Oppressive pines: Uprooting Israeli green colonialism and implanting Palestinian A’wna

Abstract

This article provides a comprehensive overview of Israeli green colonialism, denoting the apartheid state’s misappropriation of environmentalism to eliminate the Indigenous people of Palestine and usurp its resources. I focus on the violence of ‘protected areas’, encompassing national parks, forests, and nature reserves. This article argues that Israel primarily establishes them to (1) justify land grab; (2) prevent the return of Palestinian refugees; (3) dehistoricise, Judaise, and Europeanise Palestine, erasing Palestinian identity and suppressing resistance to Israeli oppression; and (4) greenwash its apartheid image. I situate Israeli green colonialism within the broader histories of Western environmentalism – particularly its perpetuation of the human–nature binary – and Zionism. Furthermore, I identify various means through which Palestinians and their land resist this phenomenon. I also explore Palestinian environmentalism, which is influenced by the concepts of a’wna (collaboration), sumud (steadfastness), and a’wda (return), in addition to the Islamic concept of tawhid (unity). I offer it as an alternative environmentalism, which is holistic, anti-racist, feminist, socialist, and nonlinear, while rejecting the trope of the ecological savage. Overall, the intrinsic link between all humans, and them and the environment must be recognised, to realise a just and sustainable society, in Palestine and beyond.

Keywords

climate change green colonialism Indigenous resistance Palestinian environmentalism protected areas

This article explores Israel’s appropriation of environmentalism, particularly its formation of ‘protected areas’, comprising national parks, forests, and nature reserves, for colonial ends (Kadman, 2010). I refer to this form of cooption as green colonialism (Klein, 2016). While officially merely 15.7% of forests worldwide are protected (Wolf et al., 2021: 522), I incorporate all Israeli forests under the umbrella of protected areas, following the lead of Palestinian scholar Dr Salman Abu-Sitta (Palestine Land Society (PLS), 2018). After all, Israeli timber failed to generate revenue adequately, leading Israel’s sole afforestation authority, the Jewish National Fund (JNF, n.d.-b), to shift from productive to protective forestry in the 1990s (Tal, 2013: 93–96). It began to administer Israeli forests, ostensibly to primarily safeguard ‘nature’, and second, to promote leisure, tourism, and other societal gains, while only marginally valuing wood and timber (Tal, 2013: 93–96). For instance, construction is banned within Israeli forests (Tal, 2008: 129). This article argues that Israel establishes protected areas to (1) colonise the land of Palestine and dispossess its Indigenous inhabitants (B’Tselem, n.d.); (2) prevent the return of Palestinian refugees (Balsam, 2011); (3) Judaise, Europeanise, and dehistoricise Palestine, obliterating Palestinian identity and quelling resistance to Israeli oppression (Abu-Sitta, 2011; Balsam, 2011; Gandolfo, 2017); and (4) greenwash its crime of apartheid, facilitated by the growth of Orientalism worldwide and JNF’s production of false propaganda (Kershnar et al., 2011; Said, 2003 [1978]). Despite disguising itself as an environmental nongovernmental organisation (NGO), JNF has acted as both a precursor and extension of the settler colony (Kershnar et al., 2011: 4–6).

I will begin by theorising Israeli green colonialism as a Zionist and Western environmental phenomenon (Grove, 1995; McKee, 2016: 156). Next, I will delve into the four major arguments I presented above, before outlining forms of Palestinian, land, and global resistance against this form of aggression (Gandolfo, 2017; Pappé, 2006; Zatoun, n.d.). Drawing on Palestinian history, traditions, perspectives, and knowledge, I will then offer an alternative and more equitable form of environmentalism, while firmly rejecting the racist trope of the ecological savage (Nadasdy, 2005; Simaan, 2017). In order to homogenize Indigenous communities as exemplary environmentalists, this myth portrays them as subhuman members of the natural world. I conclude by emphasising that the global establishment of a holistic, anti-racist, feminist, and socialist environmentalism is essential for societal and earthly wellbeing, in Palestine and beyond (Ferdinand, 2022; Justice, 2019). As a Palestinian activist-scholar, I also rely on my lived experience to not only highlight ongoing green colonisation of my homeland, our resistance, and our epistemologies, but also urge solidarity with our cause and action to abolish oppression everywhere it exists. This article is part of a larger project, which analyses a wide array of media, including original Israeli government documents, human rights reports, and maps. This project seeks to unearth Palestinian memory and greenwashed forms of Zionist oppression against the Natives.

Unearthing Israeli green colonialism

We shall try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country . . . the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly.

—Theodor Herzl [founder of Zionism] (Institute for Middle East Understanding, 2013)

Israeli green colonialism must be understood within the broader histories of Zionism (Nakba) and Western environmentalism (Grove, 1995; McKee, 2016: 156). Around the mid-20th century, Palestine should have gained independence from the British, as a state, akin to many other colonies. Instead, Britain collaborated with the Zionists to create a Jewish ‘national home’ in Palestine, in what became infamously known as the Balfour Declaration (Abu-Sitta, 2011: 47). As a European ideology and movement, Zionism had recently arisen, targeting Palestine as the site of a future Jewish state (Caplan, 2005: 550–551). Although Zionism was packaged as a solution to antisemitism, it was a settler colonial project and antisemitic itself (Massad, 2003: 440, 445). After all, Zionism blamed the spread of antisemitism on Jews, and thus promoted their exclusion from Gentile societies and the formation of a Jewish state, as the resolution (Massad, 2003: 445–446).

