It's been four years since Operation Protective Edge, an operation that brought the nation to a standstill and saw 4,594 rockets and mortars fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip. While mortars were whistling over their heads and landing on their doorsteps, farmers in Gaza-adjacent communities kept sowing, planting, harvesting, and sending fresh food to civilians all over Israel. The nation's store of vegetables kept running throughout all 53 days of the fighting.
What's different this time? The color. Green has turned black. Instead of rockets, the threat level has dropped from terrorism that puts lives at risk to terrorism that leaves the land scorched. Burning kites and balloons leave fields in cinders and send nature preserves and grazing land up in flames. A field that is burned this year will be green again in a year's time, but it will take at least 15 years for 40,000 dunams (almost 10,000 acres) of forests and fields to return to what they used to be. The south that turns brilliant red every year as anemones bloom across the western Negev will stay black.
Negev farmers are a tough breed. In the past 20 years, they've seen and experienced almost everything possible, and still, they get up early in the morning or the middle of the night to water their fields and grow fruit and vegetables, wheat and the barley, and even bananas and avocados for the country.
We hope that the government won't take us for granted. There is no political problem here; the problem is a national one, and the government and the security forces must find a solution. We know that a harvest that is burned up cannot be salvaged, but we can be compensated, and quickly, without farmers having to navigate the bureaucracy of the Israel Tax Authority. A solution can and must be found to counter the fires, and no less important, Israel needs to create a new reality in the region that will break the cycle of violence and allow the many people who have moved to the area in recent years to enjoy a regular life like everyone else, free from Qassam rockets, incendiary balloons and kites, or tunnels.
