Ma?m?d Darw?sh's poetry, particularly his depictions of olive trees, respond to and question Zionist dicourses on land and cultivation in several ways. Zionist discourses often depict the land that would become the State of Israel as empty and in need of cultivation, as exemplified by the well-known Zionist slogan “A land without people for a people without land.” This empty land was often depicted as occupied by pre-modern, perhaps even barbaric inhabitants who were reduced to a part of the landscape; consequently, this land was depicted as in need of newcomers who could cultivate the land using modern techniques. This depiction of empty, uncultivated land waiting to be populated can be linked to the ways in which Zionism (as Maryanne Rhett has noted) sought to produce a new Jewish identity free from the tropes of European anti-Semitism, which portrayed European Jewish men (who were often legally barred from land ownership) as unmasculine and unsuited for physical labor. Ma?m?d Darw?sh's poetry, particularly his depictions of olive trees, appears to respond to and to question this discourse primarily by depicting Palestinians and the olive trees they cultivate as kin. Darw?sh's land is not empty but has been occupied continuously by human beings and olive trees which have cared for one another for centuries. In poems which often blur the boundaries between human and tree, Darw?sh links the simultaneous uprooting of Palestinians and olive trees from their land and suggests that there is a relationship between the right of trees to grow unmolested and the rights of human beings to remain in their native land. The right of humans to remain, he suggests, are drawn from a reciprocal relationship in which human beings care for trees who care for them in return; human beings are depicted as having a familial, kinship relationship with olive trees and as drawing their own rights to remain upon their land from this relationship. Both Darwish’s poetry and Zionist discourse depict Palestinians as part of the landscape, but with very different effects; while Zionist depictions have the effect of erasing Palestinians, Darwish’s depictions assert that it is Palestinians’ very kinship relationship to the landscape, and their roles as caretakers of its trees, that best support their right to remain.