Rahul Gandhi

Chapter 5: Background on War on Gaza

In rethinking IR and the impact of war on the environment, the case study of Gaza is being analysed in terms of a relational ecology explored in the framework above to elucidate an ecology of people, relations, histories, and the environment. These non-exhaustive constituents are an integral part to understanding the experience of war on Gaza, and especially the entanglements of the impact of war on the environment. This chapter reflects on Gaza in terms of this framework by analysing its history for insights into occlusions of coloniality, the operation of orientalism, and the forms of life which have contributed to the war and its impacts today. These insights are drawn from a critical engagement with its history as a part of Palestine from early times, to more recent history since the establishment of the State of Israel, and finally considerations of what is unfolding at present. To challenge the coloniality of linearity discussed above, an analytical narrative is discussed below which notes important moments in Gaza’s history and their relations to other points. This is organised around categories such as identity, societal development, the environment, and political events such as war as related multilinear objects in history. This may involve a non-linear traversal of history along these loosely-defined lines but as far as possible, an attempt is made to deal with events as they occurred while rooting their significance in relations to other times or objects. This is prefaced by a discussion of Zionism to explicate it to understand its exogenous origins, modes, and relations to coloniality in thinking IR, orientalism, and each of the histories of Gaza subsequently analysed. The relations from this history can then be used to highlight how the impact of war on the environment in Gaza, analysed in the subsequent chapter, operates with genocide as appendages of Grove’s proposed Eurocene form of life. In conclusion, it reflects on the implications of relational elements revealed by this history. It also reflects on the broader implications for an exercise of this sort in terms of what may be a temporal operation of coloniality as well as how the position of the knowledge producer should be contended with, without reproducing coloniality. In thinking not only with the environment or the human, but with multiple histories, people, and beings, this embraces a view of nature as fluid and consisting of places, histories, people, and the environment.

Zionism

During the 19th century, Zionism emerged as a European phenomenon of Jewish nationalism, which it was contended could adopt colonisation of Africa and Asia as a model for establishing a Jewish state in the Holy Land to address the “Jewish problem” (Pappe 2006, 69; Sayegh 1965, 1). This was rooted in its founder, Theodore Herzl’s, inspiration by the Dreyfus affair as an anti-Semitic trial, which made it seem impossible for Jews to assimilate in Europe (Pappe 2006, 69-70). Despite resistance from traditional rabbis who asserted that only God could return the exiled Jews to Israel, Herzl conceived of Zionism as an attempt to revive Jewish culture, science, and rationalism, nevertheless rooted in Jewish scripture, history, and ancient Hebrew (Pappe 2006, 69). Practically, this sought to address the religious persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe, by establishing three Congresses between 1897 and 1899 which sought to promote colonialism as a solution and Jewish identity as productive (Pappe 2006, 70-72). Herzl saw Palestine as largely empty and, like other colonialists, proposed that its land and people would benefit from colonial settlement (Khalidi 2020, 8-10). This resulted in the First Aliya (ascent) of “pioneers” to historic Palestine, which Pappe (2006, 72-73) contends was modelled after white settlers in North America. These people settled mainly as farmers, with funding from Lord Rothschild premised on their productivity (Pappe 2006, 73). This accelerated despite the resistance of the Ottoman rulers due to pressure from the British in 1888 (Pappe 2006, 74). This later augmented to include colonisation by Christian missionaries concerned with the land’s religious affiliation, and developed to form enclaves of European settlements which featured superior technology and infrastructure (Pappe 2006, 75-76). The techniques used by these European settlers, such as for agriculture, were not shared with Palestinians, for the concern was not with local development, but productivity of the land (Pappe 2006, 76). Overall, this represented a migration of what was seen as progressive innovators bringing modernity and productivity to the lands of the traditional and listless Orientals (Malm 2024, loc. 34 of 75).

