Olive trees are a major agricultural crop in Palestine, where they are mostly grown for olive oil production. It has been estimated that olive production accounted for 57% of cultivated land in Palestine, with 7.8 million fruit-bearing olive trees in 2011.[1] In 2014, an estimated 108,000 tonnes of olives were pressed producing 24,700 tonnes of olive oil – which contributed US $109 million in added value to the crop.[2] Around 100,000 households rely on olives for income.[3]
The olive tree is seen by many Palestinians as being a symbol of nationality and connection to the land,[4] particularly due to their slow growth and longevity.
Palestinian women crushing olives in order to make olive oil, 1900–1920.
Chalcolithic period (c. 3600–3300 BCE)
There is evidence for early olive use and possible cultivation in the southern Levant during the Chalcolithic. Archaeobotanical remains, including olive pits, wood, and crushing residues, have been found at sites such as Tel Tsaf in the Jordan Valley, dated to ~7000–6500 BP (approximately 5500–5000 BCE), indicating olive oil production and intensive use.[7]
While these findings suggest early horticultural practices, it is difficult to distinguish wild from truly cultivated olives in these early contexts.[8] Recent studies indicate that early olive oil production and horticultural use were likely underway by the Middle Chalcolithic (~6500 BP), but widespread organized cultivation and oil technologies are more clearly established in the Early Bronze Age.[9]
Bronze Age (c. 3300–1200 BCE)
During the Bronze Age, olive cultivation expanded and became a significant component of local economies. Evidence of olive oil trade is found in shipwrecks, such as the Uluburun cargo, which included amphorae that may have contained olive oil from Palestine. Archaeobotanical evidence shows olive pits and pollen across southern Levantine settlements. In village sites, installations for olive processing, such as stone presses and storage jars, indicate systematic collection and storage of olive oil for domestic use and exchange.[10]
Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods (c. 332 BCE–636 CE)
Under Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine influence, olive cultivation and oil production continued to expand across Palestine. Excavations reveal numerous olive presses and large storage installations, including rock‑cut press facilities and amphora storage, indicating both local use and participation in wider Mediterranean trade networks. The technological innovation known as the *bad* press — consisting of a pierced round stone rotated on a horizontal stone to crush olives — was used throughout much of this period and persisted in traditional presses into later centuries. This method increased extraction efficiency and supported larger production volumes.[11][12] Olive oil from this era was used for food, lamp lighting, cosmetics, and religious rites. The continuity of olive cultivation through these centuries contributed to an enduring agricultural landscape characterized by olive groves, terracing, and village‑based production.
Early Islamic period (c. 636–1516 CE)
Following the Arab‑Muslim conquests of the seventh century CE, olive cultivation remained widespread in Palestine. Archaeological and historical research indicates that olive oil production in Palestine continued from the Byzantine period into the Early Islamic period (7th–11th centuries). Material evidence from sites across the southern Levant shows continuity in olive cultivation and oil‑pressing technologies, and many installations remained in use or were adapted after the Arab‑Muslim conquests rather than being abandoned entirely.[13][14]
Olive oil continued to be used for domestic consumption, and documentary evidence from ninth‑century Egypt records deliveries of oil originating in Palestine, demonstrating participation of local producers in wider commercial networks. Archaeological finds of Palestinian amphorae in Egypt further attest to this trade. Local agricultural practices persisted among rural communities, although the scale and organization of production varied over time.[13]
Ottoman period (1516–1917 CE)
During Ottoman rule, olive cultivation was a defining feature of Palestinian rural agriculture. Sixteenth‑century Ottoman tahrir (tax registers) for villages in the Sanjak of Nablus recorded olive trees and olive oil‑related production such as presses among taxable agricultural commodities. These registers provide quantitative evidence of taxable resources including olives and their products across hundreds of villages in Ottoman Palestine, showing how integral the crop was to the agrarian and fiscal economy. [15][16]
