Archive for December 2010
The Roof Is Now the Field
photo: Emad Badwan
BEIT HANOUN, Gaza, Dec 2, 2010 By Eva Bartlett- “We grow on our roof because we are farmers but have no land now,” says Moatassan Hamad, 21, from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza Strip.
“Our family is large and thankfully what we grow feeds us,” he says. They grow a variety of staple vegetables.
“Cabbage and eggplants in winter, and endochriyya (a plant used for making soup) and chili and garlic and onions in summer. And other things that we can sell, like flowers and palm tree seedlings.”
The house is a typical cement block house, in the crush of a Palestinian refugee camp. “There is no space in camps, no trees, no public gardens,” Hamad says.
The flourish of greenery and colour of his garden contrasts the utilitarian grey of their home and those close around it. Large blue plastic containers sprout date, orange and palm tree seedlings; parsley, cacti and peppers flourish.
“Our friends and guests like to sit up here, because most of them don’t have anything like this,” Hamad adds.
Hussein Shabat, director of the Palestinian Centre for Youth Development, guides families working on rooftop garden projects, sometimes with the aid of outside donors.
“Beit Hanoun is an important place for such gardens. It’s near the border with Israel, and much agricultural land has been destroyed repeatedly by the Israeli army,” he says. The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee reports that up to 75,000 dunams (a dunam is 1,000 square metres) of prime agricultural land has been destroyed by Israeli bulldozers and bombings. post continues
