In West Bank, Hope for Future in Link Between Land and People

The author, planting a cherry tree near Bethlehem in the West Bank this spring, part of an initiative by a local environmental group to help maintain Palestinian culture. Photo: Olivia Meehan.

Voices of Environmental Justice: In West Bank, Hope for Future in Link Between Land and People

By Yessenia Funes

The sun hung low in the afternoon sky. I felt a slight chill in the air, so I wrapped my denim jacket around me tighter. It was early April, and I was meeting with local farmers in a village near Bethlehem in the West Bank.

I looked out over their field of red, ripe soil. It was covered in rows of holes two feet deep. We were there to plant cherry, mandarin and lemon trees with a local environmental organization, Arab Group for the Protection of Nature.

I crouched down low to plop a cherry sapling into the red, rocky dirt. I had never planted a tree before. I’m usually quite skeptical about tree-planting campaigns. Their histories are mired in failed (may require subscription) promises to store carbon and irresponsible practices to plant non-native trees or monoculture plantations. Some companies use their efforts as evidence of their environmental commitments — all while continuing to pollute.

I was glad, however, that my first tree wouldn’t further some for-profit greenwashing scheme. No, this cherry tree would feed a people. Well, as long as the Israeli military or nearby settlers don’t steal it, chop it down or burn it.

 

In the West Bank, planting trees is a

peaceful form of resistance. The plants

keep the Palestinian culture alive.

 

In the West Bank, planting trees is a peaceful form of resistance. The plants keep the Palestinian culture alive — from the chickpeas crushed into hummus to the sweet dates served as dessert.

Many farmers and their families have tree groves beyond the West Bank. Since the Israeli occupation, they can no longer reach those lands. Their orchards remain abandoned. Every new tree seeds hope for their future.

“APN started in 2000 when Israel was uprooting a thousand trees, mostly olive trees, so the group wanted to replant what had been removed,” said Ibrahim Manasra, a farmer who spoke in Arabic through a translator. “So we started our campaign: If they uproot a tree, we will plant 10 more. We hope to plant a million.”

 

An urgent call for storytelling

The West Bank is rich with stories about the Palestinian people, their land and the ways the relationship between those two has evolved since colonial powers established Israel as a state in 1948 and displaced at least 750,000 Palestinians.

I walked away from my time in the West Bank with a long list of story ideas — about history, wildlife, wildfires, food and more. All these issues connect back to the climate crisis, but we can’t talk about the land without talking about the oppression Palestinians actively face from the Israeli government.

In every community, families shared a fear with me: They’re expecting the military assault on Gaza to soon come their way. In many ways, it’s already begun. In the northern West Bank, the Israeli military has launched deadly aerial and ground attacks. The operation has resulted in at least 62 Palestinians killed, including nine children.

Since Oct. 7, 2023 — when the militant group Hamas carried out its deadliest attack on Israel, killing some 1,200, mostly civilians, and capturing 250, resulting in the violent siege on Gaza — the Israeli military has killed 913 people across the West Bank, including 17 children this year alone, according to the United Nations (with more than 52,000 dead in Gaza, according to a panel of U.N. experts).

“The heightened assault on the occupied West Bank is part of an overall process of Palestinian forced displacement and replacement and the territorial expansion of Israel,” an earlier panel of U.N. experts said in a January 2025 statement. “This is not an isolated action.”

Journalists of all stripes — including, yes, we environmental and climate journalists — have a duty to tell these people’s stories now, before it’s too late. And I’ll make it easy for you all by sharing some story ideas that deserve ample coverage.

 

How Israel weaponizes nature

During my trip, we spent the first two days in Jordan before we crossed into Jerusalem to eventually make our way to the West Bank. Jordan is where I met the women leadership behind APN.

The group’s offices were adorned with rows of awards recognizing its environmental leadership. Its founder, Razan Zuayter, and her daughter, Mariam al Jaajaa, presented us with slides on the various ways the Israeli government weaponizes nature to keep the Palestinian people oppressed.

