THE ROAD winding north from Ramallah to Nablus is the same road used by travelers in Abraham's time - and one thousand years before. Now paved and streaked with the rubber of speeding vehicles, it twists and turns through the olive-planted terraces of the West Bank.

One might travel that road a hundred times, looking out over the hills that turn copper at sundown and misty in winter, without seeing the slow changes on the nearby dusty slopes.

But geographer Kamal Abdul Fattah cannot miss the markings of a deep, permanent - and for him, sad - transition in West Bank life. Picking nimbly up a steep hill, Abdul Fattah points out the places where rock walls, carefully packed to hold back the topsoil and conserve the scarce rain, have been left in disrepair.

"You see the difference between the plowed areas, and the unplowed areas," he says pointing to patches of earth where weeds are competing with the gnarled roots of the olive trees.

What is happening on this hillside is happening all over Palestine. The children of farmers are growing up and moving on to construction and white collar jobs, no longer working these fields. While agriculture and fishing made up 30 percent of the Palestinian Gross Domestic Product in the 70s, in 1994 it was nearly 14 percent of the GDP. In 1996, it shrunk to 12.20 percent of the GDP.

But what seems like a natural transition for a developing country will have immense social and ecological consequences for the West Bank.

Olive cultivation, which is done on seventy-three percent of the fruit-producing West Bank land, does not fit easily into today's faster world. Every one of the thousands of olive trees planted in Palestine takes 15 years of tending before it yields fruit. The earth beneath the tree is held against its roots with stone terraces, plowed to increase the moisture and raked to prevent fires. Handpicking produces the best quality oil, and most Palestinians do pick their olives by hand. With time and care, the harvest is rich.

But when a tree is not supported and cared for, the precious topsoil that nourishes it washes down the Palestinian hillsides into the valleys. It only takes a few years to wash away topsoil that took 10,000 years to produce. Without that topsoil, the annual 25 inches of rain that falls on the northern West Bank falls on stone. Already, bald limestone slopes dot the countryside.

The process of losing agricultural land begins with the lack of rain. "Water shortages are the main issue," explains ARIJ research center's Jad Issac of declining Palestinian agriculture. Without development and support, farmers turn elsewhere for income.

"Rain-fed agriculture is declining because of low revenues and because Palestinian farmers find it easier to find work in Israel," he explains. And once the farming life is abandoned and the terraces no longer maintained, the land can no longer be cultivated.

That does not mean that farming has already been lost as a way of life for Palestinians. If an olive tree and its surrounding land are cared for, they bear fruits and produce rich olive oil for hundreds of years. Nearly one-half of the olive trees in the West Bank and Gaza are over 15 years old and into fruit-bearing maturity.

For the people of the city of Nablus and its surrounding villages, olives remain the primary source of income. The Nablus district boasts 162,700 dunums or over 650,000 acres of olive trees, more than any other district save Tulkarem.

Since the Islamic period, Nablus has been known for its olive oil soap, essential for Muslims banned from using soap made from pig's fat. At its height in the 18th century, the industry was exporting 7,000 tons or 30 to 40 million bars of soap a year to as far away as what is now the Arabian Gulf. Today, those factories number only three or four and function more as tourist attractions than industries.

To the south of Nablus city, deep in the West Bank's stony slopes, lie the lands of three villages - Qabalan, Usarin and Beta. It is here where industrialization has won the most recent battle for Palestinian land.

Six thousand people live in Qabalan. Its roads wind steeply up through cement homes, their thick metal enforcements twisting out of ragged holes in the concrete. Electricity comes from a local generator and cuts out nearly every night.

"Look at my hands," says Ahmad Hamdan Nijme. The father of seven splays his cracked, dry fingers out over his long gray robe. "We worked on this land, we defended this land, but now they have put this idea in their heads."

But, contrary to what one might think, Nijme is not opposed to the industrial area that the Palestinian Authority has ordered built on 35 dunums (140 acres) of his olive trees. He simply wants to get what he deserves. In his mind, the 7 JDs per acre that the Authority is offering in exchange for the right of imminent domain is just not enough.

"It's important that our country comes, but not on my shoulders and with my death," says his brother, Subhi, who owns another 35 dunums of the industrial park project that he says will extend over 2,400 dunums or 9,600 acres. The trade ministry told reporters that the zone will cover 1,232 dunums, the equivalent of 4,928 acres.

These men are savvy. They have done the math. If the Authority has started bargaining at 7,000 JDs per dunum, these landowners stand to gain more than half a million dollars for their combined 70 dunums of land. But they believe that they can get even more. Industry minister Saadi Krunz said as much when he visited the area two weeks ago to drum up support for the project.

At that time, the minister told reporters that 7,000 JDs per dunum was the base price for the land alone; an appropriate price for the olive trees would be evaluated later by the ministry of agriculture.

