Palestinian Fair Trade

I'm back from the dead. In my three-month hiatus I've been getting my act together in print and online, writing up a storm about suburbanization in Israel at GreenProphet.com, and publishing an interesting piece on Palestinian fair trade in the Jerusalem Report. It's not available online; here are files.









I learned a lot from reporting this piece. The article was born in a roundabout way; I went to the Ministry of Agriculture in Bethlehem to speak to specialists and make connections for my thesis research on Palestinian farming. Here I am on a Bethlehem roof.


One of the officials I spoke to was Odeh, who said "you are most welcome in my home any time." He mentioned he was a grape farmer.

A week later I called him up and took along reliable Anthony for a day in Beit Ommar, a town of 15,000 on the road between Bethlehem and Hebron in the West Bank. Odeh took us to the office of the Beit Ommar Cooperative, where he started a nursery to sell cheap olive saplings and herbs to local farmers. We went to his house and met his wife, son and two daughters, along with his dad. Lunch was yoghurt with rice. Odeh also showed us the modern and traditional methods of grape farming. He mentioned he was trying to market the cooperative's grapes via Fair Trade to Europe.

I had filed the day away mentally when my editor at the Jerusalem Report said they were looking for a story on Palestinian affairs. Some interviews later, the article was born. By the way, if you are in the region and want to do Odeh a favor, he's looking for someone to clean up the English on the cooperative Web site.

Here are some of the photos that didn't make it into the piece:
Odeh getting the radio treatment in the Beit Ummar nursery.

Odeh looking out at his family's vineyards.

Odeh on his cellphone from his roof. In the background is the settlement of Karmey Tzur.
Odeh's father, who speaks Hebrew from years spent working on Israeli construction sites.

The red words on the white paper above the door say "Wizarat Al-Zira'a" - aka Ministry of Agriculture.