HEBRON (Ma’an) — An annual campaign to plant one million trees on land facing annexation in the occupied West Bank kicked off Tuesday in Hebron.

Dozens of Palestinian activists planted olive trees near the Qurtuba school in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron.

The campaign was organized by the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature, in partnership with the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development.

Several Palestinian institutions such as Al-Quds University, the Palestine Polytechnic University, and the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee, are taking part in the activities.

Maysara Salah, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Voluntary Work Committee, said that the campaign would move to other districts in the West Bank on a weekly basis.

The next locations will be in Sair, Yatta and the south Hebron hills before moving to the central and northern West Bank.

The first two campaigns cultivated over 90,000 dunams of land owned by around 17,000 Palestinian farmers, supporting roughly 122,000 people.

The initiative intends to help farmers maintain ownership of agricultural land threatened by Israeli annexation and replant tree seedlings on damaged land.

The olive industry supports the livelihoods of roughly 80,000 families in the occupied West Bank.

Since 1967, approximately 800,000 olive trees have been uprooted in the occupied West Bank, according to a joint report by the Palestinian Authority and the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem.

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