When is a Fig tree really an Olive Tree?

When is a Fig tree really an Olive Tree?
By Mike Odetalla www.hanini.org http://www.palestineremembered.com/Jerusalem/Lifta/index.html
Our situation as Palestinians in negotiating with the Israeli governments on borders and other items brings to mind this tale told to me by my grandfather (God bless his soul) when I was a child...
This tale concerned 2 neighboring Palestinian villages in the late 1800's (yes there was Palestinians back then). These 2 villages had a border dispute that had been ongoing for a while. The names of these 2 villages were Lifta (which was ethnically cleansed in 1948) and Beit Iksa which remains as part of the occupied West Bank (since 1975, Beit Iksa has lost nearly 80% of its land to Israeli settlements). These 2 villages were located in the Jerusalem district, as was my own village of Beit Hanina . All three villages had a common border with each other. The dispute concerned a small plot of land on top of the hill that served as their border. For the longest time the people of Lifta claimed that their village border ended just past an old olive tree and thus, the land belonged to a family from their village. The people of Beit Iksa on the other hand claimed that the village limits were just past an old fig tree, and that the land belonged to a family from their village!  The difference between them was a mere 50 meters. If the border was drawn according to the people of Lifta who used the olive tree as the marker, then Lifta would get the extra 50 meters. If the border was drawn according to the people of Beit Iksa, who used the fig tree as the marker, then they would gain the 50 meters. This dispute simmered for years, until one day the people of Beit Iksa seized a sheep that they claimed strayed in to their village boundary to graze. The village elders from both villages were summoned to sit with a “third party” to try to resolve this dispute once and for all. The third party's decision, no matter what it may be, would be accepted as final and binding on all sides. This was the way that most disputes were handled in the rural areas of Palestine .