emotional security, survival, and a sense of purpose. It connects the act of “doing” for survival with the sense of “being” that comes from fulfilling societal roles and preserving identity.
- A’wna (solidarity): Collaboration with family, village, and the broader community is central to olive cultivation. This interconnectedness extends to the land and animals, fostering a sense of collective responsibility and intergenerational solidarity.
- Sumud (perseverance): A form of resistance that evolves throughout Palestinian history, demanding ongoing sacrifices and interdependence within the community. Sumud ultimately aims for self-determination and community well-being, expressed through everyday acts of resistance.
This resistance takes on an even more potent form when considering the act of guerrilla gardening. Guerilla gardeners, like their fellahin counterparts, tend the land, but they do so in unexpected places, often on neglected or abandoned plots within the confines of a modern, urbanized landscape.
In the context of Palestine, this act becomes a powerful challenge to the forces of modernity that threaten traditional ways of life and land ownership. By cultivating these plots, guerrilla gardeners reclaim a connection to the land and assert their right to exist and thrive within a rapidly changing environment.
The Israeli occupation with its separation walls, restricted movement, and land confiscation, embodies the very forces that guerrilla gardeners resist. Planting on these unexpected plots – a patch of land by the wall, a neglected traffic island – becomes a symbolic act. It pushes back against the sterile control of the modern landscape, replacing it with a vibrant symbol of Palestinian identity and resilience.
The choice of what to plant is also significant. Guerilla gardeners might cultivate olive trees or indigenous vegetables, a testament to traditional knowledge and self-sufficiency. This deliberate selection reinforces the message – the land may be controlled, but Palestinian identity and connection to the land cannot be uprooted.
Occupation, land confiscation, and restrictions on movement all contribute to the epistemicide of the fellahin. Efforts to document and promote Palestinian biocultural diversity such as Counter-Mapping by Al-Block are crucial in this fight against the erosion and extraction of knowledge and traditional practices.
The spirit of the fellahin endures. Theirs is a story that transcends the act of farming, becoming a potent symbol of Palestinian identity and a beacon of hope for a future rooted in the land.
‘‘We’re not a militia, our weapons are our pickaxes and shovels, our hands and our olive trees’’ – Baha Hilo
Caveat: readers should be conscientious of ‘theoretical imperialism’, whereby knowledge created by scholars in the West, who base their findings on marginalised ontologies and epistemologies, is incorrectly thought to be universal and applicable to global communities (Hammell, 2011).
References
Abufarha, N., 2013. Land of symbols: Cactus, poppies, orange and olive trees in Palestine. In Middle Eastern Belongings (pp. 85-110). Routledge.
Hammell, K.W., 2011. Resisting theoretical imperialism in the disciplines of occupational science and occupational therapy. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 74(1), pp.27-33.
Simaan, J., 2017. Olive growing in Palestine: A decolonial ethnographic study of collective daily-forms-of-resistance. Journal of Occupational Science, 24(4), pp.510-523.