Zionism could thus be understood as a philosophy developed to contend with the growth of anti-Semitism in Europe. However, the narrative above deepens this view to understand it as a form of life adopting the methods and epistemic mechanisms of colonialism to establish a Jewish state. These methods include the overt replication of European colonisation, the use of religion, the promotion of productivity and rationalism, and the establishment of the Oriental “other” as a backward people and an empty land that did not and would not share in these values of progress. Apart from the contention that it was overtly modelled on colonialism, Zionism thus resembles many of the features governing orientalism and coloniality in IR as explored by Said, Krishna, and others. These include the valorisation of universal values of progress, productivity, and even linearity. It furthermore occluded the histories and being of the indigenous people. The significance of this is that, in surviving today, Zionism may represent an appendage of the coloniality in the contemporary international order. Contending with its presence and implications is explored below, but an immediate provocation is whether this survives as a mode of ecocide. A historical perspective points to how the land was seen by Zionists like Rothschild for its utility, much as Anghie (2004) suggests that international mandates, including Palestine, were sought and managed to maximise productivity and economic value. If Zionism, and this mode of thinking, survives today, it may inform how the objects constituting Gaza’s being are seen. To evaluate this, these objects’ histories are explored below.

First, however, it is worth considering how Jewish identity has also been shaped in Israel beyond the basic features of Zionism. Sand (2009, 15) identifies how Jewish identity has been shaped through a narrative in archaeology, history, and anthropology, transcending time to suggest an unbroken continuity between the Jewish forefathers and present-day Jews. More than a mythology of national origin, for Israel, this represents a certain truth that Moses received the Ten Commandments, led the twelve tribes to Israel from exile in Egypt, and conquered it, creating a kingdom featuring figures such as David and Solomon (Sand 2009, 16). Yet, despite the later fall of this kingdom and the destruction of the Jewish Temple twice, as well as the exile of Jewish people, they have avoided diluting their identity and remain purely in line with a continuity originating in biblical times (Sand 2009, 16). A secular reading of this scriptural narrative gave meaning to the Zionist project by asserting it as universal truth (Sand 2009, 65).

In line with the Zionist view, this eternal people could reclaim its ancient homeland to address the issue of integration elsewhere (Sand 2009, 17). In fact, this messianic view would have taken place even in spite of the Holocaust (Sand 2009, 17). And, since the land of Israel had been promised, it necessarily laid empty, awaiting its bloom, but for the foreign inhabitants who had stumbled upon it in the meantime (Sand 2009, 17). With this perspective rooted in a factual view of religious history, the inhabitants of Palestine, even in resisting this almost biblical destiny, would be unjustified (Sand 2009, 17). They could only remain at the pleasure of the original owners of the land (Sand 2009, 17). It is clear that in this form of identity, the colonial dualism between a rational and faithful human and the environment is maintained. This, along with the colonial modes of Zionism, potently serve to shape Palestinian history, as seen below. 

However, there are also questions raised by this Zionist view of Judaism which highlight discontinuities between the religion and the ideology, and further, the phenomena of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. If Jews are seen as an ethnic group that represents a continuity with biblical Jews, does this account for the different cultures among Jewish communities (Sand 2009, 21)? If they are instead seen as a belief-culture and not a nation-culture, does this indeed constitute anti-Semitism when it challenges Zionist claims to Israel (Sand 2009, 21)? There is a tension here revealed by a contradiction: claims of Jewish people’s alien cultural homogeneity were once used to support anti-Semitic understandings of Jewish people in Europe for instance, but now it may be considered anti-Semitic to claim that Jewish people are multicultural as it defies the foundational premises of the Zionist ethnonational state (Sand 2009, 21).

Coloniality may help in explaining this curious contradiction. Identity, as discussed by authors such as Said, is shaped by relations to others (Sand 2009, 22). Coloniality, as a maintenance of unequal power between the dualistic “self” and “other”, necessitates construction of identity through views seen to be universally valid, having a selective view of history, and occluding complexity. Jewish identity can change to take on new meanings in response to different interests – resistance, survival, coloniality. Anti-Semitism as an undeniable form of violence against Jewish people, has been used by Zionism to justify political ambitions. This has its inception in Herzl’s answer of Zionism to the Jewish question (Pappe 2006, 70). Sand identifies how this may persist in other forms. The construction of Jewish identity around a claim to the Holy Land, and the valorisation of Jewish eternal exile and suffering, occludes the ways in which Jews are today able to enjoy full rights in many other countries (Sand 2009, 22). The formation of Jewish identity as nationhood develops historiographical means to support the concept of a state, as has modernity itself (Sand 2009, 22). This could be seen in the use of archaeology to support Zionist claims or the Zionist valorisation of productivity and modernity of European settlers (Sand 2009; Pappe 2006).

