Bitter Honey
By Herb Keinon
Jerusalem Post

(February 15) -- Beekeepers have been stung by the
mass theft of their hives -- 

The scene, from a distance, looks like a nuclear accident:
Thick black smoke billows into the air, forming dark,
foreboding clouds on an otherwise perfectly clear day.
Men in white uniforms with protective masks and gloves
scamper to and fro in the street, dressed as if ready to
deal with radioactive material. Sirens wail, horns honk. 

But this scene, unfolding at an IDF roadblock at the
northern entrance to Jenin last Wednesday morning, is no
nuclear mishap. The source of the smoke is not some
defective reactor, but large tractor tires set alight in the
road. And the white-uniformed men are not engineers
scouring the area and checking radioactivity levels, but
beekeepers in protest strutting about in their work
clothes. 

This is no accident at all; it is a well-planned
demonstration by a few dozen beekeepers who have
recently stepped up action to complain about the thieves
who, they say, are literally robbing them of their
livelihood. 

"We want to send a message both to the government and
to the Palestinian Authority that something must be done,"
declares Shaul Yarkoni, a 54-year-old beekeeper who
says he just can't take being robbed anymore. 

Waving his arm in the direction of Jenin, Yarkoni says
matter-of-factly, "They are stealing the country from
underneath our noses." And Yarkoni, who has stickers
declaring "Save the peace" and "Friend, you are missed"
plastered on the back of his pickup truck, is not speaking
metaphorically; he is not speaking - as a right-wing
activist might - of Palestinians "stealing" Judea and
Samaria away from the Jews. Yarkoni - a long-time
Labor supporter, who defines his political inclination as
"center, with tendencies to the Left" - is speaking quite
literally. He is speaking about the theft of hoses and water
pipes, meters and pumps, fertilizer, cattle, apples,
cherries, and tractors and, yes, beehives. Hundreds, no,
thousands, of beehives. 

"They are creating their Palestinian state with equipment
stolen from us," Yarkoni says. "It has to stop." The signs
hanging on sides of the trucks brought to the protest say it
all. "No beehives, no peace," reads one. "Enough
stealing," states another. "A land flowing with milk," reads
a third, with a large red "X" over the words "and honey." 

YARKONI, from Moshav Beit Oved near Rehovot, has
about 10 empty beehives in the back of his pickup truck.
The hives are white wooden containers - about 40 cm.
high by 50 cm. long - and were lugged to the roadblock
just south of Moshav Magen Shaul in the Jezreel Valley at
5:30 a.m. to serve as props for this early-morning street
theater. The immediate audience for this "show" includes
hundreds of Palestinian laborers prevented from going to
work because of the demonstration, and dozens of
soldiers and border police hoping the beekeepers don't
act on a threat and open up one of the full beehives
brought to the demonstration, releasing some 20,000
bees into the air. 

But Yarkoni and his colleagues are playing to a wider
audience than just the Palestinian day laborers and the
nervous border police. They are playing to an audience
which includes ministers and MKs, and the heads of the
Palestinian police. After months of working the back
channels in an attempt to get somebody somewhere to
pay attention to their plight, the beekeepers have decided
to take to the streets: burn some tires, block some roads,
and - if need be - release some bees. 

That ought to get people to take notice. 

"This is our third protest," says Yarkoni, stepping out of
his white protective uniform at the end of the
demonstration. "We started by blocking roads, then we
burned tires, and now we have brought live beehives. The
border patrol warned us that the Palestinians might get
angry and start throwing rocks. We said, we have no
problems with that. We have beehives here, and if we
open a few of them, 200,000 bees will be released.
Everyone will scatter, except for us - we know how to
deal with the bees." 

EVER SINCE the Oslo Accords were signed and large
tracts of the West Bank and Gaza started to come under
Palestinian control - limiting the police and IDF's ability to
pursue thieves and search for stolen goods - the theft of
agricultural material from kibbutzim and moshavim has
taken on epidemic proportions. Stories are legion of
agricultural thieves who strip apples off trees, take cattle
from their pens, and steal fertilizer from store-houses. 