Meanwhile, I understand colonialism as a ‘historically specific set of processes and practices associated with the expansion and conquest by European powers of most areas of the world, which arguably started in 1492’ (Persaud and Sajed, 2018: 3). European colonisers, including European Zionists, perceived non-Western communities as inferior, and thus, their bodies and lands as exploitable and dispensable (Caplan, 2005: 550). Indeed, the Global South was not only racialised, but also feminised, (e.g. characterised as weak and illogical), and sexualised, by colonial powers. They then proceeded to plunder its resources, and rape and enslave its inhabitants, universalising capitalism as an economic structure, to systematise their exploitation of it (Akbari-Dibavar, 2018: 72; Persaud and Sajed, 2018: 3). Overall, I concur with Justice (2019), that all global challenges, including colonialism and climate change, are rooted in the interlinked and oppressive systems of White supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism.

Settler colonialism is distinguished from colonialism by its genocidal character. In staking claim to the land of the entire colony, perpetually, settler colonialism seeks to obliterate not only Indigenous cultures, socioeconomic systems, and histories, but ultimately, peoples themselves. After all, original inhabitants were dehumanised into nonexistence, rendering their land available for takeover, morally and lawfully (terra nullius) (King, 2018: 138–139). Indeed, Palestinians existed for centuries prior to the founding of Zionism, at which point only about 5% of Palestine’s population was Jewish (Caplan, 2005: 550–551). Consequently, following the signing of the Balfour Declaration, Palestine began to be colonised by hundreds of thousands of mostly European Jews (Caplan, 2005: 551–553). Zionists then expelled about two-thirds of the Indigenous population of Palestine (Kershnar et al., 2011: 6). Eleven urban neighbourhoods were ethnically cleansed and 531 villages were razed to the ground (Pappé, 2006: xiii). This period of Zionist-perpetrated atrocities became known as the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe (Pappé, 2006: xvii). Taking over 78% of Palestinian territory, Zionists then created the settler colony of ‘Israel’ (Abu-Sitta, 2011: 48). For the purpose of, this article, I use here colonialism and settler colonialism interchangeably.

Since its founding, Israel established more than 65 laws that disadvantage Palestinians, due to their identity, across the Holy Land (Adalah, 2017). Whether they reside in the remaining 22% of Palestine – including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel illegally occupied in 1967 – or in what is now known as ‘Israel’, to which I refer to as 1948 Palestine, Palestinians are targeted by the apartheid regime (Adalah, 2017). Israel’s continuous denial of the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands, in flagrant violation of UN Resolution 194, is one prominent example of the Zionist project’s disregard for human rights and international law (Mohamed, 2016).

Another example is its adoption of Western or modern environmentalism (Grove, 1995; Kadman, 2010). For millennia, human societies globally sought and established healthy relationships with non-humans. In contrast, modern environmentalism was founded by French colonial administrators in the 18th century (Grove, 1995: 5–9). After launching capitalist, patriarchal, and White supremacist operations in the Global South, Western empires recognized that they were devastating Native landscapes and thus threatening the viability of their own resource extractive industries and the lives of settlers. Colonial powers, however, then sought not to cease their inherently unsustainable repressive processes, but to preserve them, under the guise of environmentalism (Grove, 1995; Justice, 2019). For example, they pioneered tools to outwardly sustain forests, in order to facilitate land grab, and the seizure and conservation of key sources of timber and water from Indigenous peoples (Grove, 1995: 9–10, 15). Former English slave master and plantation manager, Charles Waterton, is also credited for originating bird sanctuaries and nature reserves, while the Scottish-American naturalist, John Muir, invented national parks to boost tourism and enable nation-building for new settler colonies (University of Cambridge, n.d.; Wakefield Museums and Castles, 2020). Muir whitewashed slavery and labelled Indigenous peoples ‘savages’ (Ferdinand, 2022: 160–161; Neumann, 2007). Hence, I see Western environmentalism as the weaponisation of ecological discourses and practices for the achievement of White supremacist, patriarchal, and capitalist aims.

Biocentrism is Western environmentalism’s defining feature, producing a duality between the ‘environment’ and humanity, where the interests of the latter – particularly non-Western, feminine, and poor ‘others’ – are neglected or even readily suppressed in the noble name of protecting the former (Ferdinand, 2022; McKee, 2016: 156). Modern environmentalism then legitimates paradoxical and reactionary undertakings, such as: the attempt to reconcile capitalism with environmentalism, captured by the term climate capitalism (Newell and Paterson, 2010); Malthusianism, which frames women of colour and the poor as primary environmental culprits, seeking to restrict their rates of reproduction (Ferdinand, 2022: 207–208); and ecofascism, exemplified by many environmentalists’ celebration of COVID-19 as a cure, for killing humans – mostly non-White communities – who are vilified as the real virus (Newton, 2020). Whereas these three subversive environmental movements are exceedingly relevant and disturbing, and must be confronted, I am focussing on yet another trend: green colonialism (Grove, 1995). Colonisers seized vast territories, with the aid of Western environmentalism, by declaring their Indigenous inhabitants intrinsically environmentally irresponsible, expelling them, establishing protected areas to superficially preserve their lands (Neumann, 2007), and then distorting, romanticising, and sexualising the areas as ‘wild’ or ‘virgin’ green havens, expunging Native memory (Ferdinand, 2022: 104).

