It was a simple, albeit ambitious, idea: Run 100 miles across Palestine and Israel, planting olive trees along the way in support of a Fair Trade farmers alliance. However, in a narrow portion of the world where territory is negotiated house to house and inch by inch, something so seemingly simple as negotiating topography can become a nearly impossible feat.
The Run Across Palestine was, in essence, an effort to offer assistance to struggling farmers in Palestine and encourage sustainability at the same time. By incorporating a foot journey—with a team of American runners covering more than 100 miles between farms in five days—the project highlighted some of the political and social barriers blocking the function of daily like on both sites of the border.
The journey was captured by journalists and filmmakers Aaron Dennis and Jacob Wheeler in a documentary titled The People of the Olive.
Traversing a string of olive farms in the West Bank of Palestine, the goal of the run was first, to raise money—more than $100,000—for members of the Palestinian Fair Trade Association. A secondary—but equally significant—goal was to add new context to a region of the world that too often is relegated to back-page stories about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Revising the world’s image of the region is an optimistic goal but for a team of 10 runners and dozens of olive farmers, the dust beneath their shoes will never look the same.
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