4.12.1987

THE SAD STORY OF THE UPROOTED OLIVE TREES

The story began about olive trees, passed through a Latin American novel, got lost in a maze of bureaucracies, and ended up with an unexpected irony. Most of all its about the daily tragedy of assumptions made too easily by all types, Jewish or Arab, liberal or conservative, cunning or naive, about each other. In short, its about Israel nowadays.

Recently, dozens of olive trees were planted on the median strip and along the side of the Haifa Road highway between the Yarkon Bridge and the Country Club.

Of itself, the combination of the already existing palm trees and the new olive trees makes the northern approach to Tel Aviv far more attractive than the approach from the eat, which is landscaped by the Masada-shaped Hiriya garbage dump.

The problem was the timing of the trees' arrival, coinciding with the uprooting of some 1,400 olive trees from disputed land owned by the Israel Lands Authority and used by a Negev Beduin clan. The timing of the Tel Aviv planting made the landscaping as smelly as Hiriya.

The six-year court struggle between the al-Nassasrah clan and the Israel Lands Authority, over the use of 40 dunams on which the Beduin had planted their olive trees, had seemed very logical. Lagiya is a pretty desolate place, which might be best described as being in the middle of nowhere.

It is not as if the olive trees were in the way of a highway, or a new settlement, or a housing project.

The court dispute had all the elements of a Latin American novel about clashes between relatively powerless provincials, incompetent at dealing with the state's bureaucratic machinery, and that bureaucracy's insistence on proving its power.

By the time the six years of litigation were over, on the eve of the olive trees' first fruit-bearing season, the argument between the Lagiya Beduin and the ILA over a windswept plateau had turned into a tragedy about pride and dignity, self-respect and nationalism.

In mid-October, when spokes-men from the Israel Lands Authority and the Nature Reserve Authority and the Green Patrol had not been able to explain why they couldn't reach an accommodation with the Beduin, they proudly announced that the trees would be replanted elsewhere.

Not that there's anything wrong with replanting olive trees that were uprooted because a road was being widened, or a housing project was going up.

Uprooting them from the middle oft he desert may be pushing state authority a little too far, but it was the seeming combination of uprooting them and then replanting them in north Tel Aviv that seemed like dancing on a grave.

It took about 30 phone calls to sources who refused to be identified and were unable to provide answers, and to official spokesmen from five agencies who often contradicted each other, to find out where Tel Aviv got its trees and what happened to the Lagiya trees.

The details of that bureaucratic maze are irrelevant. What is not irrelevant is that some sources who refused to be identified, when asked about the origins of the Tel Aviv trees, volunteered without being asked that the trees wee not from Lagiya. One source indicated that they might be and then said, "And so what?"

It also should be reported that at one point the Israel Lands Authority said it gave the Lagiya trees to the JNF, and the JNF said it never got them from ILA.

In the end, despite at least one source bluntly stating that it would be impossible to find out where the Lagiya trees went and where each and every one of the Tel Aviv trees came from, the answers were simple.

The Lagiya trees, said Nature Reserve Authority spokeswoman Yael Shoham, are in the Gilat nursery, not far from Mishmar Hanegev, awaiting replanting elsewhere.

The Jewish National Fund owns the nursery, she said, and according to various JNF sources and spokesmen, either the JNF decides where to plant uprooted trees or the Israel Lands Authority makes the determination.

In either case, the JNF will do the replanting-in public parks, along highways, in army camps, and presumably wherever olive trees would be nice in the public domain. "Its policy and we're proud of our policy not to uproot trees" said one source.

Shmuel Shoham may or may not be related to Yael Shoham. But he is the man in charge of Tel Aviv landscaping and when he finally got on the line he had what he called "the sad story" of where Tel Aviv got the olive trees.

"It has nothing to do with Beduin" he began.

"It has to do with Jews. Jews in the Galilee are uprooting olive trees. That's right" he said "you heard me. Uprooting trees because its not worth their while to grow them any more for the olive oil they can produce.

"So they dig them up and sell these 15-year-old trees to Arabs from Samaria. And next year those same Arabs will say the trees have been in the family for generations.

"For me, that's a sad story. For me, that's a story that should make the bleeding heart liberals cry. But it doesn't. They cry about the Beduin". Shmuel Shoham was on a roll.

"There are kibbutzim that are in such bad shape that they're selling their olive trees. For me, that's a tragedy. But who cares? The state? Where's the state? What's the state? The people?" and in his voice one could hear more than disappointment.

It was as if while he was speaking he were looking out his City Hall window seeing everything he had never wanted to see in his Land of Israel.

He didn't say anything about Arabs who are also digging up olive trees, unable to make a living from producing the oil.

Tel Aviv paid NIS 200 shekel a piece for the dozens of 15-year-old olive trees planted between the Yarkon River Bridge and the Country Club. The payment covers the costs of transport, planting, and maintenance for a year.

The contractor who won the Tel Aviv City Hall olive tree tender, is a Jew, from a Galilee moshav. Arabs, of course, do the labour.

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