Sindyanna
Sindyanna is a Fair Trade organisation marketing olive oil products from Arab farmers in Israel and the West Bank. They also run a land reclamation project in the Galilee, where volunteers clear rocky land and distribute olive trees at half price, to plant on the land to make it harder to confiscate. The Middle East security situation often makes Sindyanna's work very, very difficult indeed.
Maitaba is a third-generation soap manufacturer from Nablus in the West Bank. When Israeli tanks roamed around Nablus last spring, he was confined to home for three weeks, while olive oil from surrounding villages was smuggled through the hills to his family's small soap factory. When the curfew was lifted, he found the doors of the factory smashed, machinery damaged, the hard disk of his computer gone, and barrels of olive oil squashed by Israeli tanks. The damage came to at least USD$10,000, and no one will compensate him. All he could do was to pick up the pieces and make soap from the remaining oil.
On the day set for delivery, there was a suicide bombing in Israel, and Nablus was again put under strict indefinite curfew. The soap had to go to the nearby village of Deir A-Sharaf where a truck with a license to enter Israel was waiting. Usually the trip takes ten minutes, but to avoid roadblocks, the driver went over dirt roads through the hills. It took many hours, and because of all the bumping, 10% of the shipment was squashed. Because the Nablus driver reached Deir A-Sharaf late, the licensed truck had to postpone its trip, but finally, weeks late, the remaining soap reached Sindyanna's warehouse in Galilee.
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