After three years of genocide, Gaza’s olive harvest is going extinct
Tareq S. Hajjaj reports in Mondoweiss on 6 October 2026:
Before 2023, Mahmoud Dweima, 75, would look forward to September and October more than any other time of year. When the olive harvest arrived, he would gather his sprawling family, all 14 sons and daughters, and their children, and prepare for a day of agricultural work that resembled a family picnic.
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Like thousands of Palestinian families who own olive trees, the harvest was not simply about collecting a crop. It was a season unto itself, a time when families gathered outdoors from dawn to dusk, eating together, working, and returning home with buckets and sacks full of olives.
Today, when October rolls around, Dweima’s family has no olive trees to harvest.
For the third consecutive year, that season has all but disappeared from Gaza. Israel’s war has devastated Gaza’s olive sector, destroying groves, uprooting trees, damaging olive presses, and cutting farmers off from large areas of agricultural land. Much of Gaza’s most productive olive-growing land lies in the eastern parts of the enclave, including areas now behind what has become known as the ‘yellow line’, which demarcates over 64% of Gaza that is now under Israeli military control, and where Palestinian landowners are prohibited from reaching their property.
For farmers like Dweima, the destruction has meant far more than the loss of a crop. A vital source of income cultivated over decades and making up an entire seasonal way of life has been erased, severing families from land passed down and cared for across generations and interrupting one of the most deeply-rooted social rituals in Palestinian life.