Journalist: Your aerial images show a number of striking things about the details of the landscape, which nevertheless need to be "read" with guidance. One was the politics of pine trees versus olive trees. The Ottoman rules were that the state could acquire any land that had not been cultivated for a certain amount of time. So now the Palestinians are rushing to plant olive trees and the Israelis are planting pine trees, which grow a lot faster.
B'Tzelem's Photographer: That's true, but it's not only that they grow faster. Another reason for planting pine trees is to make a difference from the olive tree as a separate national symbol. A third reason is that pines have an acidic drop on the ground. There are no bushes under pine trees, so grazing and shepherding is very difficult in these areas that have been planted with pine. Even if you cut the pine trees, the subsequent acidity of the land is such that it does not allow agricultural cultivation. Right now we are working on an enlargement of one particular image in a similar fashion to the kind of work that intelligence analysts do during wartime. They can see things that the untrained eye cannot. We try to reveal the hidden narratives engraved on the landscape.
j's comment: I dont really understand what they are trying to do. All Samaria is open to Israelis including Israeli Arabs and can be reached by car in maximum 20 minutes from Tel Aviv. Why to make intelligence analysis from the air when anyone can go and take all the pictures he may want from zero distance? People can be asked and things understood. OK, there is always the danger that some Palestinian terrorist shoots at your car or the shabab throws stones to your car travelling at 60 mph and kills you. B'Tzelem, in my opinion, is choosing the indirect way in order to misunderstood, to misinterpret what is obvious at soil level. By the way, I have never heard about the devious purpose behind planting pines. I always thought Israelis, in their minds, all wanted to live in an Alpine forest, and were trying to remake this Middle Eastern wasteland planting pinetrees and building Swiss chalets. Moreover, as the price of olive oil has shot up astronomically, all the settlements where there is some land, they are planting olive trees like crazy.
B'Tzelem's Photographer: That's true, but it's not only that they grow faster. Another reason for planting pine trees is to make a difference from the olive tree as a separate national symbol. A third reason is that pines have an acidic drop on the ground. There are no bushes under pine trees, so grazing and shepherding is very difficult in these areas that have been planted with pine. Even if you cut the pine trees, the subsequent acidity of the land is such that it does not allow agricultural cultivation. Right now we are working on an enlargement of one particular image in a similar fashion to the kind of work that intelligence analysts do during wartime. They can see things that the untrained eye cannot. We try to reveal the hidden narratives engraved on the landscape.
j's comment: I dont really understand what they are trying to do. All Samaria is open to Israelis including Israeli Arabs and can be reached by car in maximum 20 minutes from Tel Aviv. Why to make intelligence analysis from the air when anyone can go and take all the pictures he may want from zero distance? People can be asked and things understood. OK, there is always the danger that some Palestinian terrorist shoots at your car or the shabab throws stones to your car travelling at 60 mph and kills you. B'Tzelem, in my opinion, is choosing the indirect way in order to misunderstood, to misinterpret what is obvious at soil level. By the way, I have never heard about the devious purpose behind planting pines. I always thought Israelis, in their minds, all wanted to live in an Alpine forest, and were trying to remake this Middle Eastern wasteland planting pinetrees and building Swiss chalets. Moreover, as the price of olive oil has shot up astronomically, all the settlements where there is some land, they are planting olive trees like crazy.
2 comments:
At least they are planting something. Without any effort on the part of the residents your country would look like the Nevada desert. The whole region would be nothing but scrubbrush and alkali flats.
You can recognize Jewish settlements in the Shomron by the trees. They look like green patches on google map.
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