In the 19th century, olive tree cultivation and oil production dominated much of the agricultural landscape in Palestine, particularly in the highlands. Ottoman authorities applied agricultural policies that impacted village life, including regulations on peasant residence and labor tied to olive cultivation. Olive oil was used locally for lighting, food, soap production, and body care, and was also a significant commercial commodity. Production techniques evolved over the century with the introduction of semi‑mechanical iron screw presses, which became integrated into traditional press buildings in many villages and towns, reflecting a form of proto‑industrial development in the rural olive oil sector. These presses are documented as material remnants in abandoned facilities across Palestinian villages.[17]
By the late Ottoman period, the area around Nablus had become a major center of olive cultivation and oil production. In the period between 1700 and 1900, the area around Nablus had developed to be the major area for olive production,[18] and the olive oil was used in lieu of money. The oil was stored in deep wells in the ground in the city and surrounding villages which was then used by merchants to make payments.[18]. Nablus also became historically significant as a center for olive oil soap production, a craft that emerged as early as the 10th century CE. By the 12th century, Nabulsi soap was renowned in the Arab world for its quality. Production expanded during the 19th century, when dozens of soap factories operated in the city, using olive oil from surrounding groves and *qili* (alkaline salts) imported from the Jordan Valley. Around 1907, records indicate approximately 30 soap factories producing the majority of soap in Palestine, which was exported regionally due to its durability and high quality. Traditional methods, combining olive oil with natural alkaline substances, continued through the British Mandate period.[19][20][21]
By the late 19th century, cash crops in Ottoman Palestine were being rapidly expanded, and by 1914 there were 475 thousand dunam of olive groves (about 47.5 thousand hectares or 112 thousand acres) across the area that was part of the Ottoman Empire.[22]
In the late Ottoman period before the First World War, olive oil produced near Nablus was hard to export due to its relatively high acidity, high price and limited shelf-life.[23]
British Mandate period (1920–1948)
During the British Mandate era, olive cultivation continued to be a major component of Palestinian agriculture. According to agricultural records from the period, the area of land planted with olives expanded significantly compared with the late Ottoman era. By the mid‑1940s, olives were one of the most widely cultivated permanent crops in Palestine, with **595,405 dunums (approximately 59,540 hectares) planted with olive trees in 1944–45**. Of this area, the vast majority was owned and farmed by Palestinian Arab farmers, with a small fraction under other ownership. That year, the estimated olive harvest reached **75,341 tons of olives**, with millions of productive trees bearing fruit under varying climatic conditions. The number of fruitful olive trees in that period was estimated in the millions, with individual tree yields varying according to weather and soil conditions. During drought years average yields were about 2 kg per tree, while in more fruitful years some trees yielded up to 12 kg, producing an average per tree output of around 7 kg annually.[24]
Land planted with olives continued to increase throughout the Mandate period, reflecting both the deep cultural integration of olive cultivation and its economic importance. Agricultural surveys and historical research indicate that by the 1940s olive groves covered roughly **600,000 dunums**, with nearly all trees in bearing condition and overwhelmingly under Palestinian Arab ownership, demonstrating continuity and growth in the sector relative to earlier decades.[25]
Olive groves were cultivated across the hilly regions of Palestine, from the Galilee and Samaria to the central highlands and down to the southern hills, with village and family holdings forming the backbone of production. The annual olive harvest remained a significant seasonal event, shaping agricultural calendars and rural labour patterns across Palestinian villages. Harvesting practices in this period largely continued traditional methods, with olives picked by hand or with simple tools before being transported to village presses and local mills for pressing into oil.
Olive oil, produced in these years, served primarily domestic needs but also contributed to local markets. A portion of the olive crop was consumed locally as edible oil, while other fractions were used for soap making, table olives, and occasional trade within regional markets. The Mandate period thus saw both an increase in olive cultivation area and sustained reliance on olives and olive oil as key agricultural outputs in Palestinian rural economies.
