This commentary engages with Mikko Joronen's ‘Polluting Appropriations: Malevolent Weathering of Settler Colonisation in Palestine’ through two tracks. Firstly, I delve into the lineage of the term ‘settler colony’ as a designation of Israel, considering some of its political framings and impacts. Secondly, I consider wider literature on environmental transformations and impacts of settler colonialism. Both tracks yield questions on Israel's commonalities with other military-colonizing powers.
AbdallahF (2025) Charting cultural territory: Imagined geographies and water politics in the works of Mahmoud Darwish. Journal of Palestine Studies54(3): 8–25. 10.1080/0377919X.2025.2561121.
2.
AghaZEssonJGriffithsM, et al. (2024) Gaza: A decolonial geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers49(2): e12675.
3.
AlatoutS (2008) ‘States’ of scarcity: Water, space, and identity politics in Israel, 1948–59. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space26(6): 959–982.
4.
AlatoutS (2009) Bringing abundance into environmental politics: Constructing a Zionist network of water abundance, immigration, and colonization. Social Studies of Science39(3): 363–394.
5.
AlqaisiyaWPeruginiN (2024) The academic question of Palestine. Middle East Critique33(3): 299–311.
6.
BeckertS (2015) Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Vintage.
7.
BrooksAGriffithsM (2025) Genocidal warfare in Gaza and the issue of balance in political geography. Political Geography: 103387. 10.1016/j.polgeo.2025.103387
8.
BushbridgeR (2018) Israel-Palestine and the settler colonial ‘turn’: From interpretation to decolonization. Theory, Culture & Society35(1): 91–115.
9.
CrosbyAW (1986) Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.
CrossR (2004) British nuclear tests and the indigenous people of Australia. In: The British Nuclear Weapons Programme, 1952–2002. London and New York: Routledge, 75–88.
11.
ElmaliachT (2017) The “revival” of Abram Leon: The “Jewish question” and the American New Left. Left History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry and Debate21(2): 73–95.
12.
GeorgeA (1979) Making the desert bloom: A myth examined. Journal of Palestine Studies8(2): 88–100.
13.
GriffithsMJoronenM, eds (2023) Encountering Palestine: Un/making Spaces of Colonial Violence. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
14.
JarvisJ (2022) Radiant matter: Technologies of light and the long shadow of French nuclear imperialism in the Algerian Sahara. Representations160(1): 54–89.
15.
JoronenM (2025) Polluting appropriations: Malevolent weathering of settler colonisation in Palestine. Dialogues in Human Geography, 10.1177/20438206251379581
16.
JoronenMGhantousW (2024) Weathering violence: Atmospheric materialities and olfactory durations of ‘skunk water’ in Palestine. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space7(3): 1122–1141.
17.
LizotteC (2025) The present and absent Jew in anti-Zionist geographic imaginaries. Political Geography: 103350. 10.1016/j.polgeo.2025.103350.
MonnetL, ed. (2022) Toxic Immanence: Decolonizing Nuclear Legacies and Futures. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
20.
PanchasiR (2019) “No Hiroshima in Africa”: The Algerian war and the question of French nuclear tests in the Sahara. History of the Present9(1): 84–112.
21.
RodinsonM (1973) Israel: A Colonial-Settler State?New York: Monad Press. [translated from French by David Thorstad].
22.
Sabbagh-KhouryA (2022) Tracing settler colonialism: A genealogy of a paradigm in the sociology of knowledge production in Israel. Politics & Society50(1): 44–83.
23.
SaidEW (1979) The Question of Palestine. New York: Times Books.
24.
SayeghFA (1965) Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. Beirut: Research Center, Palestine Liberation Organization.
SeikalyS (2022) In the shadow of war: The Journal of Palestine Studies as archive. Journal of Palestine Studies51(2): 5–26.
27.
ShoufaniE (1974) Israeli reactions to the war. Journal of Palestine Studies3(2): 46–64.
28.
SidawayJD (2023) Beyond the decolonial: Critical Muslim geographies. Dialogues in Human Geography13(3): 337–358.
29.
SidawayJD (2025) On the sources for critical Muslim geographies: Rebellion and tradition. Dialogues in Human Geography, 10.1177/20438206251345545.
30.
SmithAF (2015) Sugar: A Global History. London: Reaktion Books.
31.
StrawsonJ (2019) Colonialism. Israel Studies24(2): 33–44.
32.
TsosieR (2015) Indigenous peoples and the ethics of remediation: Redressing the legacy of radioactive contamination for native peoples and native lands. Santa Clara Journal of International Law13(1): 203–272.
33.
United Nations Environment Programme (2025) Environmental impact of the escalation of conflict in the Gaza Strip: Second assessment of environmental damage and recommendations for recovery and reconstruction planning. Available at: https://wedocs.unep.org/20.500.11822/48536 (Accessed: 22 October 2025).
34.
UrwinJ (2022) "The old colonial power can stand proxy": The Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia and the politics of the 1980s. Australian Journal of Politics & History68(4): 525–543.
