In Gaza, farmers rescue roots buried under rubble to grow fruit again. Gazan fig and date farmers are replanting crops from roots that survived years of Israeli bombing.

Ghada Abdulfattah

Figs grow again in Sheikh Ijlin, on the southwest edge of Gaza City, after farms there were destroyed by Israeli attacks since 2023.

 

By Ghada Abdulfattah, Special contributor

Gaza City, Gaza Strip | Oct. 02, 2026, 2:36 p.m. ET | 5 min read

When Jumaa Abed Saad returned to his farm in Sheikh Ijlin in January 2025 after more than a year of displacement, the place that greeted him was nearly unrecognizable. His house looked like a crumbled concrete cookie, with its blown-apart walls, roof, and floors scattered across the ground. Nearby, the neat rows of grapevines and fig trees his family had tended for three generations had vanished under piles of rubble. The grass towered above his head.

“Everything [was] gone,” he says of the farm in Sheikh Ijlin, a neighborhood on the southwest edge of Gaza City renowned for its grapes and figs.

Or so it appeared. But as Mr. Saad and his sons cleared the debris and dug into the sandy earth, they found something extraordinary: roots. For three years, as Israeli bombs made ruins of the ground, some of the trees and vines had clung to life in the spongy layer of clay below.

“Grapevines and fig trees don’t always give up as easily as they look like they have,” Mr. Saad says.

The taste of home

It is this quirk of soil, more than anything else, that has made this small corner of Gaza famous for grapes and figs for generations. Plant a vine or tree, and its roots reach down through the sand until they find the clay beneath. Through the driest months of summer, when nothing else in the ground has water left to give, the clay remains moist enough up to keep the tree alive... READ MORE https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2026/1002/gaza-rebuilding-ceasefire-farming-figs-grapes-sheikh-ijlin 

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies here, there- and everywhere] 

"Homes can be demolished. Walls can be reduced to rubble. Entire families can be scattered across the world. But roots run deep... And sometimes, from beneath the wreckage, life emerges to remind us that memory, belonging, and hope refuse to die." Mike Hanini Odetalla

Mike Hanini Odetalla

ptonedsroS3 aguh96c1ia5t010t:619lh249ly 33uaM01273uMP 78 g6i  ·

All That Remains...Reflections on a rather sad day

 

5/31/26

 

After the death of my father-in-law (ay), his humble two-room home in the Kadoura Refugee Camp was torn down.

 

His family, like so many Palestinians, had been violently expelled from their homes and lands by Zionist forces in 1948 and forced into a life of exile and displacement.

 

Seven years later, in 2022, I took my grandson—his great-grandson—back to show him where his grandmother had grown up and to visit a place that I myself had always loved.

 

The house was gone.

 

The tiny garden that my father-in-law had tended with such tender loving care was buried beneath rubble. Yet among the destruction, something remarkable remained.

 

A magnificent grapevine once covered his patio, providing shade in the summer and producing the most exquisite grapes. As I stood there looking at the ruins, I noticed a small cluster of grapes protruding defiantly from the debris.

 

I took this photograph.

 

To some, it is merely a bunch of grapes growing from a collapsed structure.

 

To me, it is a symbol of Palestine itself.

 

Homes can be demolished. Walls can be reduced to rubble. Entire families can be scattered across the world. But roots run deep.

 

And sometimes, from beneath the wreckage, life emerges to remind us that memory, belonging, and hope refuse to die.

 

All that remains... and yet, somehow, it is enough to tell the whole story.

That image of grapes emerging from rubble carries a quiet symbolism that is difficult to ignore:

 

the house was destroyed, but the vine still remembered where it belonged. 

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10166091777606977&set=a.10150390714236977

 photo & essay copyright Mike Hanini Odetalla 2026

"It was like being given the choice between suicide or being murdered" Palestinians forced to demolish own homes to make way for Israeli theme park. Residents of al-Bustan district told to make way for Kings Garden, with knocking down own houses cheaper option

‘This is something bitter,’ said Jalal al-Tawil as his family’s home was demolished. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

Julian Borger, Quique Kierszenbaum and Sufian Taha in Jerusalem

Sat 16 May 2026 03.00 EDT

 

At the bottom of a steep and densely populated valley just below Jerusalem’s old city walls, the earth has been shaken in recent weeks by jackhammers and bulldozers.

These have been the sounds of Jerusalem for decades as the Israeli state has relentlessly sought to stamp a uniformly Jewish identity on to the occupied east of the city, while erasing its Palestinian character.

Typically it is workers for the state and municipality at the wheel of the bulldozers, but in the al-Bustan neighbourhood, in the shadow of the 11th-century al-Aqsa mosque, the clamour is from a more recent development.

