Introduction

I am walking through an olive grove with Abu Iyad,1 a coordinator of the popular resistance campaign in the West Bank village of Budrous. “If you ask someone in the village if they know me, Abu Iyad, maybe they will and maybe they won’t. But if you ask them if they know Umm Haya,” he continues, gesturing towards a gnarled tree ahead, “they will know that tree. So when a tree is uprooted, it is like watching an old woman whom you have known your whole life die in a single moment.”