I shall carve the number of each deed / Of our usurped land / The location of my village and its boundaries. / The demolished houses of its peoples, / My uprooted trees, / And to remember it all, / I shall continue to carve / All the chapters of my tragedy, / And all the stages of the disaster, / From the beginning / To end, / On the olive tree
—Tawfiq Ziyad
What happens when we listen to the trees? When we tell the story of Palestine from their point of view? When we begin to consider how their fate is intertwined with ours? In his PhD research at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Alaa Iktash explores these questions.
Alaa is a Palestinian scholar from Jerusalem. His ancestors have lived in the city and its surrounding plains and hills for centuries. Growing up under Occupation, he learned to see right through the policies of elimination and erasure. Too obvious were the contradictions around him, too clumsy the manipulation of space and history, too explicit the racism and violence. Through his PhD project on the Latrun area, supervised by Professor Michael Mason, he is recovering Palestinian knowledge and narratives.
Alaa Iktash in the Latrun area. (picture courtesy of Alaa)
On a sunny day, we arrived in the Latrun area after a 30-minute drive from Jerusalem. Upon arrival, we were confronted by a large sign: “Ayalon-Canada Park, Jewish National Fund.” This “park” is a popular Israeli tourist destination today. As we spotted a map of trail paths, a group of Israeli hikers passed by us, laughing and chatting. Our eyes followed them closely, but we stayed silent. To them, this was a park, a forest — a space to breathe, unwind, and relax. But as subjects of the Occupation, we knew that nothing was as it seems. We knew that this park hid a dark secret. And we knew the traces of truth were everywhere, for those who cared to look.
The entrance to the “park.” Photo credit: Naji Safadi.
I followed Alaa through a forest of cypress and pine trees until we reached a lonely sidr tree. The sidr, known internationally as Ziziphus spina-christi, is native to the region. “I want you to take a picture of this sidr,” he instructed me, “because it is a tree that tells a story.”
The lonely sidr tree, between cypresses and pines. Photo credit: Naji Safadi.
The sidr is surrounded by cypress and pine trees, but still, it seems lonely. The fact is, the sidr tree is not out of place; it is the only tree that is truly rooted where it stands. “She has seen everything,” Alaa says as he traces his fingers across its trunk. Alaa’s research highlights that this tree stood not between pines and cypresses in an Israeli natural reserve, but between the houses of the Palestinian village of Imwas in 1958. It provided its fruit to the villagers who had planted it — who lovingly took care of it as if it were their child. Imwas, together with Yalo, Latrun, Beit Nuba, and Deir Ayoub, formed the Latrun area.
Before 1948, the villages in the Latrun area thrived, because they were located at the very heart of Palestine — between the Jerusalem hills and the coastal plain, and at the strategic intersection of the two roads from Gaza to Ramallah and from Jerusalem to Yafa. Their blessing became their curse: they went from the crossroads into the crossfire. The Latrun area was heavily fought over by Israeli and Jordanian forces in 1948 until it was ultimately captured by Jordan. The villagers who had been at the center of Palestine were suddenly marginalized at the edge of the Jordanian-controlled West Bank. The economic consequences were devastating — yet they could stay on their land, unlike most other Palestinians.
But the catastrophe caught up to them: the Latrun villages were the only ones fully depopulated when Israel captured the West Bank in 1967. “It was a Nakba in the Naksa,” Alaa explained. Around ten thousand villagers were expelled, many at gunpoint: they were forced to walk 40 kilometers to Ramallah. Afterwards, Israel demolished their houses.
The ruins of a house in the Latrun village. Photo credit: Naji Safadi.
Over the last 57 years, the Jewish National Fund, with support from Canadian Zionist donors, has attempted to erase the Latrun villages from memory and marginalize their agroecological landscape by planting a forest over them. Alaa took me on a walk to show me how. The village Imwas used to be surrounded by a rocky, open area for animals to graze, yet we found ourselves in a dense forest of cypress and pine trees. Between the trees are Jordanian trenches from 1948, as well as the remains of Palestinian family homes. By turning the village into a cypress and pine forest, the Jewish National Fund aimed to seize the land, prevent its rightful owners from returning, and create a European-like landscape.
The stones of ruined Palestinian houses, hidden and scattered between cypress and pine trees. Photo credit: Naji Safadi.
The lands of the ruined village Imwas are cut in half by the Israeli highway running from Ashkelon (‘Asqalan) to Modi’in (the largest Israeli settlement in the West Bank, built on confiscated Palestinian land). We slowly walked along the road, noticing old Palestinian tiles and pipes, reminding us of what once was. Countless Israeli cars sped past us — did they notice too? A few meters ahead, the highway intersects with the one running from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv (Yafa).
