Evergreen Resistance: The Olive Tree and the Palestinian Struggle

Across the hills of Palestine, a tree stands that has outlived empires, crusades, occupations, and treaties. Its limbs are gnarled by time, its bark cracked by sun and storm, yet it grows. Not because the world made space for it, but because it claimed its own. The olive tree does not survive by accident. It survives by will.

And in its survival, it has become more than a tree. It has become an act of resistance.

In Palestine, the olive tree is not just a plant. It is not just a livelihood. It is a memory. It is resistance rooted in the soil. For centuries, it has offered fruit, oil, and firewood. But far beyond its utility, it has carried something heavier: identity. When so much has been stolen, erased, or rewritten, the olive tree remains defiantly unchanged. It bears witness.

 Existence Itself Is Resistance

The violence against these trees is not incidental. It is deliberate. It is a calculated attempt to sever the connection between a people and their land. When soldiers and settlers uproot, poison, or burn olive trees, it is not just environmental destruction — it is psychological warfare.

Every olive grove destroyed is a family history incinerated. Every root system hacked away is a declaration: "You do not belong here."

But the tree, and the people, answer back: "We do. We always have."

In every orchard set ablaze, there is a pattern. In every bulldozer trench where roots once ran deep, there is a message. The goal is not efficiency. It is fear. It is about reminding Palestinians that permanence is an illusion under occupation. That no tree, no memory, no home is safe.

Yet, these trees keep returning. Like the people who tend them, they know how to grow through cracks.

Cut an olive tree down, and it will fight its way back from the stump. Strip its leaves, and it will regrow them, slower perhaps, but stronger. Uproot it, and its seeds will carry. Resistance does not always come with slogans or stones. Sometimes it grows in silence, unnoticed, until it’s undeniable.

That is the kind of resistance that scares the colonizer: the kind that is patient, rooted, and self-replicating. The kind that does not wait for permission to exist. The kind that does not beg to be humanized.

In Palestine, resistance lives in stubbornness. It lives in hands that pick olives from trees that were nearly destroyed. It lives in elders who remember where each grove used to be, even when the land has been turned to rubble. It lives in the young who refuse to forget what their grandparents fought to protect.

It lives in every act of staying.

 Rejecting the Demand for a Palatable Truth

This world asks the oppressed to smile while suffering. To be poetic while bleeding. To tell their stories in ways that make the colonizer comfortable. But the olive tree does not soften its bark to be more appealing. It does not curve its branches to avoid offending those who seek to destroy it.

There is power in that. Unapologetic survival. Not beautiful for the sake of admiration, but beautiful because it exists in spite of every attempt to erase it.

Resistance should not have to come with a disclaimer. Existence under occupation is already a radical act. To plant a tree in stolen soil is defiance. To harvest fruit from land deemed illegal is a rejection of that legality. To press olives into oil, to light a lamp, to feed a family — these are not neutral acts. They are acts of political defiance.

There is no fair negotiation when one party carries the axe. There is no justice when the one uprooting the tree also writes the law. And there is no peace in asking the root to compromise with the hand that rips it from the earth.

The international stage loves a sanitized version of struggle. A "both sides" narrative that pretends colonization and resistance are morally equal. But the olive tree does not care for these performances. It knows what side it is on. It stands firm, even when the land beneath it is cracked with blood and grief.

This is not about balance. This is about survival.

 Where Roots Run Deep, Hope Grows

Even when the tree is gone, its memory lingers. The stumps tell stories. The soil holds the echo of roots. Children walk past empty groves and name them after what used to be there. Memory refuses to die quietly.

And that is why the tree must be attacked. Because it remembers. Because it connects. Because it binds the people to the land in a way no permit, checkpoint, or occupation decree can sever.

You can bulldoze a grove, but you cannot bulldoze a people’s will to remain.

This is not a poetic abstraction. This is physical, daily, intentional destruction. Thousands of olive trees are destroyed every year by a regime that knows exactly what they represent. These are not casualties of conflict. They are targets of an imperial project.

This is colonial violence dressed in legal paperwork. This is environmental warfare disguised as policy. This is the destruction of history in the name of control.

But even in fire, in absence, in silence, the tree resists.

Those who tend to the trees are not passive. They are not victims waiting to be saved. They are resisting every day with their hands in the soil. With their backs bent under baskets of its fruit. With their refusal to leave.

The tree stands because they stand.

And those of us far away must learn from that kind of resistance. We must name what is happening. We must reject the softness that dilutes the truth. We must stop asking the tree to be anything other than what it is: rooted, defiant, and unkillable.

The olive tree does not need your sympathy. It needs your solidarity.

Because this is not just about land.

It is about dignity. It is about memory. It is about the right to exist, fully and freely, without permission.

And it is about knowing that no matter how many times the tree is cut down, it will rise again. Because the root remains. Because the people remain.

Because resistance is evergreen.