Engineer Zina Al Jaajaa participated, as a spokesperson for APN, with a distinct set of speakers in an event entitled (About Palestine, from Palestine, to Palestine) organized by Pecha Kucha - Amman, (6 September 2021).
During the webinar, Al Jaajaa explained the environmental and agricultural destruction policy pursued by the Israeli occupation in Palestine and the surrounding countries, pointing to the continuous environmental violations in Lebanon and the Jordanian-Palestinian borders in the northern Jordan Valley committed by the Israeli occupation, where the latter intentionally exploits the wind movement to ignite and destroy hundreds of dunums of Ghori agricultural land.
Al Jaajaa presented a comprehensive overview of The Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN), indicating that it is an independent and non-profit "green movement". APN has a local impact through its developmental rehabilitation projects, and a regional impact by defending and espousing the demands and aspirations of smallholder farmers in the Arab region, in addition to international influence through involvement and participation in a number of international forums and platforms.
When explaining the motives for establishing “APN”, Engineer Zina said that the Israeli entity uproots - according to statistics - every minute a tree, as part of a systematic war targeting olive trees and fruit trees and confiscation of land; In order to devalue the Palestinians' attachment to their land , in addition to robbing them of their livelihoods, disturbing them and preventing farmers from reaching their orchards, in attempts to pressure them to leave their lands in favor of establishing colonial projects. she also pointed to the occupation’s exploitation and manipulation of the laws in order to steal the land from its owners.
She pointed out that the occupation has uprooted more than 3 million trees until today, and is deliberately executing trees and stealing perennial trees, in order to replant them in colonies, or sell them for millions of dollars in global auctions. Moreover, she explained how the occupation focuses on destroying livestock and plants during its aggression and wars on the Gaza Strip, stating that the losses resulting from the recent aggression on the Strip amounted to more than 200 million dollars.
In response to all of this, Al Jaajaa explained that APN worked stubbornly to replant the uprooted trees within the Million Tree Program, under the slogan “They uproot a tree..we plant ten”. She said that the association has so far managed to plant two million and 700 thousand fruitful trees. It left amazing results in terms of strengthening the farmers' resilience and protecting the lands. Through these trees, the association was able to empower more than 29,000 Palestinian farmers.
She noted that those in charge of the association follow strict determinants and criteria in receiving funding, stressing that the association only accepts unconditional and non-domesticated funding, which poses challenges for the association, but Arab national hands always can be counted on, according to Al Jaajaa.
She pointed out that "Israel" began to notice the impact of APN work on the ground, which lead "Israel" to set budgets to monitor the association and seek to intensify its logging activities. She also noted the restrictions imposed on the "APN" page on Facebook, which prevents its work from reaching followers, calling for the need to initiate media support from everyone.
Speakers (Lama Shehadeh, Shatha Safi, Ibrahim Al-Hindi, Tariq Al-Bakri, Majd Mashharawi) participated in the webinar, in addition to a number of followers and interested parties.