For the Israeli army and Jewish settlers, the symbol of the olive is simply, death. When many Palestinians innocently believed that the Oslo peace accord is bringing them a just peace, they rushed to the streets waving olive branches, celebrating the long awaited justice and peace. Seven years later, Palestinians realised that Oslo was nothing but a wicked experience that brought little peace, and much poverty and humiliation. And as they began to pass their martyrs one by one to crowded grave yards, they attached olive branches to the caskets and around the newly watered graves, a symbol of continuation and resistance. Olive harvests have always been a festive occasion for most Palestinians, even for the refugees who own no land and no olive trees.
Complete strangers help each other harvest the land.
Young children help to clean the olives from small branches that fall as men and women stand on high ladders, collecting the olives with enthusiasm and a great sense of joy. Beit Fourik however, like other Palestinian villages in the West Bank has long lost that festive spirit that used to come with the olive harvest. The once small Israeli Jewish settlement of Eitamar near Nablus has stripped the harvest joy, as armed gangs of settlers are dedicated to stealing Beit Fourik's land, to burn and destroy it's olive trees and to endlessly expand at the expense of helpless villagers. The settlers may have feared that the sound of their bullets would gather nearby farmers, so they surrounded the man and savagely crushed his skull with rocks. His own son, Udi then failed to recognize his father's face.