Vivien Sansour is a writer, producer, and photographer living in Beit Jala. She has worked with farmers in the field for over six years, capturing their stories for the wider world. She is currently a doctoral candidate for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at North Carolina State University.
From this author
Historic Palestine has long had an abundance of natural resources, ranging from fresh and ground water, arable land and, more recently, oil and natural gas. In the seven decades since the establishment of the state of Israel, these resources have been compromised and exploited through a variety of measures. These include widespread Palestinian dispossession of land in the ongoing Nakba, exploitation of water through failed negotiations, and a finders-keepers approach to gas and oil found in or under occupied land.
Like many farmers around the world, Palestinian farmers are the victims of a top down neoliberal development approach that attempts to dispossess them of their land and seeds in service of banks, multinational corporations, and agribusiness giants. An instrument of this approach has been the Palestinian Authority’s creation of industrial zones that will entrench Palestinians’ dependency on Israel and sustain the current detrimental economic framework.
