The Land Remembers

The land in Palestine speaks – if you know how to listen.

Land here is not just a passive backdrop to human life but an active presence, cultivated, protected and remembered, shaped as much by care as by history.

Across the West Bank, hillsides bear the imprint of generations of labour, terraces holding soil in place, trees marking lineage, and fields quietly recording the passing of time. Sustainability here is not a concept imported from elsewhere but a practice refined over centuries, embedded in daily decisions and long-term thinking.

However, as Dimple Agarwal, a recent volunteer with Eyewitness Palestine, explains,

“This conflict isn’t only being fought with weapons, it’s being fought against the land itself.”

The scale of environmental devastation in Palestine is staggering. Entire neighbourhoods flattened. Water systems destroyed. Soil is compacted and contaminated. The carbon emissions released by the destruction of Gaza alone are estimated to be comparable to the annual emissions of some small nations.

Olive trees are among Palestine’s most enduring companions, many tended by the same families for generations and passed down like heirlooms. They have been adapting to changing climates and conditions with a patience that feels almost instructive.

“These trees outlast politics, which is why they matter so deeply. They are older than any nation. They’ve survived empires.”

Harvesting olives is not solely about productivity or yield but about continuity, returning year after year to the same land and reaffirming a relationship built on care rather than extraction. Attention accumulates slowly here, and its effects are measured over decades rather than seasons.

Across the West Bank, Israel has planted vast areas of non-native conifers over the ruins of Palestinian villages destroyed during and after the Nakba.

“They look like forests,” Dimple explains. “But they’re covering displacement. This isn’t accidental, it’s landscaping as denial.”

These trees drain soil moisture, increase wildfire risk and disrupt biodiversity. Recent fires near Jerusalem have been fuelled by such plantations.

Conversely, Palestinians are deeply invested in preserving what grows naturally on their land. They maintain indigenous plants and trees, as well as traditional agricultural knowledge, with a sense of custodianship that extends beyond the present moment.

At the Palestine Museum of Natural History in Bethlehem, Dimple visited a seed bank dedicated to preserving local biodiversity, which houses seeds representing generations of ecological knowledge.

Seed banks ensure that native species adapted to local soil and climate are not lost, serving as quiet commitments to future regeneration and continuity.

“If seeds survive, the future remains imaginable,” Dimple chimes. Her hosts explained that the locations of the region’s seed banks are now kept secret as they are increasingly targeted by the Israeli military.

Environmental pressures are real and persistent. Water access is inconsistent, space is limited, and soil quality varies, yet adaptation continues with remarkable pragmatism.

Rooftop gardens, cooperative farming, and small-scale cultivation are not framed as innovations but as the continuation of a long-standing heritage. They are ways of working with what is available rather than lamenting what is not.

Despite ongoing challenges, commitment persists. Fields are replanted, seeds are saved, and knowledge circulates quietly, often informally, from one generation to the next.

In the West Bank, sustainability is not framed as an aspiration or an ideology. It is practised daily, rooted in care, continuity and the belief that the future remains worth tending.

At the Allenby Bridge crossing into Jordan, waiting hours for permission to leave, Dimple felt an unexpected grief.

“I felt like I was abandoning something,” she says. “Like I was leaving my purpose behind. I’ve left a piece of myself there, and I’m not done.”

She plans to return, not with the sense of having left something behind, but with the feeling of having joined something ongoing.

Continue reading Dimple’s firsthand experience of volunteering in the West Bank.