Our Family's Land: The Farm Behind Palbox

Our family has cared for land and olive trees in Bethlehem for more than 100 years.

Since 1991, our farm has faced the threat of confiscation from the surrounding Israeli settlements.

From a young age, we learned that farming in Palestine is never only about producing food. Land can be confiscated. Water can be restricted. Movement can be limited. Markets can become uncertain.

This is the story of our farm, and why Palbox exists.

A hilltop bought in 1916

In 1916, my great-grandfather, Daher Nassar, bought a hilltop about six miles southwest of Bethlehem, near the village of Nahalin. It is about 100 acres of terraced land, with grapevines, fruit trees, and olive groves. People still call it by his name: Daher's Vineyard.

He registered the land with the Ottoman authorities. Our family registered it again under the British Mandate in the 1920s, and again under Jordanian rule. We have kept every one of those papers. His son, my grandfather Bishara, and my grandmother Milade raised nine children on and around this land. Today my father, Daher, named after his grandfather, works it with his brother Daoud and sister Amal.

1991: "State land"

In 1991, Israeli authorities declared our farm "state land." Since then, our family has been in Israeli courts defending land we have owned, farmed, and documented for more than a century. It is one of the longest-running land cases in the West Bank, and it is still not resolved.

Over those years, the hills around us filled with settlements. Today the farm sits inside the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, with settlements and outposts on the hilltops around it. Settlers have built roads across parts of our land and fenced off the way in. In 2024, settlers began setting up a new outpost right next to our land.

Farming without water, power, or permits

Because the farm is in Area C, under full Israeli control, we cannot get permits to build, and the farm has no connection to the water or electricity network. So we adapted.

We collect rainwater in more than 20 underground cisterns. We run on solar panels. When we could not build above ground, we went below it: our family turned the natural caves on the hill into rooms, and one of them into a small chapel.

We have also had to replant, more than once. In 2002, settlers uprooted about 250 of our olive trees. In May 2014, Israeli army bulldozers destroyed around 1,500 of our fruit trees, a week after we filed an appeal and before the court could rule on it.

We planted again.

Why this became Palbox

Growing up with this land taught me something I still carry: staying on your land is not enough if you cannot earn a living from it. Of all the pressures I listed at the start, the one we could do something about from here was the last one. Markets.

That is what Palbox is. Every season, we buy directly from Palestinian farmers, artisans, and small family businesses, many facing the same restrictions our family knows, and we bring their work to your table with their names on it. Not "artisan-made." Made by someone we can name.

When you open a Palbox, you are part of that same choice our family made on the hill: to stay rooted, to keep growing, and to refuse to give up.

Thank you for being part of it.

Warmly,
Bshara & Kiersten