Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Dec 14, 2025

Dear Friends of Palestine,

As 2025 draws to a close, please consider a year-end donation to the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project’s annual olive tree planting campaign.

For the past three years, MRSCP and Palestine Partnershave worked with the Dutch organization Plant an Olive Tree (Plant een Olijfbloom) to sustain groves of olive trees and replace those lost to Israeli violence in the Masafer Yatta area of the West Bank. Palestinians have planted and cultivated olive groves here for generations, nurturing trees that produce the region’s most cherished crop.

Now the families of Masafer Yatta — along with many others in the West Bank –are being placed at extreme risk by a drastically escalating Israeli campaign of violence and land theft.  (See for example How Israel Organizes and Arms Settler Militias to Terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank from Drop Site News.)

Israeli settlers and soldiers have burned, slashed, bulldozed and uprooted thousands of olive trees in the region. (Here’s a video from just this week near Nablus.)

Israeli law allows for the seizure of land as “state land.” Palestinian families who cannot prove they have cultivated their land for three years are at risk of losing it and with it, their homes and livelihoods.

But there is a way you can help.

The planting of these olive trees can help protect Palestinian-owned land from dispossession. This is why we created the Madison-Masafer Yatta Olive Grove, making trees available to the Palestinian farmers and landowners most at risk in the Masafer Yatta region.

Sponsoring an olive tree is a practical act of solidarity with these families, and a hopeful act for the planet. 

You have the option to sponsor a tree in the name of a loved one, as either a celebration of life or a gift that keeps on giving.

The end of this year is the deadline for the next batch of trees, which must be planted between January and March. Each tree costs 20 euros, or about $24 US dollars. So far we have raised funds to plant 257 trees out of our ambitious 2025 goal of 400.

Please help us reach our goal of 400 trees by sponsoring a tree (or trees) in the Madison-Masafer Yatta grove.

There are two ways to sponsor.

ONLINE: Click here and follow the directions; be sure to indicate if you would like a printable certificate sent to you by email.

IF YOU PREFER A CHECK: Please send a check payable to Palestine Partners and marked “trees” to:

Madison-Rafah Sister City Project
P.O. Box 5214
Madison, WI 53705

Be sure to include your name, mailing address, and email and indicate if you would like the printable certificate and/or a lovely card to send to someone in whose name you are donating a tree. 

As always, thanks for helping keep hope alive in these darkest of times.

Sincerely,

Barb Olson, Coordinator
MRSCP

A special message from Cassandra Dixon:

Over the 20 years I’ve been visiting these villages I’ve seen hundreds of trees bulldozed by the military and slashed and burned by settlers, and I’ve watched and helped people replant many many more. It’s a vital way of keeping land, and in this time of unprecedented violence it remains a solid act of solidarity from afar. I’m beyond grateful for every tree sponsored.