Post‑1948 and the Israeli occupation (1948–present)
Following the 1948 Nakba, which led to the displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians and the depopulation of hundreds of villages, olive cultivation in historic Palestine was profoundly affected. Prior to 1948, Palestinian Arab farms accounted for the overwhelming majority of olive production; in the 1944–45 agricultural season, approximately 97.5 % of nearly 80,000 tons of olives harvested in Palestine were grown by Arab Palestinian farmers, illustrating the centrality of olives to Palestinian agriculture.[26]
The aftermath resulted in widespread loss of access to olive groves due to displacement, land confiscation, and destruction of villages. Many Palestinian farmers who became refugees were unable to return to their lands and olive trees, which were often left untended, destroyed, or repurposed. Some displaced farmers attempted to return to harvest olives from abandoned lands, often at great personal risk, though most were prevented by hostilities and armed presence.[27]
Palestinians who were able to remain in territories incorporated into Israel after 1948, and as a result became citizens of the Israeli state", particularly in the Galilee, continued to cultivate olives under the constraints of new agricultural and land tenure policies. Between 1948 and 1955, Palestinian farmers adapted to regulations while maintaining cultivation on their remaining lands.[28] In addition to land expropriation, Palestinian farmers in Israel faced disparities in access to agricultural resources. Official agricultural statistics from this era show that Arab villages, despite cultivating a significant portion of the country’s field crops, were allocated only a small percentage of national agricultural water consumption. This inequitable distribution of water resources constrained the ability to maintain intensive cultivation, including olive groves under rain‑fed conditions that were typical of Palestinian agriculture.[29]
Despite these challenges, olive cultivation persisted on remaining village lands. The adaptation to reduced holdings and limited irrigation occurred alongside shifts in rural labour patterns, with some families supplementing agricultural income through wage labour while continuing to harvest olives. In some communities such as Majd al‑Krum, a substantial portion of the surviving cultivated land was devoted to olive groves even after significant land loss, though many farmers faced ongoing challenges related to soil quality, water scarcity, and fragmentation of plots.[30]
In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, under Jordanian and Egyptian administration respectively until 1967, Olive cultivation remained a key agricultural resource for subsistence and local market economies, although overall land holdings were reduced compared with pre‑1948 levels due to displacement.[31][32]
After the occupation of Palestine, Israeli forces targeted olive trees as a primary form of land acquisition and began to uproot Palestinian olive trees in 1967, with an estimated 830,000 olive trees uprooted between 1967 and 2009.[33]
The olive harvest was the primary source of income for Palestinians during the first Intifada and was so essential for the Palestinian communities that public institutions, universities, and public schools closed for the olive season so as many people as possible could help with the harvest.[34]
In 2014, UNESCO designated Battir as a World Heritage site because of its agricultural significance as its olive production characterizes the landscape through "extensive agricultural terraces, water springs, ancient irrigation systems, human-settlement remains, olive presses, and an historic core."[35]
Currently, olive oil is an essential export for Palestinians in the West Bank. Marketing consultant Robert Massoud states, "There is very little Palestinians can export but olive oil."[36] This dependence on olive oil exports is widespread throughout the West Bank to the point that, to most villagers, olive oil represents economic security.[34]
The vast majority of the olive harvest is pressed in the West Bank mostly around the town of Jenin where most of the olive oil presses are located.[2]
Olive oil produced in Palestine is primarily consumed locally.[37] The natural olive tree cycle of high-yield years followed by low-yield years has caused large fluctuations in production, but on average there is an excess of around 4,000 tonnes of olive oil produced per year. Of this, the biggest market is likely to be to Israel – although the data is not collected, making the destination of the oil hard to assess. The rest is exported to Europe, North America and the Gulf states.[37] The International Olive Council estimates that the average production of Palestinian olive oil was 22,000 tonnes per year with 6,500 tonnes exported in 2014/15.[38]
The main olive cultivars used in Palestine are Chemlali, Jebbah, Barnea, Manzolino, Nabali Baladi, Nabali Mohassan, Shami and Souri.[39] Molecular characterisation of Nabali Baladi, Nabali Mohassan and Surri cultivars from olive trees growing in the West Bank has shown that they are true cultivars with measurable differences.[40]
Culture
Olive trees are seen as being a major component of traditional Palestinian farming life, with several generations of families gathering together to harvest the olives for two months from mid-September.[41] The harvest season is often associated with celebration for these families, and family and local community celebrations are organised with traditional Palestinian folk music and dancing.[41]