I am indebted to Richard Grove’s (1995) book, Green Imperialism for the language of ‘green colonialism’. ‘Green’ emphasizes the weaponization of environmentalism in the process of colonial violence (Klein, 2016). Unfortunately, Grove (1995) does not recognise the incompatibility of environmentalism with colonialism. Conversely, he praises the ‘pioneering conservationist role’ of the latter, particularly the work of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Pierre Poivre, and Philibert Commerson, while underscoring their alleged humanitarianism, although the trio were colonial administrators (7, 9). Hence, racism, such as the noble savage trope, instead of love for Indigenous communities, drove their actions, even if they condemned injustices occasionally (Robbins, 2002: 203). For instance, Poivre is commonly honoured as an anti-slavery activist, but he himself enslaved people and encouraged slavery (Ferdinand, 2022: 116–117). Such colonial hypocrisy can also be found in ‘an Israeli ethos that can best be described as “shoot and cry”’, where soldiers and politicians who were complicit in the Nakba aim to alleviate their guilt and improve their image by publicly displaying regret (Pappé, 2006: 110). Behind a green veneer, the noun, colonialism, clarifies what I will be ultimately critiquing as a colonial project.

However, despite my strong criticisms of Grove’s (1995) work, it remains a seminal text that significantly details the colonial origins of modern environmentalism, across various continents. I am thus able to contextualise Israeli actions, historically and globally, by employing his terminology. Although they are frequently conflated, I opted for the term colonialism, rather than imperialism, since it more accurately describes Israel’s structure, as I outlined above (Klein, 2016). Generally, colonialism necessitates the relocation of colonisers to Native land, unlike imperialism (Kohn and Reddy, 2017). Overall, green colonialism can be traced back to the colonial birth of Western environmentalism, as a White supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist, and biocentric paradigm. Emulating its settler colonial predecessors, Israel embraced biocentrism, evidenced by its establishment of protected areas and general silencing of its environmental groups around ‘political issues’ (McKee, 2016: 156).

Colonisation

At least 380 nature reserves and 115 national parks were created by Israel. I argue that these conservation projects act as green conduits for processes of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and land grab (B’Tselem, n.d.; Kadman, 2010: 57). I call these landscapes green colonies, inspired by the term ‘green settlements’ (Agence France Presse, 2012), to better capture the colonial nature of these areas (Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), personal communication, June 22, 2018). As seen in a map provided by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) (Tsimbler, 2022), I maintain that Israeli national parks and nature reserves are tactically concentrated in: (1) the region of Jerusalem, which Israel has been attempting to claim in its entirety as its capital, contrary to international law; (2) the West Bank and oft-forgotten Syrian Golan Heights that Israel also illegally occupies; (3) the South of 1948 Palestine, where Israel seeks to ethnically cleanse all Bedouin Palestinians (Manski, 2010); and (4) the North, where along with the South, the vast majority of the original inhabitants of 1948 Palestine still reside, as documented by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS, 2021: 1). Notably, 92% and 98% of the inhabitants of two other areas of 1948 Palestine consist of Jews and other non-Palestinians: categorised as the Central and Tel Aviv Districts, respectively, they are largely void of national parks and nature reserves (CBS, 2021: 1). Israel clusters its green colonies in valuable areas, where Indigenous Palestinians and Syrians mostly continue to reside, to justify their dispossession and the seizure of their territories (B’Tselem, n.d.).

According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (IMFA, 1998), national parks are established to safeguard vital natural, historic, archaeological, and architectural sites, while the role of nature reserves is to defend nature, for scientific and educational ends. However, Palestinians are stripped of the right to cultivate or build on their land, when it is labelled a national park or nature reserve, as they are designated as a threat to the integrity of these areas (B’Tselem, 2017; IMFA, 1998). They are thus denied opportunities to start families and engage in one of the prime accessible activities for income generation in Palestine: agriculture (B’Tselem, 2017). In contrast, Israel’s Knesset approved an amendment to its National Parks, Nature Reserves, National Sites and Memorial Sites Law, in November 2018, to enable residential construction for Jewish colonists, inside a national park, located in the occupied eastern part of Jerusalem (Office of the European Union Representative, 2019). Israeli colonists are even permitted to pursue large building projects and pollute within protected areas (B’tselem, 2017). Consequently, Israel bluntly does not oppose all human residence within its protected areas, or even environmental degradation, but seeks to erode non-Jewish Palestinian presence only.

In addition, the establishment of Israeli national parks in regions ‘devoid of any significant archeological findings or natural treasures’ reveals their colonial, rather than protective, objectives (B’Tselem, n.d.). Many green colonies are even planted by Israel, signifying that a justification is entirely manufactured for their creation (Braverman, 2009). Indeed, ‘initially, [Israeli] tree planting was not perceived as an ecological practice but rather as a way to physically freeze undeveloped [Palestinian] land for future Jewish development’, an Israeli afforestation official blatantly stated (Braverman, 2009: 347). He adds that Israel will legally simply clear the trees when necessitated by its ‘development’ projects (Braverman, 2009: 347). For example, Israel is currently planning to uproot hundreds of trees, in its oldest planted forest, Hulda Forest, to power the Central District with renewable energy (Surkes, 2022). Meanwhile, the director of JNF’s Forestry Division, Mordechai Ru’ach, claims ‘the best guards of the land’ to be trees, since as Kadman (2015: 42) notes, they ‘create, preserve, and demonstrate presence on the ground’. From concentrating protected areas in Palestinian-majority regions to dispossessing their Indigenous inhabitants, Israel evidently employs environmental policies to colonise Palestine inconspicuously, rather than enhance the non-human environment.

