No ballot boxes or olive baskets

Writer: Rami Mahdawi

There is a Palestinian paradox worth contemplating: waiting for the ballot box, like waiting for sacks of olives, becomes a kind of betting on a season that its owners have no guarantees of reaching. Here, we are not talking about a passing similarity between politics and agriculture, but rather about a reality in which the Palestinian’s ability to control his destiny declines, whether when he goes to his land to reap its fruits, or when he waits to go to a box to choose someone to represent him. In both cases, the truth seems clear, but the path to it is surrounded by facts that are created outside of his will.

The postponement of the elections, as was expected in light of the existing political and security reality, added a new layer to the impasse of Palestinian life. The elections, which are supposed to be a gateway to renewing legitimacy and restoring people’s confidence in their institutions, find themselves hostage to a reality that does not allow them to be held normally, and does not allow Palestinians to exercise their democratic right in isolation from the restrictions imposed on their lives. But the tragedy does not lie in the postponement alone, but rather in the exception turning into the rule, and the absence of a democratic horizon becoming a familiar part of public life, and the assault on land and sources of livelihood becoming a recurring scene until getting used to it almost becomes another form of defeat.

On the other hand, the olive season comes loaded with more than its agricultural and economic value. The tree that has withstood the succession of generations does not face drought alone today, but rather faces a system of attacks that include uprooting, burning, and poisoning trees, stealing fruits, and attacking farmers and preventing them from reaching their lands. What witnessed in the areas south of Hebron, from Masafer Yatta to Khallet al-Hummus, Wadi Ma'in, Khirbet al-Rakiz, Farsh al-Hawa, and all the Palestinian villages, is not just an infringement on a crop, but an assault on the relationship between man and his land, and an attempt to make survival itself a costly and dangerous act.

Thus, between postponed elections and stolen olives, a deeper picture of the Palestinian scene is revealed. In Gaza, the destruction is no longer limited to the homes that were razed to the ground, but rather extends to the conditions of life itself. To work, production, education, health, and to society’s ability to imagine tomorrow. In the West Bank, settlements, attacks, and restrictions on movement and land are advancing, while the spaces available to Palestinians to build a stable life are declining. In both cases, not only the present is targeted, but also the ability to create the future is exhausted - while I was writing this article, settlers attacked the village of Sarda, the Al-Rayhan neighborhood, and Birzeit, and were shooting bullets -.

But what is most dangerous of all is that the Palestinian turns into a person who lives in a time of waiting: waiting for the elections in order to regain his vote, waiting for the olive season so that he can earn a living, waiting for reconstruction so that he can return to his home, and waiting for an economic breakthrough in order to provide for his family’s needs. When waiting becomes the regulating rhythm of life, politics as an act of change erodes, and resilience, important as it is, becomes a daily attempt to postpone the next loss.

Does this mean that elections have lost their necessity, or that holding on to the ground is no longer enough? on the contrary. Postponing the elections does not eliminate the need for democracy, but rather makes it more urgent, and the theft of olives does not reduce the value of the land, but rather reveals the necessity of protecting it with tools that go beyond seasonal reaction. However, insisting on rights should not mean limiting ourselves to repeatedly demanding them, as if the clarity of the right exempts us from devising means capable of seizing and protecting it.

Here the need for an out-of-the-ordinary Palestinian strategy emerges, one that does not replace politics with economics, nor civil resistance with development, but rather combines them in one project. A strategy that begins with the recognition that crisis management is no longer sufficient, and that institutions are required to move from responding to losses to anticipating them. This can be embodied in a national system to protect agricultural lands and seasons, in which municipalities, cooperatives, ministries and human rights institutions are integrated, and use digital maps, databases and early warning to identify threatened lands, document attacks and follow them up legally, and provide agricultural support and compensation to affected farmers.

It is also possible to build marketing and economic solidarity networks that ensure the purchase of crops from farmers, the development of olive-related industries, and the expansion of local and foreign markets, so that the theft of fruits does not become the end of the season economically. When responsibility for protecting production is distributed among society and institutions, the farmer is no longer alone in facing danger, and his loss no longer remains a limited family affair.

Politically, the postponement of the elections must be dealt with as a national crisis that calls for a clear path to renew legitimacy, not as an excuse to create a vacuum. This requires a serious dialogue about the conditions and guarantees of elections, and developing forms of participation and accountability until the necessary conditions are created for them to take place, while preserving the democratic right as an inherent right and not a grant postponed for an indefinite period.

What is happening in Gaza and the West Bank are not two separate crises, but rather two aspects of the same target: weakening the Palestinian’s ability to own the conditions of his life and decide his future. Therefore, the response cannot be only agricultural, nor only electoral, nor only relief. It needs a national vision that reconnects the land with people, the economy with politics, and steadfastness with the ability to act.

No ballot boxes, no sacks of olives; It is not about the absence of two seasons, but about a homeland whose people are forced to wait for what is supposed to be a natural right: to choose, to plant, to reap, and to live in dignity. Perhaps the real dilemma is that we have mastered describing what is being taken from us, but we have not yet succeeded in building a national system capable of reducing what is being taken and restoring what can be restored.

The olives that do not reach their baskets, and the voice that does not reach their trunk, converge on one question: How does the Palestinian regain his right to be the decision-maker in his land and his life?