The Ancient al-Badawi Olive Tree and What It Says About Palestinian Belonging
MACKENZIE DEBRUHL The al-Badawi olive tree, Palestine’s oldest living tree, still yields 800 kg of olives every other year. Photographer Adam Broomberg, the author of a book about Palestinian olive trees, Anchor in the Landscape, writes, “Anyone, it doesn’t matter what their ideological beliefs are, would conclude that nobody who loves a land would willingly destroy its oldest indigenous inhabitants. Only when that someone is led by hate.” (IBRAHIM HUSSEINI/AL JAZEERA) Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August/September 2026, pp. xx-xx Special Report By MacKenzie DeBruhl THE UBIQUITY of the olive tree in Palestinian liberation discourse points to an ancestral identification with land stewardship. The land on which the olive trees stand is not only a defining feature in the Palestinian geopolitical struggle but also at the heart of various cultural heritage practices. Olive cultivation is an expansion of this rationale. It symbolizes a rooted connection to the land sustained through millennia. Olive trees have always inhabited a physical and imaginative spatiality within Palestinian cultural assemblages. Their average age spans several decades. Through these generations, Palestinian farmers have sustained the biocultural tradition of olive cultivation with a great deal of care and attention, contributing to an intimate connection and an intense identification with the trees. They comprise a large portion of the agricultural sector, both in economic production and as a primary food source, and they have come to reflect the growing sentiment of a materialized notion of Palestinian belonging to the land. These trees symbolize Palestinian Indigenous presence, a central...
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