It’s getting colder, so I headed out to buy some wood for our fireplace from our Palestinian neighbors in the nearby village of Wadi Fukin, situated just a few kilometers west of Bethlehem. In this narrow valley agriculture is still practiced much as it has been since biblical times, with terraces and hand-dug water wells. The land here is fertile, my friend Shaadi once told me, and they live in harmony with the residents of the adjacent Orthodox Jewish settlement of Beitar Illit.
The local Palestinians benefit as much as anyone from the Promised Land flowing with “milk and honey.” The foreign media almost always portrays the situation in the so-called “West Bank” in a negative light, but in reality, agriculture here is flourishing. And what’s more, the Palestinians have Israel’s assistance to thank for it.
More than 300,000 Palestinians make their living from farming the biblical heartlands of Judea and Samaria. Their total annual revenue is almost $365 million (£280 million), and they employ 15 percent of the total workforce in the region. Another 150,000 Palestinian...
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