The Nijme brothers and nine other landowners are way ahead of this game. Over a year and a half ago, when they saw that the Nablus municipality was surveying the land for construction, they began to negotiate over the price of the land. Israel would have paid them at least $14,000 or 10,500 JDs a dunum if it was confiscating the land, they argue.

When asked about the other 14 Qabilan residents who will lose land to the project, the two brothers say that they are just waiting to see what happens with the negotiations. When asked if Palestine Report might talk to them, Subhi is evasive. "Maybe they aren't home right now."

There are many reasons why the people of these villages might not like this project. They and their children work in these fields. Land that is built on can never be recultivated, nor can it be used for housing for their large families. Further, industry brings waste. While no one has told these villagers what kind of industry will grow out of this deal, without the proper infrastructure, the byproducts could be hazardous and pollute the environment.

The villagers of Usireen are less complacent about the project than the Nijme brothers. Off the junction that leads to the Israeli settlement Ariel, the village of 1,100 is more isolated, and its people coarsened by a difficult life.

"If the industrial zone was going to be two kilometers or more from our houses, then maybe it would be ok, but here it will be no further than 15 meters from the houses," says Abdel Jabar Adeli, whose 35 dunums swallowed in the project. "After a time, there will be nowhere left to build."

The men that gather in the small grocery know far less than those in Qabilan about the size and scope of the project, but they look very worried. They know that the first stage of 200 dunums will take 150 dunums from their village. They also know that they have no choice in the matter, as the order has come down from Palestinian President Yasser Arafat himself.

Usireen is clearly a poorer village than Qabilan. Hedged in to the north where an Israeli road prevents construction, the village may soon also be restricted to the west by the industrial park. Most of these landowners hold only parcels of land, rather than vast fields that would bring a hefty price in a buyout. The men say that only five or six of the village children have gone on to higher education and white-collar jobs; otherwise they work in the fields in the summer and Israeli construction in the winter.

"I will have nothing to give to my children," says a father of six who asks not to be identified. The industrial park will take five dunums from him. He estimates that each of his olive trees brings him $75 a year, and that each dunum holds 15 trees, adding up to $1,125 annually per dunum. That income does not include the grapes and wheat planted beneath and around the olive trees.

At that rate, it would take him ten years to make up the Palestinian Authority's first offer. Perhaps as an afterthought he adds, "If my children work in the industrial park, it will be good because it will be nearby."

Unlike the Nijme brothers in Qabilan, those in Usireen are concerned about pollution because the zone will be their neighbor. "We are a people who have no freedom to choose," says a bearded man sitting on the floor.

Indeed, the forces at work in the preparation of this industrial zone are immense. Under current Palestinian-Israeli trade agreements, industrial estates fall under a special trade jurisdiction that resembles the trade arrangements for Israeli products, a contortion that gets around Israeli closure restrictions. To expedite those arrangements, all industrial estates fall along the borders of what Palestinians and Israelis assume will be the borders of a future Palestinian state. The Karni Industrial Estate in Gaza is a prime example.

Why then, is this area in the hills of Nablus being planned as an industrial zone? Currently the village lands are in area B, or partial Palestinian Authority control. The future industrial area is, however, an island in a cluster of Israeli settlements that include Ariel, the largest of the West Bank settlements.

According to descriptions by analyst Khalil Shikaki, a preliminary final status document known as the Beilin-Abu Mazen document allows for the annexation of this cluster of settlements. "It annexes the so-called Arial finger, which extends more than 15 kilometers inside the West Bank and reaches up to Nablus Road which connects Nablus with Ramallah," Shikaki told Palestine Report in a September 22 interview. That would put this industrial estate right on the future Israeli-Palestinian border, assuming that the Beilin-Abu Mazen document is still a working plan.

Since $81 million is being put up for this project, $10 million from the European Investment Bank and the rest from public and private sources, those in charge must be fairly certain that in the future the area will be suitable for an industrial estate and its special trade classifications.

"This project is one of the most important steps that will help the citizens in Nablus and the economy in general," Krunz told reporters. The zone, he says, will create 18,000 jobs.

As for helping the economy by helping farmers, the Palestinian Authority, aided by the donor countries, has a poor track record. Only two percent of the total credit extended to various sectors in May 1999 was put into agriculture. Of the $2.5 billion in donor aid granted since 1994, only $45 million dollars has been put into agriculture development, meaning that farmers fared better than only the environment, women's issues, legal affairs, telecommunications and the private sector.

Jad Isaac, one author of an October 1999 study on Authority agricultural development, says this is no accident. "The Palestinian Authority is trying to put agriculture at the top of its priorities, but the World Bank and donors are not giving their fair share." He believes that this is because development of the agricultural sector is directly related to land, water and natural resources, which are constrained under the current Oslo agreement. To put money into agriculture would be to directly challenge Israel's hold on water and land in the West Bank and Gaza. "I think it is politically motivated," he says.