Anthropologist Anne Meneley describes her olive-picking experience as community oriented:
We are hot and dusty and sometimes clumsy as we negotiate the rough rocks that surround the olive trees. Our Palestinian hosts bring us most welcome cool water and juice and hot sweet tea and coffee. There is communitas of sorts in this shared labor: we feel that we are contributing something, however symbolic, to the Palestinian cause.[42]
As olive cultivation is a significant aspect of Palestinian culture, the uprooting of olive trees by Israeli settlers is a prominent point of concern in Palestinian culture. Poet Mourid Barghouti describes olive trees as "the identity card that doesn't need stamps or photos and whose validity doesn't expire with the death of the owner" and "with each olive tree uprooted by Israeli bulldozers, a family tree of Palestinian peasants falls from the wall."[43]
Religiously, "the Holy Books refer more often to the vine and the olive tree"[44] than to prophets. Muslim teaching also holds olives in high regard as "the Almighty is even believed to have himself taken an oath by the olive tree."[44]
More recently, the olive tree is a symbol of rootedness. After the Israel Defense Forces defeated the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1982 Lebanon War, the olive became a symbol for Palestinian identity. Because "olive trees are a prominent feature of the mountainous region of the landscape in the West Bank," Palestinians began to "draw connections between their ancient presence in Palestine and that of the ancient olive tree rooted in the land of Palestine."[34]
Olive trees also have a nationalist connotation in Palestinian culture. In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, Yasser Arafat stated that Zionist terrorism targeted the olive tree because it "has been a proud symbol" and "living reminder that the land is Palestinian."[45] He concluded the speech with a nationalist reference to the olive branch:
Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.[45]
Arafat's remarks on the olive branch still influence literature today in works such as Raja Shehadeh's "Diary of an Internal Exile: Three Entries" in which she writes about her struggles as a resident of the West Bank. She concludes, "Arafat was right to hold a gun in one hand and an olive branch in the other. I was never so naive as to expect that Israel could be won over by the olive branch alone, but the gun could only ever be a means to an end."[46]
In her 2009 publication entitled Tree Flags, legal scholar and ethnographer, Irus Braverman, describes how Palestinians identify olive groves as an emblem or symbol of their longtime, steadfast agricultural connection (sumūd) to the land.[47]:1[48][49] Similar destruction of olive trees occurred in Jabal Jales (an area near Hebron) and in Huwara.[50] The United Nations reported that by 2013, 11,000 olive trees owned by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank had been damaged or destroyed.[51][52] Washington Post, October 2014:
"More than 80,000 Palestinian farmers derive a substantial portion of their annual income from olives. Harvesting the fruit, pressing the oil, selling and sharing the produce is a ritual of life."
In 2012 Israel was urged to protect West Bank olive trees after trees were uprooted in al-Mughir, Turmusaya, Nablus, al-Khader, and Ras Karkar.[53] In 2014 trees were uprooted in Deir Istiya and Wadi Qana with some 800,000 to one million trees having been destroyed since 1967.[54] In 2016 trees were uprooted to build a road in Qalqilya.[55] In 2017 laborers began uprooting olive trees to build a bypass road near Azzun and Nabi Ilyas. According to international law[56] an occupying power can only take land to build roads benefiting the residents or military needs specific to the occupied territory. In January 2017 B’Tselem reported there were approximately 60 kilometres (37mi) of roads that Palestinian were prohibited from using.[57] With the many trees being removed or vandalized, some 700 to 1000 years old and still bearing fruit, to build a wall roads, other "improvements", as well as for the building of illegal settlements this has caused economic hardships especially with families separated from their farmlands.[58]
In October 2021, settlers vandalized 8,000 trees in the West Bank. In the first two weeks of the 2021 harvest, 18 incidents of damage to Palestinian olive groves, consisting of acts of battering or chopping down trees or denuding their fruits were reported.[59]
In the 2023 olive harvest season, Yesh Din reported 113 attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank that disrupted olive harvest.[60] The attacks caused 96,000 dunams of olive-planted land to go unharvested last year, resulting in approximately US$10,000,000 in losses.[61][62] Approximately 1,340 olive trees were slashed by settlers in Qaryut in 2024.[62] Over 150 attacks on olive pickers have been recorded in the 2025 olive harvest season.[63]
↑Lodolini, E.M.; Ali, S.; Mutawea, M.; Qutub, M.; Arabasi, T.; Pierini, F.; Neri, D. (2014). "Complementary irrigation for sustainable production in olive groves in Palestine". Agricultural Water Management. 134: 104–109. Bibcode:2014AgWM..134..104L. doi:10.1016/j.agwat.2013.12.006. ISSN0378-3774.
↑Goren, Y.; Vardi, R.; Weiner, S. (2022). "Early Olive Oil Production in the Southern Levant". Scientific Reports. 12: 1–12. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-10743-6.
