Palestine is of great significance for the three Abrahamic religions. The holy land of Palestine is not just a geopolitical entity but a sacred space that holds deep meaning for millions of people worldwide. The rise of public disapproval drawn to Israeli violence, since the start of October 7th, 2023, has grown by around 18.5 percent across 42 countries (i.e. China, Brazil, U.K, South Africa, U.S, etc). [1] The recent categorization of the war in Gaza as a genocide by the U.N. [2] is not merely a new political fight but also an extension of an ongoing spiritual bond, where connection to land itself is a symbol of justice, identity, and collective struggle. The relationship between the land, spirit, and people is a way for us to understand Palestinian history and the origins of ongoing violence. The National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning at Nieuwe Instituut holds objects which can help uncover these dynamics in the context of Palestine.

Hendrik Wijdeveld, a Dutch architect, traveled to Palestine in 1923 and wrote a series of reports about his journey to Palestine in 1923. Within his donated writings at the Nieuwe Instituut, Wijdeveld draws attention to the spiritual connection between the land and soil. [3] At the time that he traveled to Palestine, he witnessed the early stages of European Jewish settlement under the British Mandate of Palestine. As he senses the tensions in the city of Jerusalem, he warns the new settler communities, “the soil of Palestine looks tired, and it hardly recognizes you [Jewish settlers]” [4] (Figure 1). Although written more than 100 years ago, Wijdeveld reflects upon the relationship maintained by those who have cared for the land and thus recognizes them in its spirit. The soil is familiar to the Palestinians who thrived upon its fruit for millennia. More specifically, the connection is made through the growing and harvesting of olives. Within the sacred space, Wijdeveld notice how there is “violence in the Holy Land… [yet] the olive tree blossoms so beautifully”. [5] His writings point to the significance of the olive as a paradoxical symbol of life and peace among the rise of violence. Wijdeveld senses that the new settler society has bred a space where “there is no ‘together’, but ‘one for himself’.

Palestine’s sacrality, beyond the historical roots of Abrahamic religions, is bound by the natives’ labor and their devotion to the land. The upholding of life for the people is only guaranteed through the fruits it bears in exchange for their care. This relationship places the native harvest as the ultimate source of livelihood and sustenance for the human spirit. Despite the disruption Wijdeveld describes on the social harmony between Palestinians and Jewish settlers, the olive tree continues to ‘blossom’ (Figure 1).

Scholars have described the olive tree as a symbol for peace, livelihood and sacredness, as referenced in stories of Mediterranean Greek mythology [6] and in sections of the Holy Qu’ran [7]. In Palestine, the olive tree amplifies the contradiction of land sacredness with the rise of the colonial regime. The cadastral survey of Palestinian land drawn by the British in 1920 operated to establish absolute spatial knowledge regarding roads, villages, agriculture, tribes and other landscape information [8] (Figure 3). This effort to map the land was part of the process to transition the Ottoman Land Code into a new system that would help facilitate the legal, later forceful, displacement, dispossession, and selling of Palestinian land to new Jewish settlers. [9] The Ottoman system classified most land as communal or common and leased as long as people actively cultivated agricultural products every three years. [10] Part of the archive of the Dutch architect Abel Cahen, from his time in Israel from 1947 to 1956, is a collection of reprinted maps originating from this British cadastral survey. In a portion of maps, the British included the specific terrain types and agricultural land used for orchards (largely citrus) or olive groves. In the map of Nazareth (Figure 3), the magnitude of olive trees grown surrounding the west of Jenin distinguishes its strong cultivation culture within concentrated areas of land. These maps were further utilized by the Israeli military, paramilitary, and other organizations to carry out missions that would depopulate and massacre Palestinians, particularly in 1948. The missions are reflected on the Israeli reprints by adding purple markings of new Jewish settlements (Figure 3). The Nazareth map, edited in 1951, marks the Palestinian village of Zi’irn and its territory above to mark kibbutz Yizre’el. The destruction of the Zi’irn was a site of Zionist military assault and was met with defense of Palestinian resistance during 1948. [11] Ultimately, the village was destroyed and present-day Yizre’el was built on the ruins of Zi’irn. [12] This is merely one label among the extensive collection of maps that visually encode, precisely, the process of exodus and building of the settler colonial state of Israel.

