Lebanon’s lost olive season: harvesting olives under drones and warplanes
Lebanon's olive harvesters are facing dangerous conditions, with potential attacks and fear of cluster munitions.
Beirut, Lebanon – Every year, Khaled Farhat tends to his olive trees in the southern village of Majdel Selm, a task carried out year after year amid the din of war.
“I own an olive grove with about 200 trees. I tend to them in my spare time whenever I’m not on duty at the school,” he told Al Jazeera by phone.
This year, reaching his olive grove, which is just a 20-minute drive from the border with Israel, is more complicated due to the ongoing Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. His town of Majdel Selm lies just north of Israel’s “Yellow Line”, below which the Israeli military is demolishing homes and local infrastructure.
Explosives have been a recurring problem for farmers in southern Lebanon since the final days of the 2006 war, when Israeli forces dumped cluster bombs containing between 2.6 and four million submunitions in the area, according to a Human Rights Watch report.