JERUSALEM (AP) — 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.

But this year’s harvest happened as a ceasefire agreement was reached, spreading a tenuous hope for peace — peace that olive branches have symbolized since the biblical story of the dove that brought one back to Noah’s Ark to signify the end of the flood.

“The land is a gift and the sign of a divine presence,” said the Rev. Diego Dalla Gassa, a Franc

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