Oppressive pines: Uprooting Israeli green colonialism and implanting Palestinian A’wna
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957221122366 |
| Author | Ghada Sasa |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957221122366
Politics
2023, Vol. 43(2) 219 –235
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957221122366
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Oppressive pines: Uprooting
Israeli green colonialism and
implanting Palestinian A’wna
Ghada Sasa
McMaster University, Canada
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
Received: 22nd October 2021; Revised version received: 17th June 2022; Accepted: 20th June 2022
This article explores Israel’s appropriation of environmentalism, particularly its forma-
tion of ‘protected areas’, comprising national parks, forests, and nature reserves, for
Corresponding author:
Ghada Sasa, Department of Political Science, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON
L8S 4L8, Canada.
Email: sasag@mcmaster.ca
1122366POL0010.1177/02633957221122366PoliticsSasa
research-article2022
Special Issue: Race & Climate Change
220 Politics 43(2)
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 apart-
heid, 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 environ-
mental 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 emphasis-
ing that the global establishment of a holistic, anti-racist, feminist, and socialist environ-
mentalism 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 green-
washed 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
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