c. 1999 Religion News Service

BETHLEHEM, West Bank _ Until the rains stopped coming two years ago, Daoud Ahmed, 44, made a good living from his subsistence farm of about 25 acres. There was even food left over to share with his brother who lives up the road.

His six other brothers had gone to work in cities or abroad. But Ahmed stubbornly stayed on the land to work the farm fields he had both inherited from his parents and grandparents and leased from neighbors.”Other men of my generation thought that they could raise their standard of living by working in the cities, and enjoy an easier life,”said Ahmed, whose rich bottom soil has been turned desertlike by winter drought.”But all they found was more troubles, more pressure. I am the one who had peace of mind.” Ahmed’s lifestyle is a modern continuation of the quintessential Holy Land culture that has persisted here for over 4,000 years through waves of successive Jewish, Christian and Muslim occupation.

That culture painted the semi-arid Bethlehem area green with olive and fruit orchards, vineyards, wheat fields and vegetable patches nourished mostly by rain-fed water sources _ so much so that European travelers in the Crusader and early medieval period often remarked on the richness of the land and its abundance.

Today, however, the rapid pace of change is evident in the farm areas around Bethlehem, where the sharp terraced angles of once fertile hillsides are gradually losing their distinctive shape from erosion.”You see the terraces of the neighbors, which are crumbling, you see the trees which have fallen into decline,”said Ahmed, pointing to a neighbor’s adjacent lot.”People haven’t got time to take care of their land anymore. They are too tired when they come home from work.” The dramatic pace of change is also evident in the abrupt way in which the countryside changes during a journey of less than 10 miles. One passes from the traffic-jammed, gleaming shopping centers of suburban Jerusalem to the 19th century ambience of Bethlehem, and finally to Ahmed’s farm on the fringes of the Judean desert, where an almost biblical scene unfolds.

For two years, the drought that has plagued Ahmed’s land has ravaged the Bethlehem area, now under control of the Palestinian Authority. Even on this late-December day the temperature hovers between 70 and 80 degrees. And even if it rains, Ahmed fears the water will evaporate before it can nourish his crops.

His warehouse stores are nearly empty. Soon he too may be forced to seek a job in the city.

The current drought, both Israeli and Palestinian experts say, is the Holy Land’s worst since the 1930s. Palestinians say Israeli control of the vast majority of the region’s water supply has made it even tougher for small farmers such as Ahmed.

The problem is particularly acute in the Bethlehem area where agriculture is mostly rain-fed, while northern West Bank Palestinian areas have at least some independent access to irrigation sources, said Nader Al Hreimat of the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, which deals with West Bank environment, transport and agriculture issues.

The drought, however, is only exacerbating a process already under way of rapid subdivision of farmland into housing developments. The results are readily apparent on the hillsides flanking Bethlehem.

Visitors approaching the city can observe new Palestinian suburbs of single-family homes built helter-skelter on old terraces to accommodate a population that is growing at a rate of 3 percent annually.”Traditional farmers love their land, and would love to continue farming,”said Hreimat.”But only 5 percent of West Bank Palestinian land is irrigated, and this limits the income that can be earned from the land. Today, you will find mainly the women and the old people working on the land, while the men go to jobs in the cities.” Traditional inheritance laws also dictate that a family farm be divided equally among the male sons when the father passes away, a practice that has spurred the fragmentation of farmland, making it unprofitable.

At the same time, the real estate value of farmland around cities is steadily increasing. Poor families can often best guarantee their future by selling off plots of land for housing construction, usually to a more well-to-do family relative or a close neighbor.”Just think, land in the villages of the Bethlehem area may be worth anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 for a quarter-acre,”said Hreimat.”If a man has only two or three half-acre parcels left to him, it may be more worthwhile for him to sell off one parcel, and let his children build on the others, than to keep working the land at all.” During the three decades of Israeli occupation, West Bank land planning was driven mostly by the political aims of Israel’s military administration _ not by social trends or grand design. Israeli settlements took over many West Bank hilltops and also large expanses of the Judean desert. Palestinian villages had to expand in what was left, including fertile valley farmland.

Today, Palestinians still control land use only in and around the large cities, leaving little possibility for planning overall patterns of growth and development, particularly in the surrounding countryside.”Eighty percent of Palestinian land is still in areas which are under Israeli security control,”said Hreimat,”and that is the place where the building boom is happening.” If Palestinians do gain control of a contiguous bloc of West Bank land, as they hope the ongoing peace proces will yield them, they will nonetheless be faced with difficult development choices of their own.

Hreimat would like to see the eventual creation of farm committees or cooperatives, which would spur land conservation. Farmers who become members would enjoy access to new machinery and other subsidies, but they would also have to agree to keep each land parcel intact, turning it over to just one heir. Critics say that may not be realistic, given prevailing cultural norms.

Ahmed, for one, finds it hard to mull the future. A deeply religious man, he prefers to leave such matters in God’s hands.

But he hopes that ultimately, his five sons will be able to find their own solutions to the problem of the inheritance, much as he came to terms with his brothers when he took over his father’s plot.”I hope that my sons will cooperate together, as I have with my brothers,”he said.”But of course I would prefer to keep the land as one integral unit.” IR END FLETCHER