Deir Ammar, occupied West Bank - The Othman family sat looking out from their homes at the valley where they’ve picked olives for generations.

Ali Badaha, 60, and his cousins Ismail, 59, and Izzat Othman, 72, recalled chasing each other in those groves decades ago, singing and having picnics while their families harvested the ancestral olive trees.

At night, they and others in the hillside village waited their turn to press their olives at the village oil press among their neighbours, drinking tea and sharing stories.

But this year, for the first time in their lives, the family’s trees and their shrunken olives, long unpruned, have gone unpicked. There’s no singing this year. No picnics or kids playing tag through the groves.

Rather, the expansive Othman-Badaha clan, their children an

See Full Page