Bitter harvest: Israeli bombs sowed grief for Gaza farmers

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, the sector sustained $550 million in direct and indirect damage during the 52-day war, including the destruction of infrastructure such as irrigation wells and greenhouses and the extensive loss of livestock. That is likely to have a long-term impact on the economic security of an already hard-pressed population.

Farms and towns nearest Israel suffered some of the worst damage.

Al-Khumaini Msallam Qudiah’s farm borders the buffer zone in Khuza’a in southern Gaza. His two-story farmhouse used to stand 500 meters from an Israeli military watchtower, from which soldiers maintain 24-hour surveillance of a dry no man’s land. All that remains of his home is a pile of rubble, but Qudiah is determined to rebuild — for the third time. He plans to return in the spring with his wife and six children to live in the only room still standing.

“I can rebuild as many times as I have to, an even more beautiful house,” he said. “The problem is, I have no money left. I have to start from zero.”

Khuza’a came under heavy bombardment in July during heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups. Human rights organizations have accused Israel of committing war crimes during the 10-day siege of the town, including indiscriminate shelling that killed civilians.

“When I came back, I found all my land, 8 dunums (8,000 square meters), bulldozed to one side,” said Qudiah. “I lost my goats, my peach and orange trees, my vegetable garden.”

With broken tiles from his home, clay and other basic materials, he has built a small shelter near his destroyed home. It contains a bed, a coffee pot and his tools, from which he started rebuilding his farm and rehabilitating some of his farmland. Because of damage to the irrigation network, he planted crops such as wheat that don’t need much water.

Most of the aid money that has trickled through to Gaza since the summer (which totals only 2 percent of the $5.4 billion pledged at a Cairo conference two months ago) has gone toward covering basic needs, such as food and clothing for the displaced.

“After the war, we encouraged people to go back to their lands,” said Mohammed al-Bakri of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, one of the oldest NGOs in the Gaza Strip. “We need them to produce the food baskets.”

The group has been able to rehabilitate about 10 percent of the damaged land, he said, working mostly in the north of Gaza. But problems include potential contamination of land by war materiel, unexploded ordnance and restrictions on the import of iron.

The remains of Samir al-Daberi’s 50 olive trees are piled up by the ruins of his home, from which he managed to salvage the two rooms where he now lives with his extended family.

The $40,000 in damage he suffered has left Daberi, who lost a leg during the 2012 war, no longer able to hire the three or four workers on whom he relied.

“But it’s not just the war. Farming is bad here in Gaza,” he said. “We barely break even, even when we plant. Before the blockade, things were better. We could sell at better prices, and importing fertilizers is very expensive.”