PENGON Activities

1 million tree project - saplings continue to be planted

Sep 5th, 2006

In recent years saplings have been planted by farmers to counter the intensive uprooting of trees by Occupation forces. Since 2000 Occupation forces have leveled over 85,000 dunums with 1.5 million uprooted trees.

The planting of these saplings is a form of resistance as well as protection of Palestinian land from confiscation and annexation. PARC together with official, civil society and international organizations started this campaign of planting new trees during the 2nd intifada. So far half a million saplings have been planted in a land rehabilitation project and in projects on land threatened by settlements and with confiscation orders. Such projects are a way of replacing the thousands of dunums of destroyed land. This was why PARC launched this intensive 1 million tree campaign to minimize the severe impact on Palestinian farmers and their land. In the 4 years of this campaign we have managed to plant 12,310 dunums owned by 3,081 families with 22,317 people. This includes the planting of 375,418 saplings in 110 different places in the West Bank and Gaza.

1. Rehabilitation projects – this includes 4,910 dunums, owned by 612 families, planted with 161,700 saplings:

• 105,000 almonds
• 7,910 apples
• 12,716 figs
• 12,506 olives
• 1,455 citrus
• 21,270 vines
• 280 guavas
• 5 strawberries

2. Other projects

These involve the plantation of 7,400 dunums owned by 2,469 families with 213,718 saplings planted:

• 75,282 almonds
• 696 strawberries
• 5,376 apples
• 9,790 figs
• 100,729 olives
• 17,126 citrus
• 4,144 grapes
• 100 guava
• 175 avocados