Palestinian farmer Nasser Ismail hopes the dates he is growing in the Jordan valley will win him supermarket shelf space in Europe from his Jewish settler neighbors who sell the same crop at a premium.
More and more Palestinians are turning to date palms in the search for ways to make a living from West Bank land farmed by their families for generations. Today, many struggle to survive.
West of the biblical river, a sluggish, 100km stream that forms the border with the kingdom of Jordan from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, many Palestinian crops are now abandoned, mid-season, for lack of water, a resource largely controlled by Israel since it occupied the territory in 1967.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Compounding their problems, farmers say exporting through borders controlled by Israel is complicated and time-consuming at best, impossible at worst. Most have given up trying.
In Jiftlik, a rural village in the heart of the sun-baked valley, smallholders talk of abandoning the land altogether.
Yet in the same region, in land adjoining Palestinian farms, Israeli settlers with better water supplies have built a farming industry described by their mayor as “a gold mine.”
PHOTO: REUTERS
Exploiting the unique climate of the lowest point on Earth — up to 400m below sea level — they grow crops when seasons end elsewhere, helped by temperatures that are always several degrees warmer than surrounding areas. One of their most lucrative is the sweet, fat Medjoul date. Moroccan by origin, it is one of the world’s most expensive varieties.
Ismail bought his first Medjoul date palms from the settlers in 2002.
“It’s a strong tree, a productive tree,” he said.
“The dates can be refrigerated and sold in any season,” he said, as his eight sons trimmed and tied off branches and tended to saplings he is planting to expand his farm near Jericho.
Thankfully for the Palestinians, the date palms can survive on the limited, brackish water available to them. They blame deep Israeli wells for hitting both the quantity and quality of their water supply.
“But the date palm can take it,” he said.
Palestinian date cultivation has expanded from 3,000 trees in 2000 to 50,000 today. This year alone, Palestinian farmers are expected to plant up to 140,000 new trees, said Ibrahim Daiq, head of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union.
The settlers in the Jordan valley number about 7,000, a fraction of the 500,000 who have moved into the West Bank and East Jerusalem since Israel captured the land 43 years ago.
They cultivate three to four times more land than that farmed by Palestinians and use 10 times as much water, the Palestinian agriculture minister said.
In a report last year, Amnesty International accused Israel of restricting the Palestinians’ access to water. Israel rejects that charge, saying it has exceeded commitments agreed under interim peace agreements signed in 1995 to supply the Palestinians water. A World Bank report last year said that those allocations fall short of Palestinian needs.
Under a peace deal, something the US is trying to mediate, the Palestinians want settlers out of the West Bank. With its agricultural potential, the Jordan valley is seen becoming the economic backbone of a future state.
However, the Israeli prime minister, citing strategic concerns, has said that even after a Palestinian state is established, Israel should keep a military presence there.
Jewish settlers moved to the area because their government told them it was vital to security. Today, Israel is at peace with Jordan.
“The Jordan valley is a success story,” Elhaiini said, explaining, for example, how the climate allows settlers to ship table grapes to Europe when farmers in Chile have finished their harvest and those in North Africa have yet to begin theirs.
The settler farms, which employ some 5,000 Palestinians, use water pumped from West Bank wells and also piped from Israel. With more water, they could farm even more land, Elhaiini said in an interview.
Dates and fresh herbs are their most lucrative crops. Elhaiini estimates that the dates produced by the settlements account for 60 percent of those exported by Israel.
The Israeli Ministry of Agriculture declined to respond to questions on the settlers’ output.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says Israel ranked No. 9 in the total value of its date exports in 2007. Its dates are among the world’s most expensive. Elhaiini estimated the yearly export value of settlement dates at up to US$150 million and the total value of the valley settlements’ output in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Palestinians today export just US$5 million of produce from the Jordan valley, Palestinians officials say.
Settlement produce is at the center of controversy, particularly in Europe because the enclaves built on occupied land are deemed illegal under international law.
In one of the latest measures targeting settlement output, Britain recommended in December that labels clearly state whether produce is from settlements. The Palestinians have banned settlement goods from their markets.
Describing the Jordan valley as “one big greenhouse,” Palestinian Agriculture Minister Ismail Daiq said he has a plan to create thousands of new Palestinian jobs in farming, using new methods to make the most of the available water and exploiting the expertise Palestinian workers have gained from settlers.
“This plan focuses on farming crops that we were buying from the settlements,” he said. “We are thinking of exporting out of Jordan to Arab states, and to Europe and Turkey through Jordan.”
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
WARNING: From Jan. 1 last year to the end of last month, 89 Taiwanese have gone missing or been detained in China, the MAC said, urging people to carefully consider travel to China Lax enforcement had made virtually moot regulations banning civil servants from making unauthorized visits to China, the Control Yuan said yesterday. Several agencies allowed personnel to travel to China after they submitted explanations for the trip written using artificial intelligence or provided no reason at all, the Control Yuan said in a statement, following an investigation headed by Control Yuan member Lin Wen-cheng (林文程). The probe identified 318 civil servants who traveled to China without permission in the past 10 years, but the true number could be close to 1,000, the Control Yuan said. The public employees investigated were not engaged in national
ALL TOGETHER: Only by including Taiwan can the WHA fully exemplify its commitment to ‘One World for Health,’ the representative offices of eight nations in Taiwan said The representative offices in Taiwan of eight nations yesterday issued a joint statement reiterating their support for Taiwan’s meaningful engagement with the WHO and for Taipei’s participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly (WHA). The joint statement came as Taiwan has not received an invitation to this year’s WHA, which started yesterday and runs until Tuesday next week. This year’s meeting of the decisionmaking body of the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, would be the ninth consecutive year Taiwan has been excluded. The eight offices, which reaffirmed their support for Taiwan, are the British Office Taipei, the Australian Office Taipei, the
CAUSE AND EFFECT: China’s policies prompted the US to increase its presence in the Indo-Pacific, and Beijing should consider if this outcome is in its best interests, Lai said China has been escalating its military and political pressure on Taiwan for many years, but should reflect on this strategy and think about what is really in its best interest, President William Lai (賴清德) said. Lai made the remark in a YouTube interview with Mindi World News that was broadcast on Saturday, ahead of the first anniversary of his presidential inauguration tomorrow. The US has clearly stated that China is its biggest challenge and threat, with US President Donald Trump and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth repeatedly saying that the US should increase its forces in the Indo-Pacific region
RSS