Abstract
Jewish immigrants settling Israel/Palestine since the end of the nineteenth century, with the objective of creating a national Jewish state, have strongly identified with trees. They perceived the planting of trees as an act of making the barren wilderness come to life and also as a symbol for planting themselves as permanent beings in their homeland from which they had been uprooted thousands of years ago. In a process of structured identity based on hierarchical binaries, they perceived the Palestinians as the opposite of themselves – neglectful of the land and lacking strong ties to it. In the ensuing and ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict trees have become signifiers of progress as well as of dispossession, weapons in the escalating cycle of planting and uprooting. In this article I show that environmental policies have been co-opted and used by the State of Israel to further marginalize the Palestinians and take over lands, in what can be termed nationalistic/ethnic environmentalism or “Green” nationalism.
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Notes
- 1.
See also in the city of Jerusalem: Braverman 2009, p. 61.
- 2.
- 3.
The construction of the desert and the settlement as opposing symbols was clearly influenced by European views of the Orient (Said 1995).
- 4.
Pines have become associated with the Zionist project of conquering and afforesting the Promised Land (Braverman 2009).
- 5.
- 6.
Director of JNF Land and Forestry from 1932 to 1972.
- 7.
A 1920 League of Nations’ Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/349B02280A930813052565E90048ED1C retrieved January 2015.
- 8.
Settled in 1937, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, on land purchased by the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association.
- 9.
Most of the lands bought for Jewish agricultural settlements had been cultivated by tenant farmers who were uprooted. Further uprooting occurred in the wake of the 1948 war.
- 10.
See more examples: In children’s books for example, springs of water created a swamp in mourning of the Jewish exile, only to become sources of life again upon the return of the Zionist pioneers and clumps of soil “jumped” into the revolving blades of the plough to aid in the hard toil (Zrubavel 2008, 206). The Israeli writer Meir Shalev reminisces about the Zionist political categorization of nature into enemies of Zionism (the Malaria bearing mosquito and various pests such as rodents, insects and weeds) and friends (the enemies’ predators). He tells of teachers who instructed their students: “when you go outdoors and encounter a plant or an animal, ask it: ‘are you with us or against us?’” (Shalev 1996, 32).
- 11.
Erasure of Palestinian presence and culture was also achieved by the actions of a governmental Names Commission (with Weitz as a member), appointed by Ben Gurion in 1949. Its task was erasing all Arabic names appearing in Mandatory maps and replacing them with Hebrew names, thus creating a Hebrew national map (Benvenisti 2000; Azaryahu and Golan 2001).
- 12.
For further discussion see Braverman 2009, Chapter 1.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
In 1999 the Society for the Protection of Nature together with Adam Teva V’din, Israel Union for Environmental Defense, appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court to stop the construction of homesteads, because of the fragmentation of open spaces, damage to local flora and fauna due to domestic animals and the introduction of invasive species, wasteful use of land and the need for new infrastructure etc. Their appeal was rejected.
- 16.
The majority of Mizrachi Jews immigrated into Israel, mostly from Arab and north African countries, after the state of Israel was established.
- 17.
Ashkenazi Jews immigrated to Palestine/Israel mostly from eastern and central Europe since the end of the nineteenth century and are considered the founders of the state.
- 18.
In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinians are under military rule.
- 19.
This is not a unique case. According to the plan for the separation wall, the village of al Walaja will remain on the Palestinian side while its water springs and unique traditional agricultural terraces will be on the Israeli side, to be declared a National Park for the recreation and pleasure of Israelis. See https://www.facebook.com/FriendsOfAlWalaja.
- 20.
Palestinians are motivated to plant olive trees also because the Israeli authorities make it increasingly harder for them to hold on to their lands if they are not cultivated intensively. Trees serve as a marker for cultivation. See Braverman 2009, p. 172–177.
- 21.
Information about the systematic takeover of Palestinian water springs by Israeli settlers in the occupied west bank can be found in the report “How Dispossession Happens” in the site of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_springs_report_march_2012_english.pdf.
- 22.
In chapter 5 of his award winning book Palestinian Walks, the Palestinian writer and lawyer Raja Shehadeh tells how he monitored the Israeli military government declaration of nature reserves in the West Bank. At first he was pleased that these areas would be protected. However, the hope that these reserves were for the benefit of the Palestinians were dashed when in 1996 Palestinians were prohibited from entering all nature reserves in area C.
- 23.
Annexed to Israel following the 1967 war. The annexation is internationally controversial.
- 24.
Retrieved December 25, 2014 http://bimkom.org/eng/from-public-to-national-national-parks-in-east-jerusalem/ ”, issued by Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights 2012.
- 25.
Palestinians are not just passive victims, however, they do not have at their disposal a powerful army and powerful organizations with state power behind them. According to a U.N. report 7,500 olive trees have been destroyed by Jewish settlers in the West Bank since the beginning of the occupation. In addition tens of thousands of olive trees have been uprooted during the construction of the separation wall, and in a few more years about a million trees will be caught in the no-go zone between it and the 1967 Armistice Line. http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/the-plight-of-the-palestinian-olive-tree/. For a detailed account of Palestinian protest measures and the pitting of the pine against the olive tree see Braverman 2009.
- 26.
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Gorney, E. (2017). Roots of Identity, Canopy of Collision: Re-Visioning Trees as an Evolving National Symbol Within the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. In: Joanaz de Melo, C., Vaz, E., Costa Pinto, L. (eds) Environmental History in the Making. Environmental History, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41139-2_18
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