"The beehives are not the only things stolen," says Shlomo
Dror, spokesman for the Coordinator of Government
Activities in the Territories. "We are also talking about
pumps, hoses, valves, seeds, and tractors. Everything."
But, Dror says, the stealing of beehives presents a unique
problem. 

"The problem with the beehives is that the damage
involved is very great - in addition to making honey, these
bees are supposed to pollinate the flowers, and that way
the orchards will produce more fruit. If someone comes
and steals a beehive, it is not only a loss to the owner of
the hive, but it also means that there will not be enough
bees in the area, and everyone will feel it in a couple
months when there won't be as much fruit on the trees." 

There is another problem, says Yarkoni, who - like most
beekeepers - has his beehives scattered around fields
throughout the country. 

In the last couple of years his 400 hives have been
whittled down to some 250. "I have lost a third of my
beehives," he laments. "If they steal from a tree, next year
the tree will bear more fruit. But if they steal a hive, it is
gone, over. I have to buy new equipment, new hives, new
honeycomb frames, new bees. I then have to train the
bees again; it takes a year or two to start all over. It is a
long process." 

ACCORDING TO YARKONI, one of four apiarists
behind what some are calling the "beekeepers' revolt," the
country's 400 beekeepers have stirred of late because the
thefts have simply gotten out of control. 

For example, between 2,600 and 3,000 of the country's
80,000 beehives were stolen last year alone, with some
600 stolen in December. 

The value of the beehives varies with the seasons -
dependent on how many bees are in the hive, and how
much honey they have already made. During April and
May, for instance, when the beehives are the busiest, one
hive may have up to 70,000 bees. Yarkoni estimates the
value of the losses last year at between NIS 2 million and
NIS 5 million. 

Although in global terms this does not sound like that
much money, and in comparison with the yearly loss due
to car thefts this is indeed small change, for the
beekeepers - many of them mom-and-pop operations -
the loss is considerable. And it is compounded by the fact
that it is generally borne solely by the beekeepers, since
few insurance companies are willing to insure the hives,
considered high-risk because they are located in open
fields and are very difficult to lock and protect. 

"The theft of agricultural equipment has been going on for
some time," says Yarkoni. "But we are taking to the street
now because matters have gotten out of hand. Okay, we
are used to having one or two hives stolen here and there,
having some honey pinched, but recently there was a man
in Kfar Habad who lost 200 hives overnight. That is his
entire livelihood. That is NIS 200,000 right there. How
are you supposed to live, how are you supposed to start
up again?" And the thefts are not only hurting those who
want to start up again, but also those who want to start
up altogether. 

Eitan Hajbi, a 23-year-old recently demobbed soldier, is
a case in point. 

"I was discharged from the army about a year ago, and -
with a friend - bought 15 beehives," says Hajbi, who hails
from Sha'arei Tikva and says he loves working with the
bees. "In the end my friend backed out, so I bought
everything; the total investment cost NIS 25,000. 

"Of the 15 hives, eight were stolen, and the other seven
were damaged," says Hajbi. "And this did not happen
along the Green Line, but rather in the center of the
country, near Bar-Ilan University. In the end, after this
investment, I didn't harvest any honey at all." Despite this,
Hajbi wants to continue in this particular line of work. 

"I believe a solution has to be found for this," he says,
raising his voice over a trucker honking for two minutes to
get past a car at the end of the protest near Jenin. "It is
not right that I have to stop doing something that I love to
do, something I want as a way of life, because of thefts.
Something is wrong here." 

Hajbi says he does not believe beekeepers are especially
targeted for theft, even if they are extremely vulnerable.
Yet, he says, the beekeepers are the first agriculturists to
have finally taken a stand "because we are a small and
organized group. It is easy for us to unite and protest on
one issue in particular. If you are going to go out and
protest about something like agricultural theft, it is too
general and grandiose. It is not defined. But it is easier if
you are talking about something like a beehive, something
that the public can focus on, something they can realize
that if it is stolen, a year's work goes down the drain." 