As an extension of land appropriation missions, native agriculture was replaced with a campaign of afforestation with non-native pine trees as a symbolic domination of land by Israelis. [13] The Zionist mass uprooting of olive trees was aided by Jewish National Fund through evictions and mass planting of foreign trees to, under the Zionist banner, “make the desert bloom”. [14] This was a denial of pre-existing abundant cultivation Palestine, a part of ongoing mass destruction, by burning and uprooting of thousand-year-old olive trees. Psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon wrote in his book, Wretched of the Earth, as a theoretical synthesis of his personal encounter with the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria, that for colonized people, the most essential and meaningful value is “the land which will bring them bread and above all, dignity”. [15] In the native’s land’s, when faced with settler appropriation and ethnic cleansing, the “bread” from the land grants the oppressed dignity. Rather than ‘human dignity’, Fanon refers to the dignity derived from material sustenance, which is “victory felt as a triumph for life”, in other words, to exist. [16]

The colonial project is at odds with the land of Palestine, an ever expanding violence that is contrary to the historic thriving of nature and Palestinian agriculture. In conjunction with the land’s spirit of rejection of settlers, the Israeli state’s replacement of the ports for foreign interests, olive oil, also referred to as “liquid gold”, economically and physically sustained Palestinian livelihood. [17] Whereas Israel prioritized the industrial sector, such as the Haifa oil refinery, that served a need for economic development within European imperial interests. [18]

In Joël Meijer de Casseres’ archive at Nieuwe Instituut, there are a series of objects related to his pro-bono work in the development and expansion of the Kishon Port in Haifa. His work in 1952 consisted of advising in the Haifa-Kishon Project to improve the industrial infrastructure surrounding the connection from the bay into the Kishon river. Within his sketches, the British-owned CLR Oil Refinery is one of the key structures that are included in most of his sketches (Figure 4). Along with his sketches, one of De Casseres’ personal report on his travels, he emphasizes the importance of the oil industry and a promising future possible through oil exploration in the territory. The CLR Oil Refinery, also known as the Haifa oil refinery, was a site of tension and violence leading up to the Nakba (1947-1948 War). [19] The colonial project was also a reconfiguration of land use in relation to industrial development and trade, this included British, Dutch and U.S interests for oil refining and transport using the Kirkuk Haifa pipeline. This was a replacement of the local economy from agricultural to industrial labor. In December of 1947, the Irgun Zionist paramilitary attacked Palestinian workers with a grenade in the Haifa Oil Refinery. [20] This led to further violence by Jewish settlers and resistance from Palestinians, culminating to the Balad al-Shayk massacre. [21] The massacre of the nearby village was a turning point that was an assertion of power in the building of colonial infrastructure. Fanon describes this process precisely as:

“Colonization involves a violent appropriation of land alongside its physical transformation: Cutting railroads through the bush, draining swamps and ignoring the political and economic existence of the native population are in fact one and the same thing”. [22]

The social devaluation of olive oil in the economic sphere by the colonial project shifted power into the hands of the colonizer, facilitated by the capitalist mode of production [23], and it is reflected in the industrial oil refinery and pipelines in Haifa. This persisted in the building of industrial zones by Zionists, as described by scholar Leah Temper, “Jews brought with them a European modernizing initiative, which saw the need to redeem the landscape and shape it to the settlers´ will”. [24] The Kishon project sketches are designs for human alteration of landscape, building infrastructure to use the ancient Kishon river for the oil refinery and pipeline. Unsurprisingly, the petrochemical refining resulted in the Kishon river becoming extremely polluted. [25] This was a fundamental dishonoring of the sacred and divine nature of a river directly mentioned in Abrahamic scripture. [26] The oil refinery is a physical replacement of foreign interest over the agricultural traditions preserving Palestinian life. The tension of this change erupted in the attacks between workers in the Haifa oil refinery and Balad al-Shayk massacre, significantly marking the start of the 1948 Nakba.

These archival objects show the historical process in the building of a religious-ethno state over a land with spiritual traditions. Instead of viewing the land exclusively in terms of worshipping in an Abrahamic sense, the land itself is a site of worship for Palestinians. More specifically, the traditions of land cultivation are what allows the native people to exist and thrive. Thus, the olive is the lifeline for existence and the land is what Palestinians have honored and have deemed a blessing for their dignity. The Quranic references to the fig and olive [27] confirm their worship of the land through labor. These archival objects showcase how the colonial process is uprooting the spirit of life. Between the colonizer and colonized, in the attitudes to how land and life is treated, one dominates while the other honors.