I already talked about the trees, whose loss the organization quantified to a tree per minute during the early aughts. Without trees, families are left without income and food. The olives and oranges also carry cultural significance for many Palestinians. Families struggle to build their agricultural livelihoods amid the unpredictable nature of the Israeli government’s attacks.

If they leave the soil barren, however, Israeli laws determine that the area is free for someone else to own and cultivate. This is one of the ways settlers steal Palestinian land. Farming villages aren’t the only ones facing these land grabs — so do Bedouin shepherding communities in the Jordan Valley that are raising livestock like sheep and goats.

When we visited one village, a young man shared that settlers had stolen his family’s entire herd overnight — a value he said was worth an estimated $2 million, a multigenerational feat on behalf of his family.

“In one day, they stole what our family had built over 50 years,” he said in Arabic through a translator.

And what do all animals need? Water. The Israeli government controls water across the West Bank. Climate change is already affecting precipitation patterns in the region, but Israeli laws limit how much Palestinians can do to strengthen their resilience against drought and water scarcity. I just wrote about this for Atmos.

Yet Palestinian leaders remain undeterred. APN, for instance, has provided 94 rainwater collection wells, 576 water tanks and over 34,000 feet of irrigation networks to help farmers, explained Lisa Shahin, APN’s advocacy and research officer, in an email.

 

‘The spirit of the Palestinian people

is one of unwavering steadfastness

and deep-rooted connection to the land.’

                              — Lisa Shahin, APN

 

“The spirit of the Palestinian people is one of unwavering steadfastness and deep-rooted connection to the land,” she said. “Despite repeated destruction and injustice, they continue to rebuild and cultivate: growing food in rubble, harvesting rainwater, and preserving traditional practices. Their determination to stay and resist is both powerful and inspiring.”

 

Palestinians push forward despite these attacks

Environmental and climate journalists have an important mission to cover these stories of hardship and struggle, but we must also look at the ways Palestinians are forging ahead despite the Israeli occupation.

I met Nasser Abufarha, the founder of Canaan Palestine, a fair trade olive oil company based outside Jenin, where the Israeli military has been attacking this year. His operations are remarkable — he sells his product across the U.S. and the Caribbean. It’s no easy feat for a Palestinian to export from inside the West Bank.

I also spent a morning with Mazin Qumsiyeh, founder and director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University. He runs a botanical garden in the West Bank — the only one there — and is creating a national history museum. I’m planning to write a story about him, but his story deserves an entire film.

Across the West Bank, there are countless others like Qumsiyeh and Abufarha, who are persevering and working toward building a new future for Palestinians.

In every meeting, individuals would look me in the eyes and ask what I would do once I left. My answer was unwavering: I would try my best to tell their story. I’m just one person, though. I can’t write them all.

 

There are plenty of reporters

based in these lands, doing

this important work. And

they need our support.

 

There are plenty of reporters based in these lands doing this important work. And they need our support. They need international reporters who will collaborate with them in an ethical and supportive manner. They need editors who will commission them. They need outlets that will be unabashed about publishing their words.

Throughout my trip, I’d come across journalists — from a bar in Ramallah to the shepherding fields near Jericho. Their voices need amplification. Their story is still being written by the hands of time.

The Palestinians could still have a happy ending where there’s less bloodshed. The media plays a critical role in whether world leaders will unite to protect Palestinian lives and sovereignty.

Check out these resources to figure out how to start covering the issue with the care it requires:

• “Resources for Trauma-Informed Reporting” from the Institute for Middle East Understanding
• Plug into the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, whose director general, Rawan Damen, has collaborated with Covering Climate Now
• Follow the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, best known as UNRWA, which publishes regular reports on the situation there
• Al Jazeera has some of the best coverage of the West Bank

Yessenia Funes is an environmental journalist who has covered the justice beat for a decade. She publishes a creative climate newsletter called Possibilities. Funes has written for publications like Atmos, Vogue, Vox, New York magazine, The Guardian and more. Her approach to storytelling amplifies the voices of those on the frontline of our present-day ecological crises. Her reporting has taken her to the West Bank, remote Indigenous communities in Nicaragua, the hostile desert of the American Southwest and post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 10, No. 21. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.