Dror, however, says that although beehives may not be
targeted, they are relatively easy to steal. Because of their
small size, they can fit easily into a car, and - unlike stolen
vehicles which are large and more difficult to hide - the
beehives can be easily camouflaged and kept out of sight.


Yarkoni says he hopes to pull other agricultural sectors
along with the budding "beekeepers' revolt," and a
meeting was held to this end in Tel Aviv this week with
heads of a number of other sectors hit by the thefts. "We
want to get the other sectors to come out with us - the
cattlemen, the chicken raisers, the orchard owners,"
Yarkoni says. "What is needed is for someone to wake
everyone up. We have decided to take that upon
ourselves." 

IF NOTHING ELSE, the beekeepers' protests have
placed the issue on the public agenda. The Knesset
Interior Committee discussed the issue Tuesday. Even
more than that, the protests have brought about meetings
between representatives of the beekeepers and
Palestinian police officials, something the beekeepers feel
would not have come about had they relied on quiet
diplomacy. 

Early this week several representatives of the beekeepers
met with the Palestinian police, including Palestinian
Police chief Ghazi Jabali, in a meeting arranged by Meretz
MK Avshalom Vilan and MK Ahmed Tibi (Arab
Movement for Renewal). Jabali said his men cannot deal
with the wave of agricultural and car theft because of the
lack of cooperation with the Israeli police. But an
Agriculture Ministry official dismissed these claims, saying
that although the Palestinians have shown an interest in
cooperating with Israel to exchange intelligence on
security matters, when it comes to dealing with "civil"
matters like car theft and the theft of agricultural
equipment, "the Palestinians do very little." 

Dror says the matter of the theft of agricultural material in
general, and the beekeepers' plight in particular, is
constantly raised at various Palestinian-Israeli forums, but
the Palestinians often make action in trying to locate the
beehives or clamp down on the problem conditional on
various demands on Israel. 

Indeed, Azzam Tubalieh, deputy to the Palestinian
Authority's minister of agriculture, says, "the issue is very
complex. I think there is another part to the whole story,
and that it is Israelis who are stealing the hives and selling
them to the Palestinians. There are checkpoints at the
borders which prevent Palestinians from bringing things in,
but Israelis can bring them in their cars, and nobody will
check." 

Furthermore, Tubalieh says that it is not right just to
concentrate on the beehives, when he claims that Israel is
itself harming Palestinian agriculture, by dumping poultry
and eggs on the Palestinian market. He says that he is
concerned that acts like the protest at Jenin could "cause
tension on the border" and lead some people to "lose
control." 

Dror says that in addition to arguments like these,
Palestinian officials - when the beehive issue is brought up
- will also bring up the issue of strawberries. Palestinians
are angry that Israeli agricultural inspectors often turn
back truckloads of strawberries, while Dror says Israel
does this because the fruit is sprayed with pesticides that
soak in and which are banned here. 

"Those are the kinds of counterissues the Palestinians
raise," says Dror, "but this is not acceptable. There is a
great difference between stolen beehives, and a decision
by the government of Israel to protect the health of its
citizens." 

Dror says that the reduction in car thefts, and the
increased return of stolen cars to Israel, shows that if the
Palestinians want, they can stem thefts. 

"It is much more difficult to find beehives than cars," Dror
admits, "but if they start working, they can find them.
Right now, I think that they want something in return. But
if there is great deal of pressure they will change direction.
They started to change their tune on cars when we
brought the issue up with the Americans. Imagine the
prime minister talking with President Clinton, as
[Binyamin] Netanyahu did, and when asked what is
bothering us, he said car theft. It was then that the
Palestinians understood that this issue was very important
to us, and they improved their work on the matter." 

Adar Avisar, Agriculture Ministry spokesman, says that -
in all fairness - the brunt of responsibility for protecting
the beehives has to rest with police here. "This matter is
being dealt with by the Israel Police," Avisar says. "And if
we are reasonable, we should come with our complaints
to them." 

