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

Author: عبد الفتاح دولة 

In the northeast of Ramallah, the village of Al-Mughayer sits atop hills of patience, blood, and olives. A small village in size, yet large in its wounds, it has been subjected to continuous aggression and siege by armed settlers for years, who have not only stolen the land but have also reached deeper than geographical boundaries: to the roots of the olive trees, the memory and spirit of the land.

Nearly ten thousand olive trees have been uprooted and stolen from the soil of Al-Mughayer. Ten thousand living beings that guarded the land and witnessed 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 stood witness for thousands of years to the seasons of harvest and joy, to the tears that fell upon its roots, and to the blood that bled near it. Today, this tree has been subjected to a silent massacre, no less horrific than the massacres of humans in the Gaza Strip. Just as humans are annihilated there by bombs, trees are annihilated here by axes and bulldozers. It is a reflection of a single project, a colonial project, that does not differentiate between human and stone, between person and tree, aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause and uprooting memory as it attempts to uproot roots.

However, the people of Al-Mughayer, like all Palestinians, stood against this aggression. They defended their homes, their land, and their olives with their bare bodies and strong 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-Mughayer is part of a series of failed attempts to subdue the Palestinian, who becomes more stubborn the more he is besieged, and who, whenever his tree is uprooted, returns to plant a new seedling in its place.

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

What happened in Al-Mughayer should serve as a wake-up call to the silent international system, to the absent humanitarian justice, which sees the ongoing historical injustice against the Palestinian and turns its face away. Nevertheless, the Palestinian continues to embody the truth of humanity in its noblest forms: the oppressed human who has not lost faith in life, who has not relinquished his right to freedom and dignity, and who transforms every wound into a new window of hope.

Today, Al-Mughayer is not just a village under attack, nor merely trees being uprooted; it is a miniature representation of all of Palestine, of the struggle of humanity against the machinery of occupation, of the land that weeps for its trees just as it weeps for its children, and of an unbreakable will that sprouts from beneath the rubble, returning stronger every time they attempt to uproot it.