The green wall

Besides serving as potent land-grabbing instruments, Israeli protected areas are meant to impede the return of Palestinian refugees, symbolically and materially (Bauman, 2004: 209). For instance, only a couple of years after Israel occupied Palestinian territories, it decided to fortify the Green Line via tree-planting (Braverman, 2009: 348). By actualising the name of the border that severed the West Bank from the rest of Historic Palestine, Israel sought to further isolate the former and curtail the freedom of Palestinians to fully access their homeland (Braverman, 2009). In addition, lands were delineated by the trees to facilitate the surveillance of Palestinians (Braverman, 2009: 347). Notably, the West Bank is inhabited by over 871,000 registered Palestinian refugees (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, n.d.). This plan materialised, as visible in a map produced by JNF (Amir and Rechtman, 2006: 36, 50; Manski, 2010). In an-Naqab, JNF also explicitly attempts to inhibit Bedouin Palestinian ‘incursion’ and herding through afforestation (Manski, 2010). As Kadman (2010: 57) highlights, Israel typically casts Bedouin Palestinians as ‘invaders’, because they continue to ‘live and herd their goats in areas that once belonged to them and were later confiscated by the state’.

Furthermore, Israeli authorities ‘fined, arrested, or beat up [Palestinians who attempted to tend their lands after they were usurped by green colonies], under the excuse of trespassing and causing damage to [the environment]’ (Barnard and Muamer, 2016: 73). After all, without the existence of colonial laws and their execution, Palestinians would be able to easily reclaim their lands, as by clearing the oppressive trees (Braverman, 2009). More subtle forms of exclusion include the fencing of protected areas and the imposition of entry fees – and at least in the case of Ein Fara nature reserve, the provision of a considerable markdown for Jews, but not Palestinians (Bauman, 2004; Rinat, 2013).

Symbolically, it has been argued by colonial governors and noted liberal Western theorists that land ownership should be reserved for ‘civilized’ individuals or nations who cultivated it (Grove, 1995: 285–286; Locke, 1988: 290–291). In fact, the Latin root of the term, colony (colonus), denotes farmer, accentuating the centrality of cultivation in colonialism (Kohn and Reddy, 2017). For example, JNF colonised and afforested the land of Palestinians after it ‘accused [them] of failing to cultivate [their] fields regularly enough’ (Nathan, 2005: 158). On the other hand, ‘Israel [is] bulldozing agricultural land, uprooting olive trees’ (Kershnar et al., 2011: 6), and scorching and intoxicating cacti, which are often employed by Palestinians to define their properties (Nathan, 2005: 136–137). Israel attempts to declare territory its property by afforesting it, while pillaging Indigenous flora, because the latter may testify to a rich history of cultivation and the associated right for Palestinians to remain or return to their lands.

Significantly, Kadman (2010: 58) finds that Israeli tourism and recreation sites, largely consisting of green colonies, encompass roughly 44% of 418 Palestinian villages, which were ethnically cleansed in 1948 Palestine. Of the territory Israel colonised, comprising the Golan, about 24% has been designated ‘[o]pen protected areas [that] include[d] nature reserves, parks, panoramic scenes, forests, [and] woods’, 27% military zones, and 37% vacant land (PLS, n.d.). Markedly, however, Israeli nature reserves, national parks, forests, and military zones can coincide (Amir and Rechtman, 2006; IMFA, 1998; INPA and The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, n.d.), even all four at once (Meishar, 2016 [2004]: 304).

Furthermore, the vacancy, militarisation, and ‘protection’ of approximately 88% of Israeli colonised territory is noteworthy, since Zionists frequently charge that Jews would have to be expelled to accommodate Palestinian returnees. However, as Abu-Sitta (PLS, n.d.) emphasises, since the British Mandate, only about 6% of 1948 Palestine remains populated by the vast majority (87%) of the Jewish Israeli population. Hence, following the dismantlement of Israeli settler colonialism, including its green variant, Palestinian return is entirely viable (PLS, n.d.). Overall, colonising nearly half of 418 Palestinian villages that were ethnically cleansed, as well as the Green Line, Israeli protected areas considerably hinder the highly feasible return of Palestinian refugees, symbolically and physically.

Dehistoricisation, Judaisation, and Europeanisation

Israel employs green colonies to Judaise, Europeanise, and dehistoricise Palestine, obliterating Palestinian identity and quelling resistance to Israeli oppression (Abu-Sitta, 2011; Balsam, 2011: 94; Gandolfo, 2017: 196). Notably, it is under the banner of ‘making the desert bloom’ that Israel plants them (Kershnar et al., 2011: 4–5). According to JNF (n.d.-b): ‘Forests and parks were not always part of Israel’s landscape. The first Jewish pioneers who came to the land of Israel towards the end of the twentieth century found a desolate land that provided no shade whatsoever’. Zionists not only persist portraying pre-Nakba Palestine as entirely a desert, but characteristic of colonialists, as an uninhabited wasteland too – terra nullius – that they purportedly salvaged (Braverman, 2009: 340).