These objects help us remember the events of exodus and ethnic cleansing, but also signify the importance of making a connection between the land, people and spirit dialectically inscribed between each other. By honoring the land’s fruits, people are able to live and thrive. The spirit of humanity is contingent on worshipping the land in an alternative way. The colonial project of Israel, as a claim to the return of Jewish people, is a desecration of the holy land, violently uprooting the agrarian culture in exchange for an industry of toxic byproducts and their parasitic political interests. The olive is sustenance and an ancient presence of prosperity. Those tending to the land and olive groves are truly worshipping, caring for the soil sustains its spirit and in exchange, its spirit recognizes and sustains us. Israel’s complete destruction, constant ethnic cleansing and forced starvation in Gaza is a continuation of a Zionist desecration of Palestinians land, a fundamental denial of the Divine spirit that is lit from the oil of a “blessed olive tree”. [28]

This article is a collaboration between Volume and Nieuwe Instituut’s Asterisk* project. The Asterisk* is a tool that helps to describe archival objects in a more detailed, critical and contextual way. The Asterisk* focuses on underexposed collection items and highlights previously untold stories.

Susana Pérez Arias is a Venezuelan historian and archivist based in Amsterdam. She has dedicated her research primarily on object-centered expressions in histories of anti-colonial resistance in Latin America and Palestine. She has her Bachelors in History and Latin American studies and Masters of Archival and Information Studies.

Sources

1. Gordon, Anna. “New Polling Shows How Much Global Support Israel Has Lost.” Time, January 17, 2024.
2. “UN Special Committee Finds Israel’s Warfare Methods in Gaza Consistent with Genocide, Including Use of Starvation as Weapon of War | Ohchr.” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner , November 24, 2024.
3. Wijdeveld, Hendrik, Reis naar Palestina en Egypte. Nieuwe Instituut, 1923. WIJD.110331852.
4. Ibid,.
5. Ibid,.
6. Grego, Stefano. “The Olive Tree: A Symbol.” Olive Cultivation, July 20, 2022. https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102827.
7. Hasanin, Majed A. “Olive Tree: A Symbol of Steadfastness in Contemporary Palestinian Poetry.” Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) 7, no. 2 (April 1, 2019): 243–44. https://doi.org/10.33329/rjelal.7219.
8. Sitta, Salman Abu. “A Survey of Palestine under the British Mandate, 1920-1948.” Journal of Palestine Studies 35, no. 2 (January 1, 2006): 101–2. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2006.35.2.101.
9. Sitta, “A Survey of Palestine under the British Mandate, 1920-1948.”.
10. Temper, Leah. “Creating Facts on the Ground: Agriculture in Israel and Palestine (1882-2000).” Historia Agraria Revista de agricultura e historia rural, August 2009, 75–110. https://doi.org/10.26882/histagrar.
11. Khalidi, Walid. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied And Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Institute for Palestine Studies i, 1992.
12. Ibid,.
13. Sasa, Ghada. “Oppressive Pines: Uprooting Israeli Green Colonialism and Implanting Palestinian a’wna.” Politics 43, no. 2 (October 8, 2022): 219–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957221122366.
14. Ibid,.
15. Fanon, Frantz. “Concerning Violence.” Essay. In Wretched of the Earth, 44. New York, NY: Grove Press, 1963.
16. Ibid, 308.
17. Temper, Leah. “Creating Facts on the Ground: Agriculture in Israel and Palestine (1882-2000). During and after Ottoman and British rule, Palestinian olive trees were a significant part of the thriving local economy and trade for oil and soap production. By the end of the Nakba in 1949, the olive produce confiscated by Israelis became one-third of the largest exports by Israel. As land appropriation took hold by settlers, the local economy collapsed and was replaced by capitalist Jewish industry.
18. Ibid,.
19. Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. Cambridge University Press, 1989.
20. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem.
21. Ibid,.
22. Fanon, Wretched of the Earth. 182.
23. Temper, Leah. “Creating Facts on the Ground: Agriculture in Israel and Palestine (1882-2000). 85.
24. Ibid, 88.
25. Tal, Alon, and David Katz. “Rehabilitating Israel’s Streams and Rivers.” International Journal of River Basin Management 10, no. 4 (December 2012): 317–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/15715124.2012.727825.
26. Judges: 5:21. The River Kishon is mentioned as part of God’s judgment and divine intervention in the Bible.
27. The Qu’ran 95:1-3. Translated by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, 2018.
28. Ibid, 24:35.