Ibrahim Kataneh, farmer

I live in Qaffin. I have eight brothers and sisters, and we own several fields that we inherited from my father. We are all married and have children. We have farmland in three different areas: one ten-dunam plot to the east of the wall; a twenty-two-dunam plot south of our village; and four plots, covering forty-five dunams in all, that are spread out west of the village and west of the wall. Twelve dunams of the farmland that lie south of the wall have been confiscated to build the wall and have been ruined.

Before the wall was built, we worked our farmland throughout the year. We looked after it without interruption, save during rain or at the season's end. In January and February, we'd plow and clean the area, and plant wheat, barley, and legumes. During February we also pruned the olive trees and sprayed them with insecticides, weeded the wheat and barley fields, and also sprayed weed-killers over the untilled land. In May and June, we harvested the wheat and barley. We did it manually, so as not to harm the olive groves.

Each family member, young and old, shared in the farm work. After gathering the harvest we rested for a while, and in September we'd get back to work. We had to clear away the thistles and weeds that had grown up over the summer, in preparation for the olive-picking season. By the end of September, we began picking the olives and choosing fruits for preserving and for the family's use.

In October and November we continued picking olives. The whole family took part – in the morning, the adults worked in the olive groves, and at noon the children joined them. When afternoon came, we went home with the olives and sorted them. Once the olive harvest ended, we rested again for a little while. Then we busied ourselves with pruning the trees and tending to them.

Today, everything has changed. It's almost impossible to reach our farmland under the current situation. In August and September 2002, tractors started to work on the village's land. They began to clear the land in the area of our southern plot, and around twelve dunams were confiscated during the first stage of operations. The harvest that year was about half the normal size. This was because of the land confiscation, and also because we began picking the olives earlier than usual, which damaged the quality of the fruit. Our work conditions that year were also horrible. We couldn't go to the grove with a car or tractor. We were often delayed by soldiers, and sometimes they prevented us from going altogether. At the end of the 2002 olive-picking season, the army closed off the areas in the western and southern parts of the village, and prohibited residents to enter their own land.

Construction on the wall stretched into the beginning of 2003. We weren't allowed access to our land that year, and we couldn't do the plowing. In the picking season, they made us request permits to enter our lands, so that we could harvest the olives there. We submitted requests for many of our family members, but the permits came too late. By then the army had already decided that picking season was over, and locked the gate. It was closed. I didn't get to my land at all, not even once. Some of my family members managed to get through, but we only managed to harvest enough olives for six containers of oil by the end of the season, rather than more than sixty, which we usually obtained.

Likewise, in 2004, the army denied us access to our land after the harvest season, and we couldn't work the land. In the middle of the year, the army dismantled a part of the wall – we could reach our plots of land in the southern part of the village again, which was now east of the wall. About half of the trees in this plot had been damaged to build the wall. Because of the long period of neglect, the other half was in poor shape, and the trees didn't bear much fruit.

In the 2004 harvest, the permits for my brother and me were delayed. My wife and some other family members received permits. The season was quite poor, because we hadn't plowed or weeded throughout the year. We couldn't trim the olive-tree branches either, which damaged the yield. The thistles had grown long, affecting the quality of the harvest, as well as our access to the trees. My wife and nephews had a very hard time gathering the olives.

When our fields were west of the wall, people living on the other side of the Green Line used some of them for grazing their flocks. The smaller trees – those under a meter and a half – were left without leaves or fruit.

Since the end of the olive-picking season, November 2004, we haven't received permits to enable us to get to the forty-five-dunam plot we own west of the wall in order to work the land. I am afraid that they're going to confiscate the land. In any case, the fields are already in bad shape from all the neglect. The weeds and thistles are growing, and a fire might break out.

Ibrahim Muhammad Kataneh, 58 is a father of five, a farmer and a resident of Qaffin. His testimony was given to `Atef Abu a-Rub in Qaffin on 11 May 2005