The Slaughtered Olives in Al-Mughayir.. A Testimony to the Resilience of the Land and Its People

In the northeast of Ramallah, the village of Al-Mughayir sits atop hills of patience, blood, and olives. A small village in size, yet monumental in its wounds, it has been subjected to ongoing aggression and siege by heavily armed settlers for years. They have not only stolen the land but have extended their hands to what lies deeper than geographical boundaries: to the roots of the olive trees, the memory and spirit of the land.

Approximately ten thousand olive trees have been uprooted and stolen from the soil of Al-Mughayir. Ten thousand living beings that guarded the land and testified to its owners throughout the ages. The olive tree is not just a tree; it is the daughter of the land, the first daughter of Canaan, which has remained for thousands of years a witness to the seasons of harvest and joy, to the tears that fell upon its roots, and to the blood that bled near it. Today, these trees have faced a silent massacre, no less horrific than the massacres of humans in the Gaza Strip. Just as humans are exterminated there by bombs, trees are exterminated here by axes and bulldozers. It is a representation of one project, a colonial project that does not differentiate between human and stone, between man and tree, whose goal is to liquidate the Palestinian cause and uproot the memory as it attempts to uproot the roots.

However, the people of Al-Mughayir, like all the people of Palestine, stood against this aggression. They defended their homes, land, and olives with their bare bodies and steadfast will. The occupation could not subdue them, just as it has not been able to subdue our people for more than seven decades. The failed attempt in Al-Mughayir is part of a series of failed attempts to subjugate the Palestinian, who only becomes more stubborn when besieged, and who, for every uprooted tree, returns to plant a new sapling in its place.

As soon as the trees were uprooted, the people of Al-Mughayir came out with new olives, planting them in the very soil, in a symbolic and practical act of resistance, affirming that the Palestinian does not leave a void behind, and that their roots are too deep to be uprooted. Every sapling planted today in Al-Mughayir is a message to the world: we are here, and we will remain here.

What happened in Al-Mughayir should be a wake-up call for the silent international system, for the absent humanitarian justice that sees the ongoing historical injustice against the Palestinian and turns its face away. Nevertheless, the Palestinian embodies the truth of humanity in its noblest forms: the wronged individual who has not lost faith in life, who has not abandoned his right to freedom and dignity, and who transforms every wound into a new window of hope.

Al-Mughayir today is not just a village under attack, nor just trees being uprooted; it is a miniature representation of all of Palestine, of the battle between humans and the machine of occupation, of the land that weeps for its trees just as it weeps for its children, and of a will that does not break, sprouting from beneath the rubble and returning stronger every time they try to uproot it.