There was a time when Kalkilya was the focus of bomb making and terrorism but a new program is aiming to turn this Palestinian city into the strawberry capital of the West Bank. The first crop of the ruby red fruit in this pilot program is halfway to harvest. The Palestinians hope to be able to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe and possibly sell strawberries to a major international ice cream producer. This is the first attempt to grow strawberries in the West Bank. In the shadow of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this pilot project, backed by international donors, has seen Israeli agriculture experts helping the Palestinian economy by developing a new “cash crop” highly in demand both in Israel and abroad. For the past few months, Israeli agriculture advisers have been training Palestinian farmers in growing these delicious, but highly sensitive fruit. Sponsored by the Flemish Foreign Ministry and facilitated by the Peres Center for Peace, Israeli experts have been supplying Palestinian farmers with irrigation equipment, nylon, pesticides and training that will help them raise the high-quality strawberries required for export. The Peres Center for Peace and others have approached various ice cream manufacturers as possible industrial markets. Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Company in Israel confirmed that it has examined the possibility but that no agreement has yet been reached. Strawberries thrive on loamy sand and the fields around Kalkilya are the first place where they are being cultivated by the Palestinians in the West Bank.
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