In fact, aside from inhabiting the land for centuries, Palestinians had a blossoming society, economy, culture, and land. The climate of Palestine’s northern half is largely Mediterranean (George, 1979). In addition, Palestinians were chiefly fellahin, peasants, who farmed all cultivable lands, before the major influx of Jewish colonisers, in the 1930s (Caplan, 2005: 552–553; George, 1979: 100; Masalha, 2012: 213). Indeed, around the time George’s (1979: 100) paper was published, Israel still failed to farm 1948 Palestine’s surface area as much as Palestinians had cultivated in 1947. Meanwhile, in an-Naqab, which was, in fact, a desert, Palestinian ‘Bedouin increasingly cultivated this area, using terraces, dams, canals, wells, and cisterns’ (Pessah, 2016).

However, Israel may be completely converting Palestine into a desert, by uprooting its families, and stripping it of vegetation and water (Pessah, 2016). It was not until after 1948 that 90% of Israeli forests were grown, but non-Indigenous species constitute 89% of them (Pappé, 2006: 227). The majority of trees JNF boasts having planted, since nearly its inception, were non-Native evergreens (Pappé, 2006: 227), which devastated both local communities and ecosystems (Lorber, 2012). For instance, animals belonging to Palestinian shepherds could not feed on greenery, after it was acidified by the shedding of Israeli pine needles (Lorber, 2012). Besides, as evidenced by the most critical wildfire Israel experienced, in 2010, these are highly flammable trees (Lorber, 2012). Israeli planted forests have even been termed ‘pine deserts’, by environmentalists, due to the ‘biological paucity’ they have caused (Amir and Rechtman, 2006: 43–44). Furthermore, as Nathan (2005: 135) notes, Indigenous carob and fruit trees, including more than 800,000 olive trees, since only 1967, were uprooted by Israel (Visualizing Palestine, 2013). In Israeli-occupied Palestine, 80% of the responsibility for a staggering 23% reduction in its forests, which occurred from 1971 to 1999, fell on Israeli colonialism and militarism (Ghattas et al., 2005: 135). Only in 2001, the Israeli state uprooted 670,000 fruit and forestry trees there (Ghattas et al., 2005: 135). In addition, research has shown that an-Naqab possibly began to experience desertification due to JNF afforestation (Pessah, 2016). Yet, the ahistorical trope of ‘making the desert bloom’ continues to be widely proliferated by Zionists, assisted by green colonies, to stifle Palestinian memory and erase the Nakba (Pappé, 2006: 229).

Judaising and Europeanising Palestine

In a deliberate attempt to dehistoricise Palestine, Israel afforested the ruins of ethnically cleansed villages to camouflage them (Masalha, 2012). For instance, the presence of the six villages of Dishon, Alma, Amqa, Ayn al-Zaytun, Qaddita, and Biriyya is obscured by Israel’s largest planted forest, Birya Forest (Pappé, 2006: 230). Furthermore, Israeli green colonies produce signs and publications, which largely fail to acknowledge Palestinian villages (Kadman, 2010: 58–59). Israel heavily censors and distorts key data about the localities when it does reference them. Often reducing them to schools and other lifeless relics, it neglects their Palestinian and Arab histories, founding dates, and numbers of inhabitants, while completely concealing the expulsions and massacres Zionists perpetrated against Palestinians (Kadman, 2010). Arabic is also absent from many park signs and most brochures produced by the INPA and JNF – the two primary bodies that establish and administer Israeli nature, heritage, and recreation sites (Kadman, 2010: 57–58).

Whereas Palestinians and their memories are subjugated or erased, Jewish and European histories are spotlighted or fabricated within Israeli green colonies (Bauman, 2004: 211–212). For instance, the Roman/Classical age would be ‘particularly celebrate[d]’, while Ottoman, Islamic, and Palestinian histories, including continuous Indigenous existence, are disregarded (Bauman, 2004: 211–212; Noy, 2012: 32–34). Israel also mostly planted non-Native pines, often even atop the culturally, spiritually, nationally, and economically integral Palestinian olive trees (Simaan, 2017) and other delicately sustained lands, to Europeanise the landscape (Pappé, 2006: 227). Its Europeanising mission via forestation has been declared as policy (Kadman, 2015: 42). Furthermore, Israel appropriates or naturalises Palestinian history. For instance, JNF has attempted to portray Palestinian-crafted bustans, or home-centred orchards, as a product of its own labour or an environmental miracle, within green colonies (Kadman, 2015: 230). Effectively, Israeli protected areas construct ‘a purist fantasy of a homogenized ethno-national (Jewish) life’ from which Palestinians are eliminated (Noy, 2012: 33–34).

Cultural genocide and stifling resistance

Israel’s genocidal aims are advanced by its dehistoricisation of Palestine – utilising protected areas – manifesting in the erosion of Palestinian identity and resistance to Israeli oppression (Abu-Sitta, 2011; Gandolfo, 2017: 196). Paralleling its cooption of hummus and falafel, Israel’s marginalization of the Arabic language and appropriation of Palestinian-built bustans, within green colonies, threaten to eliminate distinctive societal and environmental contributions, verily the identity of Palestinians (Abu-Sitta, 2011; Kadman, 2010; Pappé, 2006). Indeed, Palestinian youth are becoming fragmented by Israel’s systemic assaults upon their cultural heritage and national identity, to the extent that some have begun identifying with their city or even neighbourhood, rather than Palestinianism (Tamimi, 2019: 4). Moreover, by partitioning the Palestinian community, Israeli green colonies hamper any potential for a revolutionary struggle.

