planting

He added, "It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more."

During the course of the Nakba, the removal of Palestinians from their lands was accompanied by the renaming of sites and often by planting trees on the sites of villages, terraced fields and olive groves.

According to the Akevot Institute, internal JNF documents from 1987 show that the organization has been planting in the West Bank for the express purpose of preparing the land for Jewish settlers and rendering it unusable for Palestinians seeking to return.

For now, planting another forest where Gaza's villages and cities once stood seems like a distant possibility and an unimportant concern.

"We use so many of these insecticides in Minnesota -- basically every corn and soybean seed is treated before planting -- and many of these chemicals can be purchased at a local hardware store for spraying fruit trees, flea and tick control for your pets, and eliminating bedbugs."