Degrees of exclusion: The politics of heat adaptation in Palestine–Israel,1950–1980

Abstract

This article investigates the development of Israeli heat adaptation research from 1950 to 1980 and its role in advancing Israeli nation-building and settler-colonial policies. Focusing on the scientific career of the Zionist military doctor Ezra Sohar, renowned for reforming the Israeli Defence Forces' “water discipline,” the article traces the emergence of Israeli thermal physiological research. It reveals the shift from the view that certain races were better adapted to specific climates to a “universalized” notion of acclimatization as a physiological process possible to anyone. The universal notion of acclimatization created new forms of exclusion, as the indigenous Arab-Palestinian population, particularly Bedouins, lost their perceived racial advantage in heat adaptation; Jewish-Israeli thermal physiologists argued that Jews were better adapted to heat due to cultural factors. Finally, the article follows Sohar's advocacy for air conditioning, which he promoted as the “ideal solution” for establishing a Western, “developed” Israeli society. Thus, the article demonstrates how the rise of air conditioning during this period further reinforced the exclusion and marginalization of Bedouin communities. It illustrates how planetary dynamics of climate injustice and colonialist policies manifest locally and highlights heat exposure as a form of colonial violence. Sohar's story provides insight into a scientific community driven by the ambition to conquer heat, reflecting a political logic that, to this day, leaves neither past heat adaptation practices nor air conditioning as possible solutions for Bedouin communities coping with a rapidly warming planet.