This potential is even more forcefully stifled by the greenwashing of the Nakba and robbing of spaces where powerful and creative forms of resurgence can occur (Gandolfo, 2017; Masalha, 2012). Israelis can contentedly hike and serve in the military, rather than be compelled to acknowledge the colonial history of Israel, their complicity, and say: ‘Not in My Name’ (Bauman, 2004; Pappé, 2006). Meanwhile, by preventing Palestinians from encountering vivid evidence of the Nakba, such as rubble and ruins, they are further removed from a great injustice and thus less likely to revolt (Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), 2020). For instance, the activist, Ahed Tamimi (FOSNA, 2020), recently recounted her experience as a child, when she travelled, along with other Natives, from across Historic Palestine, to the de-populated village of Ein Hijleh. They lived, slept, and re-enacted Palestinian traditions there. Yet, the Israeli army invaded the village, beat, shot, and launched tear gas and sound bombs at them, driving them out under the sole protection of blankets. She emphasised that this, albeit less traumatic, chain of events stayed with her, since it fostered greater empathy for her displaced ancestors. It solidified her resolve to resist Israeli injustices – namely, the denial of the right of return. To assert Palestinian land ownership and prevent Israel from further obliterating ethnically cleansed localities, she then encouraged other Palestinians and allies to also reclaim them. Even temporary recovery of sites of dispossession allows Palestinians to better connect with one another, their land, and their past, heal by grieving collective trauma, and launch a new wave of anticolonial resistance, sparked by hope (FOSNA, 2020; Masalha, 2012: 257). Consequentially, by dehistoricising and afforesting Palestine, Israeli green colonies simultaneously seek to efface Palestinian identity and memory, and curtail resistance to the Nakba (Abu-Sitta, 2011).

Israeli greenwashing on a global level

Israeli greenwashing was instrumental in bolstering Zionism on a global scale, especially considering the history of JNF (Balsam, 2011). As a precursor to the Israeli settler colony, Zionists founded JNF, as early as 1901, to purchase Palestinian land for Jewish colonisation (Balsam, 2011: 93). Needless to say, however, JNF stole most of the territory it gained, succeeding in controlling 93% of 1948 Palestine, though 80% of it is co-administered with other members of the Israel Lands Authority Council (Kershnar et al., 2011: 6). By transferring the vast appropriated lands to JNF, camouflaged as an environmental NGO, Israel was able to stifle global outcry (Kershnar et al., 2011). After all, JNF (n.d.-a) claims to have planted trees, totalling 230 million and counting, led Israel into the 21st century as the lone state with a net gain of trees, and become the Middle East’s chief environmental body. Meanwhile, donation or charity boxes for JNF have been globally distributed to Jewish households since its founding. They began featuring ‘images of Jewish youth depicted as young pioneers assisting in the reclamation of the land’, lately, instead of the maps that covered the boxes previously, which displayed occupied Palestinian territories as Israeli (Balsam, 2011: 95–96). Images of youth and environmentalism arguably gained favour over the maps, in an attempt to greenwash JNF’s colonial ambitions (Balsam, 2011: 95–96). The effectiveness of Zionist propaganda is corroborated by the persistent perception of JNF as a tree-planting and playground-building organisation, among Jew communities worldwide, unaware of its settler colonial background (Pappé, 2006: 228). Hence, beyond the economic value of Israeli greenwashing in fundraising, Balsam (2011: 95) stresses that the allegiance of many Jews and others to Zionism was cultivated by the simple act of donating to JNF.

Green Orientalism

Israeli greenwashing is powerful to the extent that over a century after the creation of JNF, many states continue to recognise it as an environmental charity (Balsam, 2011: 93). To elucidate the effectiveness of this disinformation, I situate it not only within the broader racist history of Western environmentalism, as I detailed above, but also within multifaceted Israeli hasbara, or propaganda, and Orientalism (Balsam, 2011; Said, 2003 [1978]). As Jewish activist Laura Schleifer argues, intersectionality is being perverted by Israel: beyond its attempt to portray itself as an environmental leader or a necessary protector of all Jews (Ishkah, 2018), it also attempts to present itself as a world gay (pinkwashing) and vegan (veganwashing) haven. In addition, Israel recently began to brazenly coopt Indigeneity, claiming that the Natives of Palestine are Jews. These hasbara offensives can be largely traced back to 2006, with the launch of ‘Brand Israel’, designed to salvage Israel’s tarnished global reputation (Ishkah, 2018). Effectively, the settler colony seeks to market itself as a sustainable, democratic, progressive, civilised, and rational state, in contrast with the concocted terroristic, unsustainable, oppressive, homophobic, and irrational Palestinians, perpetuating Orientalism (Ishkah, 2018; Said, 2003 [1978]). In turn, this type of propaganda is readily accepted, even within certain Western ‘leftist’ circles, not only due to its ubiquity, but also their anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia (Ishkah, 2018; Said, 2003 [1978]). As a result, the slogan ‘Progressive Except for Palestine’ (PEP) continues to resonate with many segments of the Western left. The prolonged global acceptance of the ‘principal Zionist tool for the colonization of Palestine’, JNF, as an ecological NGO, is sufficient proof that Israeli greenwashing and Orientalism strikingly reinforce apartheid (Pappé, 2006: 17).

