Gaza Herald — In Gaza this year, the question is no longer just how many olive trees survived the war. The harder question is whether the fruit that’s left can make it through a system that’s been broken at every step.
From orchards that can’t be reached to workers who can’t be paid and mills with no fuel or spare parts, the war didn’t just damage the trees. It followed the olive all the way to the press.
This olive season is now a test of whether anything is left of Gaza’s agricultural economy.
From 39 Mills to 8
Before the war, Gaza could handle its harvest. In 2022, the Strip had about 39 olive presses with a combined capacity of roughly 136 tons per hour, according to Shaher Al-Rifi, head of the Olive Press Committee in the Gaza Strip.
Today, only 8 presses are reportedly able to operate. Most are in the central governorate.
That collapse has created a bottleneck at the very end of the chain, right when farmers finally get their fruit to market.
The Olive Can Survive. The System Around It May Not.
The damage starts in the field.
Preliminary estimates say about 5,000 tons of olives remain on roughly 5,000 dunams of olive trees. But harvesting them is its own fight.
Farmers are dealing with damaged land, restricted access to fields near the border, high labor costs, and transportation costs that can exceed the value of the crop.
UN data shows how far this has gone. A joint FAO and UN Satellite Centre assessment found that 71.2% of orchards and trees had been damaged by September 2024.
By October 2025, that number had risen to approximately 89%. Olive orchards were among the worst hit, with damage estimated at approximately 90%.
For many farmers, the problem isn’t just growing olives. It’s reaching the trees, picking the fruit, and finding any functioning system capable of turning it into income.
From the Field to the Press
The few mills still running are carrying the weight of the whole sector.
Al-Rifi says they face severe shortages of spare parts, soaring maintenance costs, and constant electricity and fuel cuts. Keeping the machines running for even one day is a logistical battle.
NGOs and agricultural teams are trying to help by securing generator fuel, training workers to operate presses during blackouts, and subsidizing part of the harvesting costs.
But every extra cost along the chain lands on the farmer, and then on the family buying the oil.
This economy depends on people who never make it onto the label: the pickers, the drivers, the press operators, and the packagers. When one link breaks, the whole chain feels it.
A Harvest With an Economic Price
Olives in Gaza have never been just about food. They’re income. They’re jobs.
Harvesting, transportation, milling, storage, and sales — entire families depend on the two-month season.
With that cycle broken, even farmers who still have trees are left with fewer buyers, less capacity, and almost no profit margin.
Keeping 8 presses running won’t bring back the economy Gaza had before. But it can keep one more piece of it from disappearing.
Agricultural teams are now conducting guidance visits and trying to cut harvesting costs. The goal isn’t just to save this year’s crop. It’s to keep enough of the chain alive so there can be a next season.
When Survival Becomes the Harvest
This year, the olive’s journey tells the wider story of Gaza’s economy under war.
A tree can still stand, but the land around it is rubble.
A farmer can reach it, but can’t afford workers.
The fruit can be picked, but trucking it costs too much.
And even at the mill, the oil can be blocked by a lack of fuel, electricity, or spare parts.
So the destruction can’t be measured only in trees lost or tons missing. It has to be measured in the links that were cut between the field and the bottle.
For Gaza’s farmers, this harvest is an attempt to keep those links alive.
For the press workers, it’s a fight to keep the machines turning.
And for the families who depend on it, every liter of oil that makes it out represents more than food.
It represents a piece of an economy the war keeps pushing toward collapse, and the determination to keep it from vanishing completely.