It is the sound of Palestinians demolishing their own family homes.

Al-Bustan: red dots mark homes already demolished and green those with existing demolition orders.

“This is something really hard. This is something bitter,” Jalal al-Tawil said as he watched a tractor he had hired, with a front loader at the front and jackhammer at the back, rip apart the last remnants of the house his father had built, which in turn had been on the site of his grandparents’ home.

By Wednesday morning, most of the walls had been brought down to their foundations and the rubble pushed into a single pile. Al-Tawil left the thick knotty root of a 35-year-old grapevine until last.

“It used to provide grapes for all of al-Bustan,” he said. The spring vine leaves had already sprouted along the trellis above him, but he was resigned to the fact they would never again bear fruit.... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/16/palestinians-demolish-family-homes-jerusalem-kings-garden-theme-park

  [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]  

"Surif is one of the beautiful Palestinian mountain towns located 25 km northwest of the city of Hebron. It also rises about 600 meters above sea level. It is known for its beautiful landscapes, and famous for the cultivation of olives, figs, almonds, grapes, pears, appricots and other fruits." Ibtisam Suleiman

Travel Palestine

Surif is one of the beautiful Palestinian mountain towns located 25 km northwest of the city of Hebron. It also rises about 600 meters above sea level. It is known for its beautiful landscapes, and famous for the cultivation of olives, figs, almonds, grapes, pears, appricots and other fruits.

Ibtisam Suleiman

#landscape #mountains #nature #fruits #cultivation #hebron #palestine

Our Dinner Today: A True Story of Historic Palestine, Gardening, Good Food, & Family by Mike Hanini Odetalla

 Traditional Palestinian Stuffed Grape Leaves

Mike Hanini Odetalla  ·

Our Dinner Today

By Mike Hanini Odetalla

2005-2023 All Rights Reserved 

 

Preface: I post this in light of the recent #Israeli claims (cultural theft) on yet another #Palestinian dish and as a tribute to my late father in-law (ay)...And with Gaza in my heart

Today, my wife made a large pot of stuffed grape leaves for the family to eat for dinner. She had spent the better part of the day, carefully rolling the grape leaves into finger sized morsels. God bless her hands and talents, for she is one fantastic cook, ALMOST as good as my mother, and that is saying quite a bit!

 

Why am I writing about grape leaves at this time? Well let me explain and give some background to the grape leaves that we had for dinner today….

 

Back in 1969, 2 years after Israel invaded and conquered the West Bank, Palestinians were finally permitted to visit parts of #Palestine that became Israel after 1948. One of those places was my father in-laws home village of #Lifta. In 1948, the Zionists attacked and conquered Lifta, forcing the residents to flee, and the ones that stayed behind, were taken by truck and dumped into east Jerusalem, which was still in Arab hands! The Palestinian residents of Lifta left most of their possessions, homes, trees, and orchards behind as they instantly became homeless refugees! The Palestinian homes that remained had holes blown into their roofs and floors by the Zionists to insure that the villagers would not come back because their homes were now made “uninhabitable”!

 

In the summer of 1969, my father in-law ventured back to the village of his birth. It had been 21 long years since he had last set foot in his ancestral village. After walking around a bit, he came upon a large grapevine. With no one to take care of this vine, it had grown “wild” all over the courtyard of an abandoned house in the village. After getting a closer look, he noticed large bunches of grapes were dangling from the vine. He ate a few of the golden grapes, their taste awakening his senses and bringing forth an avalanche of memories, and then decided to take a couple with him to his house in the Ramallah area refugee camp!

 

Once back home in his humble abode, he gave his daughters a “taste of home” by allowing them to each try the grapes of Lifta. As he and his family ate the grapes, they threw out the seeds in the flower beds that he had built in front of his house. A few weeks later, lo and behold, a grapevine was sprouting from the ground. One of the seeds had taken and was now growing into a grapevine, transplanted as it were, away from its home and surroundings, much like people of the village of the village of Lifta.

 

And so the grapevine grew and grew, with my father in-law tending to it as if it were a small child, watering and pruning it, it became his obsession, a passion. As it grew, he erected metal bars and wires overhead, covering entire front area of the house and the tiny little “courtyard” of his hovel in the dust choked refugee camp of Al-Khadura. The grapevine, much like a grateful “child”, rewarded the old man’s love and devotion, producing year after year, an abundance of grapes, “golden drops of honey” as he liked to refer to them. In fact, the grapevine, which eventually grew to cover the entire area surrounding the house, spilling over to the neighbors home, produced such an abundance of grapes, which he ended up distributing to his many neighbors in the overcrowded camp.