The Jewish experience of genocide, taking place alongside Zionist settlement of Palestine, is a key contributor to understanding coloniality’s varied occupations, the experience of coloniality in Europe, and the strategy of genocide in general. It may also reveal the continuities with contemporary coloniality in Zionism, and its contributions to views of life and death, or humanity and inhumanity, which includes animals and the environment. Jews in Europe were beginning to be seen as insects and were described by Nazis such as Himmler as lice – parasitic, blood-sucking, diseased, insidious, pervasive, and filthy, requiring innovative means of control (Raffles 2010, 144-145). This was supported by modern sciences such as biology and the social sciences (Raffles 2010, 145). It was even embodied by progressive theories critiquing capital accumulation, which identified Jews as a parasitic class neither owning property nor being productive (Raffles 2010, 146). Dehumanisation, Raffles (2010, 146) discusses, becomes a pertinent strategy in identifying undesirable groups with negative traits such as those found in insects, to justify their eradication. As insects, or non-humans, they move from objects of disease needing care to objects of annihilation – subjects of agency is not considered (Raffles 2010, 155). It is not impossible to imagine that the environment could occupy this role, often being seen as non-human.

Raffles highlights an unmistakable similarity between regimes of cleansing and regimes of eradication that follows from this. The quarantine-style enclosures, gases, collective showers and cremations are shared features of pandemic management and genocide (Raffles 2010, 158). Once they were identified with insects as diseases or disease-vectors, dehumanised people like Jews during the Holocaust would be subject to the same treatment to secure hygiene (Raffles 2010, 160).

Zionists like Alfred Nossig themselves contributed to this, representing a continuity with coloniality and anti-Semitism, by asserting that the exile from Israel had caused Jews to degenerate to become morally base, shrewd, ambitious, and vain (Raffles 2010, 147). Zionism could be the problem to the Jewish question by utilising the same coloniality which places Jews as hierarchically below Christian Europeans, to find solutions elsewhere by extolling the virtues of Jewish people as educated and liberal – Jews could organise and regenerate (Raffles 2010, 148). Jews were at once too immoral to be European but moral enough to be colonial settlers – a contradiction which only the dualist hierarchies of coloniality could manage. A particular logic of this, originating in the philosophies such as Lamarck, asserted that Jews were diseased with immorality due to their spiritual exile, and upon reinstatement to Israel, would regenerate (Raffles 2010, 151). Rather than contending with the coloniality underlying anti-Semitism, Zionists like Nossig chose to be heirs to European modernity at the frontier (Raffles 2010, 154).

The discussion above shows that the experience of Jewish history in the 19th and 20th centuries is marked by traces of coloniality. Zionism could adopt strategies of coloniality which had continuities with anti-Semitism and could carry it out in a colonial setting. This would not necessarily deconstruct the hierarchical view of Jews as inferior but find an “other” on which to assert superiority. Using strategies such as those described above, Zionism comes to embody a colonial matrix of power to subjugate Palestine. This is not to deny the great injustice of the Holocaust. However, the genocide of the Jewish people has a logic which is implicated in coloniality – in knowledges, practices, and discourses which renders some groups less-than-human. The genocide of Jews represents enclosure, control, and eradication of people which can only be justified by adhering to a colonial view of what constitutes human life and what does not. In some cases, human beings do not constitute human life. But often, non-humans like insects and the environment can seldom constitute human life. It may be that these strategies are reproduced in Palestine and Gaza. Zionism may indeed resemble other colonial appendages like Nazism (Nijim 2023, 169). This is looked at further below.

