Come October, monks and nuns are busy harvesting olives at the Mount of Olives and the Gethsemane garden — where, according to the Gospel, Jesus spent the last night before being taken up the other side of the valley into Jerusalem to be crucified.
For two years, the Israel-Hamas war has cast a pall on the Holy Land. The hundreds of centuries-old olive trees here have shaken periodically in missile attacks targeting Israel.
