JENIN, (PIC)
The scene in Zububa village, west of Jenin, was not just a bulldozing operation of agricultural lands, but it seemed like an uprooting of a memory that is decades old.
During three continuous days, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) continued to remove hundreds of perennial olive trees, turning wide areas of land, on which dozens of families depended for their livelihood, into a wasteland, in a step that the residents see as part of a policy targeting both humans and the land together.
From closures to targeting the land
Zububa’s suffering did not start with the bulldozers. For about eight months, the village has been living under a continuous series of Israeli measures, which included incursions, arrests, and repeated closures of its entrances, before moving to a more dangerous stage represented by targeting agricultural lands.
The head of the Zububa village council, Zaki Jaradat, said that the IOF used to close the village entrances periodically under the pretext of “security reasons,” which caused its isolation from its surroundings and hindered the movement of residents, then the measures expanded to include issuing successive notices to remove olive trees.
He added that the notices began with limited areas, before gradually expanding to include 126 dunums in three locations, but what happened on the ground exceeded even those notices, as the recent bulldozing operations ended with the destruction of more than 120 dunums and the uprooting of about 1,200 olive trees.
Jaradat warned that the plan could extend to affect about 500 additional dunums, which means eliminating the largest part of the agricultural lands in the village.
A last source of livelihood
The importance of these lands increased after the outbreak of the war on the Gaza Strip in 2023, as many of the people of Zububa lost their jobs inside the Green Line, so they turned to agriculture as the only source to support their families.
But this resource, according to the residents, has today also become targeted, at a time when the area of the village is shrinking rapidly, after it used to extend over about 48,000 dunums before 1948, and only about 1,200 dunums remain of it.
“They uprooted my mother before they uprooted the trees.”
The farmers do not only talk about material losses, but about memories uprooted with the trees.
Farmer Munir Jaradat said that some of the trees destroyed by the IOF were over 60 years old, and his mother had planted and watered them herself, carrying water for long distances until they grew and bore fruit.
He added with a voice overcome with heartbreak, “These trees are not just olives, they are my mother’s life and our childhood memories. If she were alive, she would not have endured seeing the bulldozers uprooting them.” عدو الزيتون!
جرافات الاحتلال تقتلع 128 دونما من أشجار الزيتون في بلدة زبوبا غرب جنين، ضمن عمليات تجريف واسعة تطال الأراضي الزراعية في الضفة الغربية pic.twitter.com/2mP3bCdEgj — ساحات (@Sa7atPl) June 29, 2026 Losses of hundreds of thousands of shekels
As for the farmer Samer Maqalda, he stressed that the IOF did not stop at uprooting the trees, but also destroyed a greenhouse, three water wells, and an agricultural pool, and notified of the removal of another farm with an area of 15 dunums.
He pointed out that he was forced to remove one of the greenhouses himself after receiving the notice, which led to the damage of the zucchini crop and a loss exceeding 30,000 shekels, while his total losses exceeded 300,000 shekels.
He stressed that five families of his brothers were completely dependent on these lands after losing their source of income inside the Green Line, but the IOF targeted their last source of livelihood.
Continuous isolation
The measures are not limited to bulldozing the land, as most of the village entrances remain closed, while the IOF isolated Al-Waer area, which includes 16 houses, by closing the road leading to it with earth mounds, forcing the residents to walk through rugged roads to reach their homes or basic services.
The expert on settlement affairs, Abdul Hadi Hantash, believes that what is happening in Zububa cannot be separated from a continuous Israeli policy targeting areas adjacent to the annexation and expansion Wall.
He said in a statement to the PIC reporter that the IOF uses security pretexts to bulldoze lands and remove trees, while the real goal is to create buffer zones and expand control over Palestinian lands, in preparation for annexing them or preventing their owners from accessing them in the future.
He added that uprooting olive trees carries dimensions that go beyond economic loss, because olives represent a title for the Palestinian presence and a means to prove legal ownership of the land, and therefore targeting it falls within attempts to change the geographical and demographic reality in the region.
Hantash stressed that the continuation of these measures will lead to a significant reduction of the agricultural area, and deprive dozens of families of their only source of income, in addition to establishing the isolation imposed by the IOF on the Palestinian villages adjacent to the wall.
In Zububa, olive trees do not seem to be just a seasonal crop or a source of income, but rather a part of the history of families who inherited them generation after generation. With every tree uprooted by bulldozers, the residents feel that a new piece of their memory is being torn away, in a village whose borders are receding year after year, while fear increases that the bulldozers will extend to what remains of its land.