History of Palestinian Identity

Palestine as a named place emerges from about 1300 B.C.E., when names such as Cana’an, gave way to a name possibly based on the Philistines (Masalha 2018, 8; Lewis 1980, 1). These were a people considered the enemies of the Israelites in the Bible who lived in the coastal region around Gaza (Masalha 2018; Lewis 1980, 1). There were other suggested origins of the name, including ‘Peleset’, referring to the ‘sea people’ marauders described in the archaeological record of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses III ahead of the Bronze Age Collapse (Masalha 2018, 56; Lewis 1980, 1). Masalha (2018, 56) suggests that, despite this, the origins of the Palestinians are indigenously in the Near East. This reflects a long association of the area with the name Palestine since antiquity, and with names of cities such as Gaza and Ashkelon, which survive today (Masalha 2018, 59). 

Looking at history may help diversify an understanding of what may constitute Palestinian identity. For instance, Herodotus speaks of Palestine as a large region where Arabians inhabited places like Gaza’s Khan Younis in the 5thcentury B.C.E. and where polytheism was practiced (Masalha 2018, 73-76). Later, around the 1st century C.E. the Herodian city of Caesarea Maritima situated on the Mediterranean coast, was home to Greco-Roman pagans, Samaritans, Greek and Aramaic-speaking Jews and Christians, and Arab Christians (Masalha 2018, 94). Still later, the Arab Christian Ghassanid kings, clients of the Byzantine Empire, were facilitating the growth of Christianity in the region, as well as aiding in its further Arabisation through supporting migration from the Arabian Peninsula (Masalha 2018). The Arab presence, growing from here, integrated with other groups such as Syriac Christians (Masalha 2018, 151-152), developing a dynamic Palestinian identity. These Palestinians were Aramaic and Arabic speaking, Syriac and Arab, indigenous and immigrant, Christian, and Muslim with the arrival of Islam in the 7th century (Said 1980, 10).

From here, Palestine was incorporated into the Islamic Caliphate in 638, and later the Ummayad dynasty, which promoted Arabic in Palestine and the construction of Islamic holy sites such as the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque (Masalha 2018). Masalha (2018) contends that while economic growth was maintained at this time, so was the harmonious transformation of society towards an Islamic majority, though one in which religious autonomy was granted to both Jews and Christians. Instead of religious coercion and mass conversion, the demands made of Christians by Islamic rulers were in the form of taxes (Gil 1997, 221). Similarly, Jews were also not subject to mass conversion (Gil 1997, 222). 

This tolerance was brought to an end in 970 with the beginning of the rule of the Fatimid Egyptians who marginalised Bedouins and Christians (Masalha 2018). Christians and Jews had to wear identifying symbols such as crosses or blocks of wood, were forbidden to use luxurious carriages or employ Muslims as servants, and had to use separate bath-houses (Gil 1997, 376). It was also decreed in about 1007 that all churches be destroyed and that Jews and Christians convert or leave (Gil 1997, 376). This situation precipitated the First Crusade and occupation of Palestine by the European alliance until 1187 (Masalha 2018). However, the Ayyubids who re-established Islamic rule in Palestine, encouraged religious tolerance of Jews and Christians, something not extended towards Muslims and Jews under the Crusaders (Masalha 2018, 195). The Crusades had also heightened Islamic concern for Palestine, enhancing its view as central to the empires ruling it (Khalidi 1997, 30).

What is clear is that religious intolerance was practiced by Christian powers in this period. Yet, Muslim rulers practiced tolerance because this was promoted by precedent in the form of sayings by the Prophet and early caliphs (Gil 1997, 141). Despite this demonstration of Palestine’s history representing tolerance and integration of diverse ethnic groups and religions, efforts were made around the rise of Zionism to occlude this. This was done using religion in the orientalist mode, to identify Palestinians as the enemy by linking them to the biblical Philistines (Masalha 2018, 56). First, the utility of considering Palestinians as ancient Judeans who had been converted to Islam was recognised for it would allow the Jewish settlers to find kinship with those in Palestine and recover them to Jewish identity and modernity (Sand 2009, 184-185). Of course, Gil argues that this was false as Jews were not forced to convert in the first place (Gil 1997, 222). Either way, this would be firmly rejected with the Arab resistance faced by Jewish settlers, leading to less integrationist views (Sand 2009, 187).

