AMMAN, (PIC)
The Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN) – based in Jordan – said that it has accomplished, in partnership with Gaza farmers, the rehabilitation and cultivation of about 400 dunums of agricultural land in Gaza (one dunum is equivalent to a thousand square meters) by planting vegetable seedlings.
The Group said in a press statement on Monday, that the “Revive Gaza’s Farmland” project “comes in defiance of the ongoing Israeli war of starvation against Gaza for several months.”
The Group was able to reach about 162 farmers from the northern, central, and southern regions until now and managed to provide them with agricultural crops “of high nutritional value and rapid production quality,” the statement added.
The “Revive Gaza’s Farmland” project was organized in cooperation with the Gaza municipality through the cultivation of seeds and seedlings of vegetables in the municipality’s plant nursery, with an area of about 6.5 dunums, “which was destroyed by Israeli occupations army’s bulldozers at the beginning of the aggression which executed tens of thousands of trees and seedlings, while deliberately bulldozing about 55,000 trees in the streets of Gaza City.”
APN supported 100 farmers from Central Gaza and Deir al-Balah in planting half a million (500,000) vegetable seedlings of tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, hot and sweet pepper, melon and zucchini, covering approximately 200 dunums.
It also recultivated approximately 170 dunums in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip with 900 kilos of “Molokhia” seeds, and 115,000 seeds of eggplant and hot pepper.
The APN’s statement elaborated that the first phase of the “Revive Gaza’s farmland” project, in addition to cultivating crops, includes the rehabilitation of the affected farms by extending irrigation networks instead of those damaged in the aggression, building greenhouses, planting fruit trees, constructing and restoring agricultural ponds and fishing equipment, in addition to the rehabilitation of chicken farms and honeybees, “all of this by directly benefiting from the resources within the Gaza Strip.”
The second stage, which is expected to commence soon, includes cultivating 50,000 varied fruitful trees, given that 60% of the Israeli war of destruction targeted trees.
The head of the APN, Razan Zuaiter, said “this exceptional war needed a quick response, to confront the war of starvation imposed by the Israeli aggression on the people of the Gaza Strip,” stressing the need to focus on local food production amid the blocked access to humanitarian aid.
