This was one of the last bridges between Jews and Arabs. Israel demolished it too

A microscopic image of the seed of an akoub, a wild artichoke, which has become part of the Palestinian heritage and identity

Ronit Vered writes in Haaretz on 9 August 2025:

On the morning of Thursday, July 31, Israeli military forces, accompanied by bulldozers, arrived at the site of one of the two propagation units of the Palestinian National Seed Bank in the West Bank city of Hebron. The bank, established in 2010, is dedicated to collecting, multiplying and preserving local plant seeds, with an emphasis on heirloom varieties of crops and plants of economic importance.

Seeds stored in the bank’s units, in which research is also conducted, are grown seasonally, in cycles, with an aim of keeping them viable for future generations. Each year, the Palestinian bank provides free seeds to hundreds of agricultural workers, in an effort to encourage the preservation of the genetic diversity of some 80 traditional varieties.

The main propagation unit, south of Hebron, included four dunams (about an acre) of cultivated land – this time of year, the plots were overflowing with tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, gourds and other summer crops – as well as a 50-square-meter metal structure that included a control room and space for storing equipment.

But at 9 A.M. on that recent Thursday, according to Palestinian reports, Israeli Defense Forces soldiers arrived at the site, forcibly removed a Palestinian agricultural engineer from the premises and then used bulldozers to demolish the structure along with its contents: irrigation and monitoring systems, tools for cleaning and drying seeds and important documents relating to the agricultural research conducted there.

Staff at the site said they had not been warned of the demolition in advance, nor did the military force tasked with the operation present a formal order or explanation for it, other then a phrase that has become common in such cases: “unlicensed construction in Area C.” This is a rather paradoxical claim in a reality where in any case, barely any Palestinian construction takes place in Area C – which is under Israel’s full security and civil control – for the simple reason that residents rarely receive building permits there to begin with.

For its part, the Civil Administration – what a misleading name for the Israeli military body that governs the territories! – claims that demolition orders had in fact been posted at the site beforehand, and that the bank’s owners had been given the opportunity to appeal. (Curiously enough, in response to Haaretz’s queries, the Civil Administration and the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit did not mention that in 2021, then-Defense Minister Benny Gantz declared six organizations, including the Union of Agricultural Work Committees that operates the seed bank, as “terror organizations,” without providing evidence.)

The demolition of the seed bank buildings.
Whatever the explanation for the army’s operation at the southern Hebron facility, destruction of records and equipment, and of water and electricity infrastructure, has effectively shut down the irrigation system in the propagation plots. This situation puts the seasonal harvest at risk and threatens the annual seed supply to more than 500 farmers who, after two consecutive years of drought and declining yields due to the ongoing climate crisis, depend more than ever on the bank.

Moreover, the damage to the unit – another one, in the northern part of Hebron, is still functioning – is a harsh blow to Palestinian food sovereignty (i.e., a community’s ability to control the foods it grows, produces and consumes) and to the Palestinian Authority’s ability to provide food security for its people.

In an era when government ministers, coalition lawmakers and Jewish Israeli citizens are publicly denying Palestinians’ humanity and their right to live on their land, amid escalating violent harassment by settlers in the West Bank – it’s hard to fault those who claim that the destruction of this agricultural facility is part of a deliberate policy of the State of Israel.

This incident pales in comparison, of course, to the series of tragic events that have become our current reality. The destruction of a structure and the loss of crops cannot be compared to the suffering of human beings, Jews and Palestinians – who are being starved, tortured and killed in the endless war in Gaza. But what happened that day struck my already-broken heart in particular because I’m very familiar with the Sisyphean and vital work of those who preserve heirloom seeds in Israel, in the area under the PA’s authority and around the world.

The genetic makeup of these seeds – true to their name – is not only of nutritional value but is also of important cultural value. Until the latter half of the 20th century, for example, hundreds of traditional wheat varieties were still common in the Middle East, including varieties that had adapted over thousands of years to being cultivated in small plots. Around each of these varieties, cuisine, social customs and patterns of consumption developed, becoming part of the way of life and of the identity of the communities relying on them. Today, we consume mainly wheat from a single genetic source; we’ve lost a host of flavors and aromas, along with a rich cultural heritage. And what’s true for wheat is also true for other grains, vegetables, fruits and legumes.

Seeds are capsules of wisdom and beauty created by nature, shared by diverse peoples throughout human history. In the modern era, small banks of knowledge have also become economic tools in the hands of large corporations that produce hybrid seeds that farmers must buy anew each year, unlike the freely pollinated heirloom seeds that reproduce naturally. Seed keepers strive to preserve the biological and cultural diversity that once existed in the world, and to adapt it to our time.

In a just world, in the kind of society I would like to live in, the Palestinian National Seed Bank and its Israeli counterpart would work together to preserve and share the biodiversity of local plants. (And since the Middle East is the cradle of the world’s most important cultivated crops, the region’s heirloom varieties are globally significant in terms of research.) But the world is far from just, and some of these traditional crops have become symbols – if not weapons – of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I’m tired of the absurd attempts by both sides to claim exclusive ownership over foods and raw ingredients that, for thousands of years, were part of the lives of different peoples sharing the same cultural and geographic space, long before modern borders and national identities emerged. I am just as moved by someone searching for heirloom wheat varieties today in order to bake showbread for the Third Temple as by someone who believes Ashkenazim shouldn’t cook freekeh (roasted green wheat), claiming that there’s no such thing as Israeli cuisine except for dishes appropriated from the Palestinian kitchen. This doesn’t contradict the fact that freekeh and faqqous (a type of local cucumber) are integral parts of Palestinian heritage and identity, and that the State of Israel – the governing power in territories defined under international law as occupied – has no justification for demolishing a facility where agricultural and scientific research related to such cultural assets is being carried out.

In any event, vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes deriving from local heirloom seeds have also become an integral part of the new Israeli culinary revolution. The very people who, in recent centuries, have preserved many of these varieties – regardless of their origin or authenticity, or whether King David drank wine made from a certain kind of grapes – are, due historical circumstance, Palestinian farmers in Israel and the PA. The West Bank farmers who grow the fruits, vegetables and legumes that have, over the past two decades, made their way to top Tel Aviv restaurants, often via direct shipments from wholesale market traders in East Jerusalem, are the very same farmers who stand to be harmed by the destruction of the Palestinian National Seed Bank’s seed multiplication unit.

In the press release issued after the recent incident by the Palestinian National Seed Bank, its directors called on foreign institutions involved in the fields of agriculture, sustainability and food production to condemn the demolition and the harm done to Palestinian food sovereignty. The abyss between Israelis and Palestinians has never been deeper, but it would also be appropriate for the Israelis working in these realms to show solidarity with their Palestinian colleagues.

In Israel’s culinary world, every restaurant that closes due to the current situation is mourned, but little thought is given to people living an hour away from Tel Aviv who grow and produce the food served there. If we lose hope for a shared existence among the diverse human communities living on this land, then what meaning is left in the search for biodiversity and harmony in nature?

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