Implanting A’wna

Quoting Serge Restog, Malcom Ferdinand (2022: 61) states that ‘despite everything, the Negro does not die’. Designating all oppressed people as Negroes, Ferdinand (60) emphasises the inevitability of their survival, embodying not just resistance, but also victory, especially in the face of genocidal settler colonialism. Indeed, Israeli oppression continues to be challenged by Palestinians worldwide, notably by steering and participating in the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the Stop the JNF campaign, which seeks to have JNF’s charitable status annulled. However, there are less known and more direct forms of action against Israeli green colonialism, pursued by both Palestinians and their allies. These include: the development of technology to detect over 500 ethnically cleansed or damaged Palestinian localities, condensed into the iNakba app (Gandolfo, 2017: 205); lobbying efforts to have Israeli green colonies establish signs, which recognise the villages they shroud (Braverman, 2009: 352–353); and Palestinian-led tours (Masalha, 2012). On the afforestation front, the Canadian non-profit Zatoun (n.d.) directs the ‘Trees for Life: Planting Peace in Palestine’ programme since 2005. It supplies olive tree saplings to Palestinian fellahin, targeting small, young starter, and female farmers, and those who had their lands pillaged by the Israeli regime (Zatoun, n.d.). Regarding Israeli veganwashing, international vegan conferences have been launched by Palestinians, centring decolonisation, by linking human and environmental rights (Ishkah, 2018).

Palestinian land is also resisting, as demonstrated by the difficulty for Israeli-planted non-Indigenous trees to survive, plagued by their heightened susceptibility to combustion, ailments, and pests (Lorber, 2012). Palestinian agronomist Saad Dagher (personal communication, 30 March 2021) even referenced a photograph he took of a fire, where, on one side, Israeli-planted trees were overwhelmed by flames, while on the other, the Indigenous flora was left intact. In another instance of land resistance, Palestinian olive trees managed to sprout again, after more than half a century of Israeli repression, by slicing through JNF pines, which smothered the ethnically cleansed village of Mujaydil (Pappé, 2006: 227–228). From the strength and creativity of its inhabitants to the tenaciousness of its olive trees, Palestinian liberation is on the horizon.

Ideas held by many Palestinians that inspire their resistance, namely a’wna (collaboration), sumud (steadfastness), and a’wda (return), as well as the Islamic notion of tawhid (unity), can form the basis for an anti-oppressive and scientific environmentalism (Furani and Rabinowitz, 2011; Justice, 2019; Ogunnaike, 2017; Simaan, 2017). A’wna recognises that, due to our deep interrelatedness, individuals cannot truly prosper while even indirectly harming others or non-humans (Simaan, 2017). Rather, this Palestinian concept emphasises the importance of strong familial, communal, environmental, intergenerational, and global solidarity, for the blossoming of all present and future humans and non-humans. Simaan provides the example of an ‘ancient practice’, which involves Palestinian families manifesting their generosity and belonging in the community by not picking all of their olives, to keep some for those who were landless (Simaan, 2017: 518). Ascribing agency to the land, there is unsurprisingly also a spiritual component, to land: ‘The land you dig will pray for you, but the land you abandon will curse you’, states one Palestinian (Simaan, 2017: 517). Other Palestinians approach trees with the same type of devotion with which they approach their children (Simaan, 2017). Hence, while modern environmentalism may be driven by materialism, opportunism, or perceived altruism, Palestinians uphold a sacred and intimate bond between people and non-human nature (Simaan, 2017). Arguably, the predominant religion, Islam (Caplan, 2005: 550), influences Palestinian environmental philosophy – especially the accent placed on tawhid. Tawhid recognises that, despite our seeming differences, all creations are unified, by their belonging to a single God, and are thus deserving of respect and ‘selfless love’ (DeLong-Bas, 2018; Ogunnaike, 2017).

Significantly, the holism that Palestinians espouse erodes the human–nature dualism, eschewing the biocentrism associated with Western environmentalism and the anthropocentrism of the mainstream view of environmental justice (McDonald, 2002; Simaan, 2017). However, I am not claiming that Palestinian environmentalism seeks the entire dismantlement of the human–nature binary. A’wna merely severely erodes it by granting non-human nature respect, agency, and love, to advance its interests and those of all of humanity collectively (Simaan, 2017). The environmentalism of Palestinians would lean towards anthropocentrism, because like all other humans, they are primarily concerned with their own wellbeing. Indeed, in contrast with the noble savage trope that characterises Indigenous relations with nature as entirely agreeable, Nadasdy (2005) stresses that, often drastically, lands were always transformed by Indigenous inhabitants to accommodate their interests. For instance, my great-great-grandmother continues to be celebrated in my family for her courage in killing venomous snakes in pre-Nakba Ramla, Palestine. Yet, the same family raised me to be careful not to move houseplants around, as they have souls, and can become depressed and die. Hence, instead of essentialising Palestinians as either environmentalists or non-environmentalists, I underline their heterogeneity and humanity, seeking to recognise their worldviews and traditions that are rooted in societal and environmental justice to progressively inspire others (Nadasdy, 2005: 311).

Palestinians and their land also pursue a’wda or return, embarking on a non-secular and circular path towards liberation (Furani and Rabinowitz, 2011; Pappé, 2006). Many, including notable environmental scholars, argue it is impractical to abolish capitalism due to its extensive entrenchment (Newell and Paterson, 2010). However, the resurging olive trees and enduring struggle for Palestinian return urge humanity to act on principle, shed pessimistic determinism, embrace degrowth, and pursue socialism as an egalitarian economic system. Yet, as demonstrated by Abu-Sitta’s (PLS, n.d.) work on Palestinian return and just coexistence with Jews, this concept vastly differs from the backward, romanticised, stagnant, and ecofascist vision of a ‘return to nature’, where people of colour are removed (Ferdinand, 2022: 197). A’wda allows us to conceive of a radically different, just, sustainable, and inclusive future. It would be built on many local and traditional epistemologies, accommodating scientific, agricultural, technological, and other innovations, to enhance relations between humans and non-humans (Simaan, 2017). Meanwhile, the sumud of Palestinians inspires patience during the thorny process of challenging prevailing structures, and envisioning and realising a healthier society (Furani and Rabinowitz, 2011).

