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.

Attributing extreme weather to climate change: State Park employees as institutional actors

“…The second sense concerns the forms of environmental engagement common in parks. Prior to (and after) the colonial seizure of lands in the U.S. and other settings, Indigenous inhabitants played essential roles as "integrated species" in the ecosystems that would become parks (Jacobs et al, 2022, p. 199;Sasa, 2023). Indigenous peoples largely engage(d) with the land and its various features (e.g., plants, non-human animals) as relatives in a broader kinship network (e.g., Kimmerer, 2013;Wildcat, 2009).…”

Attributing extreme weather to climate change: State Park employees as institutional actors

“…The second sense concerns the forms of environmental engagement common in parks. Prior to (and after) the colonial seizure of lands in the U.S. and other settings, Indigenous inhabitants played essential roles as "integrated species" in the ecosystems that would become parks (Jacobs et al, 2022, p. 199;Sasa, 2023). Indigenous peoples largely engage(d) with the land and its various features (e.g., plants, non-human animals) as relatives in a broader kinship network (e.g., Kimmerer, 2013;Wildcat, 2009).…”

Race and climate change: Towards anti-racist ecologies

“…Covering key sites of vulnerability and contention – from flooded coasts to contested forests and socioecologies marked for offsetting – this collection confronts how both environmental harms and supposed solutions for climate change are experienced by racialised communities of the South. Some contributors reach for the very roots of planetary crisis, taking us back to the contact zone of colonisation to show how race ‘underwrites’ the nature–culture divide (Gill, 2021; Sasa, 2022). Other authors expose the pitfalls of climate action in the contemporary market episteme, questioning who this action serves (Collins, 2021; Perry, 2021).…”

“…In the name of environmentalism, and through the establishment of 'protected areas', Israel has attempted to erase Indigenous socioecologies in occupied Palestine. According to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), trees are 'the best Guards of the land' (cited in Sasa, 2022), and Sasa argues that the planting of these 'oppressive pines' serves as justification for colonisation and helps to inhibit Palestinians' right of return to their land. Ultimately, the non-native species of evergreens planted by the JNF have acidified the local ecology, making it toxic to Palestinian farmers' grazing animals, and increased the risk of wildfires due to the highly flammable properties of the trees.…”