↑Liphschitz, N.; Gophna, R.; Hartman, M.; Biger, G. (1991). "The Beginning of Olive (Olea europaea) Cultivation in the Old World: A Reassessment". Journal of Archaeological Science. 18 (4): 441–453. doi:10.1016/0305-4403(91)90037-P.
↑Kaniewski, D.; Van Campo, E.; Boiy, T. (2012). "Primary Domestication and Early Uses of the Emblematic Olive Tree: Palaeobotanical, Historical and Molecular Evidence from the Middle East". Biological Reviews. 87 (4): 885–899. doi:10.1111/j.1469-185X.2012.00229.x.
↑Springer, "Archaeobotanical assemblages from Tel Kabri: Olive cultivation in the Early Bronze Age southern Levant". 2023.
↑"The Olive Trees and The Olive Press in Palestine", Virtual Museum of Tourism Palestine. 2025.
↑Detailed description of ancient olive pressing technologies in Palestinian contexts. Palestine‑Studies.org. 2021.
12Sijpesteijn, Petra Marieke (2014). "Making the Private Public: A Delivery of Palestinian oil in third/ninth‑century Egypt". Studia Orientalia Electronica. 2: 74–91.
↑Taxel, Itamar (2013). "The Olive Oil Economy of Byzantine and Early Islamic Palestine: Some Critical Notes". Liber Annuus. 63: 361–394.
↑Coşgel, Metin M. (2006). "Ottoman Taxation in Palestine, Syria, and Transjordan in the Sixteenth Century: The Determinants of Kism Rates". Explorations in Economic History. 43: 332–356. doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2005.03.002.
↑Hütteroth, Wolf‑Dieter; Abdulfattah, Kamal (1977). Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten. ISBN3920405412.
↑"Olive Oil Production in the Late Ottoman Rule", Palestine‑Studies.org. 2024.
↑Massad, S.J.; et al. Farming, Water, Food Sovereignty, and Nutrition in Palestine. International Journal of Food and Nutrition Sciences. 2025. Table of major crops in Palestine before 1947 indicating olive statistics for 1944–45.
↑"Ottoman and Mandate Periods." Olive production summary, 2025.
↑World Agriculture Report. 1945 agricultural data for Palestine.
↑IBRASPAL. "The Abandoned Harvests of 1948: Palestinian Farmers Remember the Nakba". 2025.
↑Reger, J.D. "Olive Cultivation in the Galilee, 1948–1955: Hegemony and Resistance", *Journal of Palestine Studies*, Vol. 46 No. 4, 2017.
↑Kubursi, S. "Water, Agriculture and Palestinian Arab Villages, 1948–1966." McMaster University, 2025.
↑Haidar 1995; Orni 2007, as discussed in sources on Majd al‑Krum agriculture. 2025.
↑Understanding Palestine. Olive Tree Cultivation. 2025. Olive trees are widespread across the West Bank and Gaza, with over 10 million trees on nearly half of cultivated land.
↑Understanding Palestine. Olive Tree Cultivation. 2025. In 2022, an estimated 100,000 tons of olives and 20,000 tons of oil were produced by Palestinian farmers.
123Abufarha, Nasser (3 June 2008). "Land of Symbols: Cactus, Poppies, Orange and Olive Trees and Palestine". Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. 15 (3): 343–368. doi:10.1080/10702890802073274. S2CID143956974.
12Darweish, M (2012). "Chapter 13: Olive Trees: Livelihoods and Resistance". In Özerdem, A; Roberts, R (eds.). Challenging post-conflict environments: sustainable agriculture. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate. pp.175–188. ISBN9781409434825.
↑Meneley, Anne (2014). "The Accidental Pilgrims: Olive Pickers in Palestine". Religion and Society: Advances in Research. 5: 186–199.
↑Shehadeh, Raja (2013). "The Driver Mahmoud". Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home. Northampton, Massachusetts: Olive Branch Press.
↑Shehadeh, Raja (2013). "Diary of an Internal Exile: Three Entries". Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home. Northampton, Massachusetts: Olive Branch Press.
↑Cook, W. (18 August 2010). "The Olive Trees of Palestine Weep". The Plight of the Palestinians: A Long History of Destruction. Springer. pp.51–53.- Retrieved 2018-07-14
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