In addition to highways, the Latrun area is also disfigured by landmines laid by Jordan between 1948 and 1967 which Israel has not bothered to clear out. Israel routinely clears out landmines to build settlements, for instance in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. This forms yet another obstacle to the landowners’ return. As for the remaining Latrun villages, the Israeli settlement Mevo Horon was built on the lands of Beit Nuba, and the cows of the settlers graze on the lands of Yalo. Yalo and Deir Ayoub are also covered by the Jewish National Fund’s pine and cypress forest, which hides their ruins.
A car with an Israeli license plate speeds by. Does the driver notice the ruins? Photo credit: Naji Safadi.
A tile from a destroyed Palestinian home sticks out onto the highway. Was it on the floor of a kitchen, a bathroom, a living room? Photo credit: Naji Safadi.
Landmines block the return of the landowners. Behind barbed wire, the plants wither away. Photo credit: Naji Safadi.
The core of Alaa’s research focuses not only on what has been planted by the Jewish National Fund, but on the plants native to the area. He documents the ongoing process of what he calls the “agroecological Nakba” by tracing changes in the natural landscape of Palestine between 1944 and the present day. He builds on the concept of “makaneyyah,” which was developed by Omar Tesdell and other Palestinian critical scholars to understand natural landscapes not as static, but as dynamic processes combining the human and non-human. Alaa expands this concept by speaking of a “makaneyyah hamashia” (marginal makaneyyah).
He researches how plants in the Latrun that formed part of the Palestinian agroecological landscape before 1967, like almonds, olives, and vineyards, have become marginalized: “Here, you see pines and cypresses everywhere — but between them there is a sidr tree. I look at this tree, and at others like it, and tell their story. How did they become marginalized? How did pines and cypresses become dominant? There are still olives, almonds, and other trees here — but many people don’t know their story.”
He elaborates on this point, noting that “People only view this area as a forest planted over Palestinian depopulated villages, but they don’t think about the plants that were there before and still remain.”
The native plants remain: here, a sumaq tree. Photo credit: Naji Safadi.
Alaa investigates how the expulsion of Palestinians has impacted the native trees: “Many of the native trees are not bearing fruit anymore. The trees require tarkeeb, tat’eem, and taqleem (crafting and clipping). If no one takes care of the trees, their health can deteriorate. When the humans disappeared, these trees became marginalized.”
“New trees came and took their place in the spotlight. And these new trees were not part of the local landscape. There were no pines and cypresses in the Latrun area before,” Alaa says. His research shows us that in Palestine, the story of the people is the story of the plants, and the story of the plants is the story of the people.
An olive tree turning brown. The people who planted it cannot come to save it. Photo credit: Naji Safadi.
Beyond the story of the plants, the Latrun area also exemplifies Israel’s expansionism and disregard for internationally recognized borders. On the ground, it seems as though the Latrun villages are part of Israel. Israelis can freely access the Latrun. There are no checkpoints or borders blocking access. Yet, according to international and Israeli law, the area is part of the West Bank. Israel openly admits this: at the historic Latrun monastery, Alaa pointed out a sign that states in Hebrew that the area is under the jurisdiction of the “Judea and Samaria” (the Zionist term for the West Bank) administrative division.
The sign admits that we are in the West Bank – but only in Hebrew. Photo credit: Naji Safadi.
Before the separation wall was constructed, Palestinians in the West Bank, including the Latrun villagers who were forcibly displaced, could visit the Latrun (though never reclaim their land). Since 2004, however, the wall and the checkpoints put an end to this possibility, severing the physical ties between the people and their land. The land is legally in the West Bank, but Palestinians in the West Bank cannot reach it.
A map of “Canada Park” and the five depopulated Latrun villages. The “Park” is legally located in the West Bank. (Map source here)
Alaa’s research project, supervised by Professor Michael Mason, shows us that the Latrun area, and the lonely sidr tree at the heart of it, is a microcosm of Palestine. Decades ago, it was part of a flourishing symbiosis of humans and nature. A violent colonial rupture tore this network apart, imposing a new natural landscape to transform and marginalize what once was. The native trees, once at the center, became marginalized and surrounded by non-native trees. They have been separated from their evicted caretakers by walls and checkpoints, while the world looks away. In a physical manifestation of their pain, some of them have stopped bearing fruit. But despite all this, the sidr tree’s roots grow deeper every day. It has seen everything, it knows the truth, it knows it belongs, and it knows it must have patience. If the native tree could speak, perhaps it would tell us: “I am a witness, I am hope, I am resilience, I am the land — I am Palestine.”
