The story of Israel and Palestine can be told through these trees. For the Palestinians, the uprooting of their saplings tells of their dispossession from their own land — the axes taken to their trunks tell of the thousands of torsos killed in the occupation, and the branches shorn of their olives by hands that did not plant them tells of their enduring misery at the hands of their occupier.

Meanwhile, the conifers that now dominate the landscape are a symbolic stand-in for diaspora Jews around the world whom Israel claims as its own. The evergreens aim to ease the anxiety of their relentless rootlessness, to finally build, for a people without a land, a connection with a land that is not theirs.

Read the full story by Ayesha Malik here.