MIDDLE EAST: People in the Gaza Strip know the value of growing their food. Now a US aid organisation is hoping to help, writes Michael Jansen from Jerusalem.
When I rang my friend Ahmad in Gaza, he and his wife Selwa were in their garden near the sea. Ahmad said he was watering and Selwa was picking "bamia", okra or ladies fingers, for lunch.
When I was invited to join them for the mid-day meal, Selwa had fixed a huge dish of rice, eggplant and meat. The eggplants were from the garden, she boasted.
Although Ahmad, a professional, makes a good living, they have seven children to feed.
Selwa is a slender, quiet, well-spoken lady with a big smile that all the children have inherited. Since my last visit she has grown younger - she looks just a bit older than her eldest and prettiest daughter Rasha, a shy girl with the longest eyelashes ever.
After lunch over coffee, Ahmad, who served a term of Israeli detention without trial and a period of deportation, said he had given up politics.
"I work and I cultivate my garden. I find it very satisfying. I've tested for a well on my land, the water is sweet."
Ahmad is fortunate. While most Gazans have neither, he has profitable employment and sweet water in water-deprived Gaza. The water most Palestinians drink and use for watering their plantations is salty because Israel installed complicated catchment schemes in the Negev, severely reducing the flow into Gaza. These arrangements impound most of the water that used to flow eastwards to reach the farmers of the Strip. Consequently the sea is encroaching on the Gaza aquifers.
Since the intifada, or uprising, erupted nearly three years ago, unemployment in Gaza and the West Bank has soared. The Palestinian Minister of Labour, Dr Ghassan Khatib, could not give a solid single figure. He told The Irish Times that the official International Labour Organisation estimate is that there is 37 per cent unemployment among active job seekers but said that field researchers suggest this is at least 50 per cent. If Palestinians who cannot reach their jobs, due to Israeli closures and blockades, are counted, this rises to 75 per cent.
One result is that jobless Palestinians in the West Bank as well as Gaza are turning to the land. The produce of Palestinian versions of Britain's second World War "victory gardens" feeds many large Palestinian families and provides some income to those who have surplus.
At checkpoints everywhere in the West Bank, middle-aged men and elderly women sit behind plastic tubs of homegrown figs and grapes, bunches of parsley and mint, and piles of slender, dark green cucumbers.
Potential buyers ask the vendors the names of their villages before making purchases. Everyone knows Hebron and the neighbouring town of Halhoul are famous for crisp white grapes and Jericho for sweet brown dates. Palestinians may be struggling for their very existence but they still savour the taste of fruits and vegetables from certain traditional localities.
In tune with the needs of Palestinians returning to farming for domestic consumption and sale, a veteran non-governmental organisation, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), is set to establish a comprehensive project for providing water for agriculture, which will benefit more than 35,000 people and provide employment for thousands in the east Hebron district of the West Bank.
The aim of the project is to repair and redevelop existing facilities, which have been neglected and fallen into disrepair, including 85 Roman cisterns with a capacity of around 200 cubic meters each. Where no ancient cisterns exist, springs will be rehabilitated and new cisterns, patterned on Roman models, will be built to hold half the Roman volume of water.
Such cisterns are particularly important for public buildings and schools, where enough water can be collected on concrete slab roofs to supply the annual needs of civil servants and students.
ANERA's director, Dr Tom Neu, said: "Imagine, in 2003, we are helping people to establish a subsistence economy by harvesting water from Roman cisterns, creating continuity between today and the \ occupation 2,000 years ago."