On October 30, farmer Omar Ghoneym drove from al-Khader to his lands in the southern area of Bethlehem. On his way there, he received unfathomable news: most of his property (mainly olive trees) had been uprooted and destroyed by settlers. What he saw when he arrived broke him. Not only had he lost all of his harvest, but even the centuries-old dar ( دار — traditional rural house), which used to overlook the hill, had been torn apart stone by stone by Israeli bulldozers.

Mahmoud Abdullah, another farmer, has acres of grape vines just next to Omar’s trees. He hadn’t been allowed to pick the fruits since October 7. But on the morning of October 30, nothing was left to harvest because his vines had been crushed into the soil. Settlers vandalized everything on the Palestinian hills surrounding their colony, Efrat.

Palestinian farmers know their land by the square-millimeter. To them, there is no such thing as “wild plants”: each sprout on their land is an expression of Palestinian life, as indigenous flora. They harvest the crops, take care of their trees, and walk along their vines with the same love and responsibility with which they protect their loved ones. Their families have been caretakers of these trees for generations; the olive trees have been feeding and protecting their caretakers for just as long.