West Bank: palm trees of discord
The peace plan unveiled by President Trump on January 28, 2020 proposes the annexation of most of the Jordan Valley by Israel. Reactions have focused mainly on the denial of international law at the heart of this document (it should be remembered that Israel's military occupation of the West Bank has been condemned by several United Nations resolutions).
Julie Trottier, University of Montpellier
But it is also important to consider the economic context: if Trump's plan is now feasible, it is largely due to the agricultural transformation that the Jordan Valley has undergone in recent years.
Israel occupied the West Bank during the 1967 war. On July 30, 1980, the Knesset passed a basic law annexing Jerusalem without granting Israeli citizenship to its residents. The map published as part of Donald Trump's peace plan proposes Israel's annexation of the part of the West Bank with the lowest Palestinian population. This provision allows for the annexation of land without incorporating a non-Jewish population into the State of Israel.
The advent of Medjoul date palm cultivation plays a key role in this process, as this agricultural transformation has been emptying the Jordan Valley of its Palestinian inhabitants for several years. A historical overview is necessary to explain the reasons for this.
The expansion of Medjool palm trees
The prominent families of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nablus had purchased land in the Jordan Valley beginning in the late19th century. Sparsely populated before the 1948 war, the valley experienced a sudden population increase with the arrival of Palestinian refugees following Israel's War of Independence. They provided abundant labor for landowners whose lands were irrigated by the Ein Sultan, Al Auja, and Fassayil springs.
After 1949, the valley found itself in a situation where many absentee landowners employed agricultural laborers who lived on their land. Sharecropping quickly became the main form of land tenure. In other words, in most cases, farmers did not own the land they cultivated and lived on. They shared the income from the harvests fifty-fifty with the landowner, a system called "nos-nos" by the Palestinians.
The 1967 occupation triggered the departure of many refugees to Jordan, but sharecropping persisted as the main form of land tenure in the Jordan Valley, a phenomenon distinct from the rest of the West Bank. Israeli settlers who settled in the valley introduced the Medjool date palm. This variety of date grows only in extremely dry and hot climates. The Jordan Valley is ideal for it. Global demand for this fleshy date is so high that its price remains inelastic in the face of increased production. Palestinian farmers followed in the settlers' footsteps from the late 1990s onwards. Since then, the boom in date palm cultivation has continued. Our research has shown that in 1999, 524 hectares were covered with date palms cultivated by the settlements and 25 hectares by Palestinians. By 2016, these areas had increased to 2,560 hectares and 1,584 hectares, respectively.
The water issue
Agronomists and economists generally approve of this agricultural transformation. On the Palestinian side, half of the area cultivated with date palms in 2016 had previously been desert, while the other half had been cultivated mainly for the local market. These crops, including vegetables, cereals, and bananas, generated little foreign currency. Medjool dates, on the other hand, are exported with very high added value. Their contribution to GDP is incomparable with that of previous crops. Furthermore, a date palm requires little water for evapotranspiration, about one-third of what a banana tree requires. Date palms tolerate relatively salty irrigation water. In an arid environment, they seem to be the ideal crop rotation.
The Israeli government developed infrastructure to transport wastewater from the Jerusalem area, Ma'ale Adumim, and Bethlehem to a series of reservoirs and treatment plants scattered along the Jordan Valley. The settlements irrigate their date palms entirely with this wastewater. Palestinian farmers, on the other hand, with the exception of a few hectares in Jericho, irrigate their date palms by drawing on groundwater. Demographic changes in the region mean that the supply of wastewater will increase in the future. On the other hand, groundwater is becoming increasingly salty. Uncertainty about the future of their water supply is the greatest risk facing Palestinian investors.
The interests of Palestinian agricultural enterprises
On the Palestinian side, the expansion of date palm cultivation is mainly driven by agribusinesses whose executives live in Rawabi, Ramallah, or Jerusalem, far from the Jordan Valley. This elite has often studied at the best American universities and speaks the language of the globalized elite. These executives are calling on European donors to fund wastewater reuse projects in the Jordan Valley similar to those developed by Israel for the settlers.
At the same time, they understand that the least expensive and most reliable solution from a technical standpoint would be to connect to the Israeli sewage system. Is it any wonder that Palestinian businessmen were invited by the United States to the conference held in Bahrain from June 25 to 27, 2019? The US did not discuss its plan with the Palestinian Authority, but sought to ally itself with the Palestinian economic elite. Its economic project specifies that it aims to "increase the capacity of Palestinian farmers to shift their efforts to higher-value crop rotations and give them the opportunity to use modern agricultural techniques." The projects included in this plan, such as cold storage warehouses, wastewater networks, and "critical connections," are clearly geared toward supporting Palestinian date palm agribusinesses.
The negative effects of agricultural transformation
Our research has demonstrated several harmful effects of the introduction of date palms. Although they are seen as a way of reducing water consumption in agriculture, they have had the opposite effect. On the one hand, they require more water than the minimum required for their evapotranspiration. They must be sprayed against mold in February, for example. On the other hand, palm trees planted on previously unirrigated land have generated new demand for water. Finally, drip irrigation in an area with very little rainfall leads to soil salinization, which is never washed away. Ultimately, this results in the land becoming infertile. This does not bother agribusinesses, which do not buy their land but prefer to lease it for a period of 40 years.
Much more crucial, however, is the impact of date palm planters on sharecroppers. Agribusinesses that introduce date palms dismiss sharecroppers. They hire seasonal workers for two months a year during harvest time. Agribusinesses fence off their plots, preventing access to weeds such as khubbezeh, a highly nutritious variety of mallow that ensures food security for the poor. No one can live on the fenced-off land anymore. Previously, sharecroppers lived on the land they cultivated. They were self-sufficient in terms of food. The switch to seasonal workers therefore means that sharecroppers lose their food security, job security, and housing security. Our research has shown that between 1999 and 2016, at least 7,567 members of sharecropper families were displaced by date palms, a significant population given the 51,410 inhabitants of the two governorates where date palms are cultivated. The accelerated expansion of date palms since 2016 has increased this phenomenon.
Driven from their homes and without economic activity for ten months of the year, sharecroppers and their families are displaced from the valley by an economic process of agricultural transformation led by Palestinian agribusinesses, partly supported by European donors. Emptied of its Palestinian inhabitants, the Jordan Valley becomes an area ripe for annexation by Israel, which can thus integrate the land without integrating a non-Jewish population.
Julie Trottier, Director of Research CNRS, specialist in Palestinian territories, ART-Dev, UMR 5281, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.