Seeds, Stories & Solidarity (Fall 2025) - Magazine - Page 36
Yasmeen El-Hasen, Palestine
Union of Agricultural Work
Committees (UAWC)
Israel is manufacturing a mass famine in Palestine and Gaza.
The reason we don’t say ‘food insecurity’ is because there
are more than enough resources for all of us to be fed. If
we had sovereignty over our land and natural resources,
we would be food secure. It’s a question of exploitation,
imperialism, and colonialism—specifically settler
colonialism—in tandem with the Israeli genocide. Israel is
attempting to ensure that those who survive the bombs are
condemned to a future without sustenance.
The Palestinian relationship with the land is not abstract,
it’s reciprocal. It’s not about what we get from the land. It’s
about what we give to the land. We have a responsibility
to care for the land and for each other. And that is a duty
that is so core to our identity as Palestinians… There is no
one stronger than the Palestinian fellahin. ‘Fellah’ is the
word that we use for peasant or farmer. And in Palestine,
it’s a title that we hold with pride. Those who are from rural
areas, who work with the land, who work with their hands,
who care for the land—and it’s not something that any
settler colony can take away.
I think the biggest thing that is giving me hope is the
solidarity from all around the world at a scale I’ve never
experienced and the commitment to the land and the
community, where to not have hope and to not maintain
that we will be free—that’s not an option.
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