“I don’t want people to hear about Palestine and just think about war and horror, I want them to think about the amazing food and creative arts from the region too”.
I am sitting in the garden of a house in Stafford listening to Karen, a former health and safety manager address a meeting of the Beit Leqya Friendship Group. They were formed three years ago to promote understanding of the problems faced by Palestinian communities living on the occupied West Bank.
Beit Leqya is a town in the occupied West Bank region of Palestine situated 10km away from the border wall erected by Israel and is home to some 7,000 people, many of whom work, or did before the pandemic, in Israel.
The town and surrounding region are famous for their superior quality olive oil, basket making and Tatreez, a unique form of highly decorative type of cross-stitch Palestinian embroidery; a exhibition of featuring which was held at the British Museum.
Since the occupation began Beit Leqya, along with the rest of the West Bank has been subjected to illegal settlement, condemnation of which by the United Nations has been ignored by the Israeli government.
The group organize film and quiz nights, invite representatives from the town to visit the UK and hold open garden events like this one. They work in partnership with other friendship and solidarity groups across the West Midlands, including those in nearby Walsall and Stoke-on-Trent.
However impressive the crafts produced in the region it is hard not to hear mention of the West Bank and think about conflict and tragedy, it is the scene of one of the harshest and longest lasting injustices in human history.
Since 1967 the region has seen consistent and extreme flouting of international law by the occupying forces. This has led to thousands of Palestinian citizens being arrested and held without charge in ‘administrative detention’. The occupied territories have been subjected to military law, under which detainees, many of whom are children, are denier proper legal representation and held in brutal and squalid prisons. (source: Palestine Solidarity Campaign).
An already difficult situation for residents of the West Bank has been made worse still by the pandemic. The closure of the border with Israel means many cannot work, causing added hardship for their families and access to vaccines has been severely limited.
Despite the problems faced by people living in Beit Leqya and the many towns like its community spirit remains strong and, thanks to support from friendship groups like to one in Stafford, services like to local school continue to be funded.
The strength of community spirit in the face of adversity can be seen in Karen’s description of residents of Beit Leqya coming together once a year to harvest and crush the olives they grow in a festival that lasts a week and ends with a celebratory meal attended by the whole town.
Palestinian olive oil, judged to be one of the best in the world, could yet provide a much-needed economic lifeline for the town.
Karen described how a chance purchase off a couple of litres for her own use had inspired a plan to sell the oil for a fairer price than the £1 a litre offered to residents by local wholesalers. This had started off small with twenty litres sent over to the UK by post and it sold out almost immediately for the much fairer price of £10.50, the bottles on sale at this event sell out equally quickly.
The problem she faces now is scaling the project up to a position where she can import the oil officially, rather than receive it through the post as a gift, meaning more money can be sent back to Beit Leqya. As part of this process, she plans to ‘jump through the hoops’ necessary to get the oil recognized by the Soil Association as organic.
Given the quiet determination she and other members exude based on a desire to see a wrong for which the UK must take no small share of the historical blame redressed there is every chance it will happen too.
More information about Beit Leqya and the friendship group can be found at:
www.staffordbeitleqya.com