Besides, Palestinian stewardship is scientific, because it tackles the repressive roots of climate change, including the society-nature binary. After all, the dichotomy ruptures ecological interdependence, namely the Earth’s constitution of humans and vice versa, leading to its ruin (Ferdinand, 2022; Justice, 2019; Simaan, 2017). Even Western environmentalism – also termed fortress conservationism – acknowledges the role of people as positive environmental innovators (Neumann, 2007). For instance, green colonies are often forced to draw on the environmental methods of the Native communities they ethnically cleansed, such as slashing, burning, and wildlife culling, to stem ecological degradation (Neumann, 2007). Ultimately, ‘nonequilibrium ecology suggests that flux, dynamism, and nonlinear and unpredictable change’ are integral for promoting biodiversity and environmental health, denouncing the fortress approach (Neumann, 2007: 1206). By segregating and policing human and non-human species, it endeavours to stunt evolution (Neumann, 2007). Indeed, Porter-Bolland et al.’s (2012: 6, 14) study of ‘40 protected areas and 33 community managed forests’ found that, across the tropics, the former experienced heavier annual deforestation than the latter, which respected Indigenous rights. Furthermore, as Neumann (2007:1206–1207) notes, while ‘the number of parks and equivalent reserves increased exponentially’, in the last couple of decades, climate change continues to escalate. Thus, aside from the necessity to reject biocentrism outright due to its moral depravity, it must be abandoned on ecological grounds (Ferdinand, 2022). It fuels climate change by legitimating the interlinked structures of White supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism driving it, while falsely designating Indigenous peoples as the culprits. The Palestinian ethics of a’wna, sumud, and a’wda can be the beginning of an alternative environmentalism that is holistic, anti-racist, feminist, socialist, spiritual, scientific, and nonlinear.

Conclusion

This article provided a snapshot of Israeli green colonialism, identifying it as a Zionist and Western environmental phenomenon. I demonstrated that apartheid Israel establishes protected areas to (1) dispossess Indigenous Palestinians and usurp their lands; (2) prevent the return of Palestinian refugees, physically and symbolically; (3) dehistoricise, Judaise, and Europeanise Palestine, eroding Native identity, concealing Zionist crimes, and choking resistance to Israeli oppression; and (4) greenwash its image as a Western environmental saviour, situated in a deserted, backward, and violent Middle East, on a global scale, employing Orientalism. However, I also emphasised how, despite the military, political, and financial might of the settler colony, Palestinians and their land persist in their struggling for justice and liberation. I then presented the Palestinian concepts of a’wna (collaboration), sumud (steadfastness), and a’wda (return), along with the prominence of tawhid (unity) in the Islamic tradition, as possible building blocks of an anti-oppressive, atemporal, spiritual, and scientific alternative to Western environmentalism, challenging the mainstreamed human–nature binary. Yet, I dispelled the ecological savage myth, by underlining the anthropocentric leanings of all human environmentalisms. In sum, the dismantlement of White supremacy, (including Orientalism), patriarchy, and capitalism, as well as erosion of the human–nature dichotomy, are both a moral and environmental obligation.

In fact, as an activist-scholar, I encourage myself and others to consistently problematise binaries wherever they may dwell, acknowledge and utilise our positions of power, and embrace intersectional and interdisciplinary methods, with the ultimate aim of achieving social and environmental justice. Regarding Israeli green colonialism, I am interested in further understanding its role in undermining the Palestinian political economy, perpetuating patriarchy, and building Israeli identity. I also noticed, in the last couple of years, large environmental organisations, such as Greenpeace, increasingly tying human and ecological rights, signalling they will become allies against global oppression. Yet, I am disappointed, though unsurprised, with the resounding silence exhibited by them, in 2021, concerning Palestine. Although Israeli oppression and Palestinian resistance were spotlighted worldwide, and criticism of the unresponsiveness of these bodies was expressed by people on their social media, they continue to endorse Zionism implicitly and explicitly. Clearly, we must amplify our efforts to oppose the dehumanisation of Palestinians, and the appropriation of environmental, LGBTQ+, feminist, and other progressive movements for oppressive ends.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Lisa Tilley, sasha skaidra, Steven Salaita, and Khaled Sasa for their incredible support and beneficial comments. I am also indebted to my supervisory committee, consisting of Alina Sajed, J. Marshall Beier, and Peter Nyers, for their suggestions on previous drafts of my paper. Additionally, many thanks to the anonymous peer reviewers who allowed me to enhance my article based on their generative feedback.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Ghada Sasa

Author biography

Ghada Sasa is a PhD Candidate in Political Science (International Relations) at McMaster University and possesses a Master of Environmental Studies. She draws on her interdisciplinary education, lived experience as a Muslim Palestinian woman, multilingualism, and human rights advocacy to orient her scholarship towards the dismantlement of all systems of oppression. Her doctoral research uncovers Israel’s weaponisation of environmentalism to discreetly colonise Palestine, as well as Native history and resistance. Informed by Palestinian epistemologies, she presents a moral and effective environmentalism. Ghada was recently interviewed by TRT World on the topic of Israeli greenwashing.

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