 

Also, apart from the tasty grapes, the grapevine’s tender young leaves proved to be ideal for stuffing and rolling into some of the best tasting grape leaves around because they had a naturally “tangy” flavor to them. Eventually, there were more tender grape leaves than his family could consume in a growing season, so they started to pack them away for use in the winter months, when fresh leaves were no longer available.

 

As in many rural parts of Palestine, up to the 1970’s, there was no electricity, and therefore no refrigerators or freezers to freeze vegetables and other staples for later use. Many Palestinians would “can” many vegetables, including grape leaves. My mother in-law though, thought that “pickling” the grape leaves took away from their flavor, she preferred to pick them fresh, roll them tight, and insert them through the small opening of plastic bottles, filling up the bottle as much as possible, them placing the cap on tightly and put them away, a crude and early form of vacuum packing. This proved to be an ideal way to store the grape leaves, locking in the flavor, and freshness.

 

All of this brings me back to the tasty stuffed grape leave dinner that my talented wife made for us today.

 

Last year, while we were in Palestine for the summer, my 88 years old father in-law would climb on a ladder each morning, reaching high to the new growths, and pick a couple of handfuls of grape leaves and hand them to my mother in-law. Seeing him teetering up on a ladder like that caused his daughters much worry, but he insisted on doing this himself, and would not allow anyone else to do this, claiming that they didn’t know the “prime leaves from grass”. One morning I asked him why he was doing this, and he replied that he wanted his grandchildren (my kids) to have the best grape leaves to eat when they went back to America.

 

Just before we left Ramallah for the last time, after many teary farewells, the most heart wrenching moment was when he hugged my youngest son Omar, holding him tight, and said, “I hope that when you come to visit me again next year, I will be here for you”, my sister in-law handed me 4-1 liter plastic soda bottles filled with the grape leaves that my father in-law had been picking each morning.

So you see, the grape leaves that we are eating today, have a history and a story behind them, much like the refugees of Palestine. They didn’t just appear from thin air nor were they “manufactured”…From a seed!

 

When we go back to Palestine in the summer of 2005, my father in-law will no longer be able to pick fresh grape leaves for us to take back to America. About a month ago, doctors amputated his leg, at first below the knee, then, the rest of it. The main reason for the amputation was the lack of access to medical treatment due to Israel’s oppressive and inhumane road blocks and checkpoints…

 

So as we sat down to eat our dinner today, I noticed that my wife’s eyes were welling up with tears as she asked God to “bless the hands that picked these”…

 

Mike Odetalla 2-2005 All Rights Reserved!

 

Below are pictures of my late father in-law's grape vines. He passed away in 2015 still longing to RETURN to the home and village that he was forced to leave by the #Zionists! The home in Ramallah's Kadoora Refugee Camp has since been torn down and with it, the grapevines...

 

The Art of Memory & Hope = Palestine #olives # grapes #pomegranates

 

Lest we forget the Palestinian refugee that planted them with absolute tender, loving care...

Mike Hanini Odetella photo of "his lone bunch of grapes defiantly announcing their existence through the rubble."

"My late father in law's pride and joy (ay), much like my late mother (ay) was his exquisite garden that occupied every nook and cranny around his humble abode. He took great care and joy in planting and tending to his garden, and so when I paid a visit to what was once his home, and through the sad ruins, I saw beautifully multicolored roses and this lone bunch of grapes defiantly announcing their existence through the rubble. Lest we forget the Palestinian refugee that planted them with absolute tender, loving care...Allah yirhamhak ya 3amee Abu Ahmed!" Mike Hanini Odetella     

Preserved Online For All To See ... a poem by Anne Selden Annab

 in Growing Gardens for Palestine

“My Christian grandmother and my Muslim grandmother in Palestine” - Shared by a Palestinian man on Facebook

       
       The Holy Land

You have bullets, bully brigades,

biblical words & word smiths

all fundraising for more...

More injustice. More suffering.

More homes and gardens usurped,

more children tormented and

families destroyed in what was

(what always will be)

historic Palestine.

 

We have nothing much more

than personal stories,

beloved memories,

and old photographs

preserved online for all to see.

 

We are people, human beings.

Our ancestry reaches back

totally entwined with every

rock and stone, every tree,

every water well, every little flower,

no matter where we are now.

 

Our recipes are of the land

and trade routes, plus trial

and error.  We helped perfect bread

baked in clay ovens, in our own way.

 

Our Zaatar is a scrumptious blend

of herbs  & our olive oil is heavenly gold.

 

We keep keys.

 

Our embroideries are

by hand, with symbols

imagined and taught

mother to daughter for eons,

for longer than thread can last.

 

Our hope is that one day

justice and peace will prevail

for all good people willing to

actively empower fair and just laws

with full and equal rights, respect, 

dignity... and security for all.

 

                                  poem copyright ©2015 Anne Selden Annab