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Pales­tine was added as a mem­ber of the Inter­na­tional Olive Coun­cil (IOC) on April 9, 2017, bring­ing the total num­ber of IOC mem­bers to 14 (the Euro­pean Union is counted as one mem­ber).

The State of Pales­tine became a mem­ber of the IOC (a United Nations orga­ni­za­tion) fol­low­ing its rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the 2015 Inter­na­tional Agree­ment on Olive Oil and Table Olives.

To com­mem­o­rate the event, Abdel­latif Ghedira, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the IOC, wel­comed Musa Amer Odeh, the ambas­sador of Pales­tine to Spain to IOC head­quar­ters with other IOC staff and ambas­sadors and diplo­mats from Oman, Tunisia, Alge­ria, Qatar, Jor­dan, and the Arab League.

Ambas­sador Odeh thanked IOC staff for the wel­come and reminded those present of the olive tree’s sig­nif­i­cance as a uni­ver­sal sym­bol of peace. The occa­sion was marked by the hoist­ing of the Pales­tin­ian flag at IOC head­quar­ters next to the flags of the other IOC mem­ber coun­tries.

Pales­tine had been seek­ing mem­ber­ship to the IOC since 2013 when its appli­ca­tion was blocked by Ger­many and the United King­dom because of con­cerns that it could dis­rupt Israeli-Pales­tin­ian peace talks. Under the con­di­tions of the talks, Pales­tine was asked to not join any UN orga­ni­za­tions or address the Inter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court in The Hague in exchange for Israel’s release of Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers.

Olives have been cul­ti­vated in Pales­tine for thou­sands of years and are a major agri­cul­tural crop. Pales­tin­ian olive farm­ers have faced dif­fi­cult chal­lenges in zones under Israeli mil­i­tary con­trol, like the require­ment of per­mits to har­vest their olives, while thou­sands of olive trees and saplings in the West Bank have been uprooted and dam­aged by Israeli set­tlers.

Accord­ing to IOC fig­ures, 24,500 tons of olive oil were pro­duced in Pales­tine dur­ing the 2014/15 crop year, with 6,500 tons exported to other coun­tries.

• Inter­na­tional Olive Coun­cil


• Haaretz