Zai Pits

Author: لما عواد

Sometimes inspiration comes from the farthest places, from a small and distant experience, but it carries in its essence a universal message. While reading about farmers' methods in Africa to combat desertification, I was struck by the "Zai Pits" model in Tanzania. Just small pits, but they changed the fate of the land and proved that simple and humble steps can pave the way for significant transformation. At that moment, a question occurred to me: Doesn’t Palestine, whose land, water, and community are being drained, need its own "Zai"? Not only in agriculture but also in politics, community, and the feminist dimension, to provide us with a lesson in transforming drought into fertility and fragility into resilience.

Just as farmers in Tanzania have seized the idea of small pits to confront desertification and restore the fertility of their land, Palestine, which is being drained by siege, walls, aggression, and deprivation of water and resources, can innovate and dig its own "Zai" in agriculture, community, politics, and the feminist dimension, capturing what slips away from life before it is stolen, transforming drought into fertility, brokenness into resilience, and reclaiming the cycle of life from the heart of a difficult situation.

Agriculture and Water

The Palestinian Zai is present in agricultural methods and water resilience, small pits around olive and almond trees to harvest rainwater before the settlements steal it, reusing compost and crop residues to rejuvenate the soil, building tanks and wells to preserve farmers’ ability to face the thirst of occupation.

Civil Society and Development

Every local initiative, whether youth, women’s, or grassroots, is a small Zai pit; it gathers the scattered water and transforms it into a source of life. Women’s food cooperatives producing jams and baked goods and redistributing income, popular educational initiatives in besieged villages, homes opening to teach and educate children when schools close... free haircuts before the school year begins... all these are small pathways, but they protect the community from erosion.

Politics and National Resilience

The Palestinian Zai is not just agricultural; it is a rooted political act, reclaiming a piece of land threatened with confiscation in the Jordan Valley, Tulkarem, Jenin, building tents and water tanks in threatened and besieged villages and camps, popular protection committees that organize the locals to face settler attacks, and transform the defense of the land into an organized collective action. These are not huge steps, but they are cumulative, restoring fertility and resilience to the people.

The Feminist Dimension

Just as small pits bring life back to thirsty land, women restore the fertility of the public sphere with continuous initiatives... communal kitchens turning into cooperatives that preserve life, reading and culture circles and artistic workshops preserving and protecting identity and memory, safe spaces and support networks preventing disintegration, small projects transforming fragility into strength and planting life in the heart of the community.

The lesson in confronting drought, whether environmental, political, or societal, is that it is not only grand projects that revive life, but the small pits that capture the rain before it is stolen and transform fragility into fertility and resilience. Perhaps all of Palestine today needs to see new "Zai Pits"—agricultural, feminist, political, and communal—that dig into the barren land and restore the cycle of life.