Police spokesman Ofer Sivan does not even
acknowledge that the theft of the beehives constitutes a
plague. He says, as the police frequently says, that each
case is being dealt with when a complaint is filed.
Nevertheless, a meeting of the top police brass was held
last week where issues of agricultural theft in general, and
the beehives in particular, were raised. A special unit was
formed in the north to exclusively deal with the matter,
just as a special unit was formed that dealt with car theft,
and significantly lowered the numbers. 

BUT THE beekeepers, who realize that the police are not
going to place an officer next to every beehive, want
more than just additional cops. For instance, Hassan
Zayud - a carpenter from Nazareth who has a few
beehives on the side - says that the state has to find an
overall solution to the problem, and if it can't, it should at
least compensate the beekeepers for the lost hives. Eight
of Zayud's beehives in the Jezreel Valley were stolen in
October. "I lost NIS 12,000 to NIS 13,000 just like that.
Who can afford to lose that kind of money?" 

Another demand is for the government not only to press
the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian police to
more actively deal with the issue, but also to withhold
funds given the PA, and even slow down the entire peace
process, if they don't act more forcefully. 

"My complaint is not against the police," says Roni
Friedman, 51, a third-generation beekeeper from Ness
Ziona who is one of the leaders of the recent wave of
protest. "My complaints are directed at our ministers who
meet regularly with the Palestinians and could raise the
issue, and say that if the Palestinians are not more
forthcoming in fighting this, we will deduct the money we
channel to them." 

Some of the beekeepers argue that money they feel they
deserve as compensation should be taken from funds
withheld from the Palestinians. But Dror says that this is a
legally sticky situation that the government has tried to
avoid. 

"This type of sanction was considered not too long ago
when hospitals came to us with a NIS 10 million debt
from the Palestinians, and said that if they do not get their
money, they won't take patients from the territories. We
weighed withholding money to the PA, looked at all the
legal ramifications, and came to the conclusion that it was
very problematic," Dror says. 

When dealing with the beehives, Dror continues, there is
another problem: "Go prove what really happened, who
stole what, from where, how many. Someone says 'I was
robbed,' so you have to determine who is directly
responsible. Many Palestinians owe a lot of money in
Israel, and once we considered not allowing them to
work in the country until they paid their debts. We
checked the legality of this and came to the conclusion
that the only way that you can take that kind of sanction is
after going through a legal process and the court rules that
the person has to return the money. And even then, if the
court rules against him, he has the right to appeal, and
only 60 days after that could you take this kind of action."


The Agricultural Ministry's Avisar says that the issue is
not only a legal one, and that the policy of Agriculture
Minister Haim Oron is clear: not to tie the theft plague to
the country's overall relationship with the Palestinians. 

"The minister does not link our relationships with the PA
and the issue of theft," Avisar says. "If a car is stolen in
Tel Aviv, you don't close down Tel Aviv." Rather than
taking punitive actions, Oron is trying to use his contacts
with the Palestinians to persuade them to take the matter
more seriously, Avisar says. "In principle we see the PA
as responsible, but to think they can prevent all
agricultural-related theft is not realistic. 

"We are aware of the problem," Avisar continues. "The
minister is using his influence inside our government, and
his good relations with the PA, to try and deal with the
problem. Outside of that there is not much you can do. It
is a serious problem, causing serious damage. I
understand the beekeepers' anger. But to say that from
this we should stop all cooperation with the PA is going
too far. The minister brings this up frequently, the
Palestinians promise to do what they can, the police
promise to do their maximum. We hope for the best,
what can I tell you?" 

But, as the beekeepers say, they have hoped for the best
for the last five years - and it hasn't worked. Now they
want action. Whether or not they will be able to get it will
depend to a large extent on whether the brushfire they lit
spreads to other agricultural sectors, and cattle raisers,
orchards growers, and chicken farmers begin joining them
in their protests. If not, the beekeepers' momentum may
very well be lost. 

The beekeepers' peak season is about to begin, and then
they will be too busy chasing bees and facilitating the
production of honey, to perform early-morning street
theater outside Jenin.