Biblical scholars contributing to this asserted that the ‘Peleset’ and Philistines were the people who inhabited areas such as Gaza, and produced enemies such as Goliath and Delilah to the Israelites (Masalha 2018, 62-63). This is not to imply that religions such as Judaism or Christianity themselves advanced this view, but that the knowledge asserted by these scholars used scripture to pose as objective truth, through disciplines such as archaeology, which removed Palestinians as indigenous (Masalha 2018, 59). And, though it was the Romans who helped identify the region with the name Palestine to erase Jewish identity (Lewis 1980, 2), it is the people of Palestine who came to form a part of the imaginary of Israel’s historic and contemporary enemy. Linguistically, philistine remains the word used to describe people as without culture (Masalha 2018, 63). If this lends itself to the orientalist project of Palestine’s Zionist occupation, it exists in a network of ideas which sees Palestine as a land without a people (and the corollary, Palestinians as a people without a history), or an empty desert waiting to bloom (Masalha 2018, 1; Malm 2024, loc. 28-29 of 75; Said 2003, 286). This reflects Doumani’s (1992) contention regarding the occlusions of orientalist historiography. That is, in the orientalist project, Palestinian culture and history is denied as much as Palestinian existence, or, in the religious sense, they have no moral significance but as the enemy of God’s chosen people. To many historians, Palestinians are only recognised in relation to Zionist history and its milestones such as the First Aliya or the Balfour Declaration (Kabha 2014, 1). This then becomes justificatory of their decimation. This becomes more significant for Gaza as Zionist historiography identifies Gaza as the precise region from where the Philistines came (Masalha 2018, 64). 

Furthermore, the Palestinians being identified with Islam or Arab ethnicity was used to similarly orientalise them and normatively pit them against Zionist aims. This adds a dimension used to gaze upon the “other” outside of the selectively propagated biblical narrative. For instance, in the larger orientalist view of Islam, Muslims are seen as vicious, venial, lecherous, and stupid by both popular and scholarly accounts (Said 1980, 26). In addition, Islam was seen as the enemy of Judaism and Christianity (Said 1980, 31). Islam thus predisposed Palestinians to despotism and criminality, emotion, and violence (Said 1980, 89). As Arabs, Palestinians are furthermore seen as cunning, unreliable, and interested only in power (Said 1980, 26-27). This view of Arabs and Muslims as somehow morally corrupt is not far from the orientalist view associating Palestinians with the biblical Philistines. At the same time, a Zionist identity was constructed for settlers to represent an “Eastern” people who had managed to lift themselves out of the worst qualities of being oriental (Said 1980, 26). They were thus considered more capable for “rebuilding” Palestine and bringing it to modernity (Said 1980, 13). Consequently, Palestinians are seen as Muslim Arabs who are less human or valuable than Zionist settlers or Europeans and thus require tutelage in the form of rule by colonialists (Said 1980, 28). Hence, Palestine comes to represent a battleground between the forces of Islam and the forces of civilisation (Said 1980, 29). Its environment is scarcely considered, except as the site of the backward Muslims or the potential fertility which civilisation could bring.

The brief history of the constitution of Palestinian history discussed above counters these claims by showing a diverse culture in Palestine which has no precise origin. It is one which nevertheless represents frequent instances of assimilation between pagans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, as well as between Arabs and other ethnic groups such as Syriac people. It becomes difficult to justify a hegemonic orientalist view of Arabs, Islam, and Palestinians in light of this. Below it will be seen how the specific claims of their societal contributions or the land are similarly inaccurate. Still, the implications are that 19th century coloniality may have implications for how Palestine, its people, and Gaza specifically are seen today. Palestinians represent this view of a backward enemy that may be justifiably, from a religious and rationalist perspective, occupied, displaced, or eliminated, to suit the project of expanding the Eurocene geopolitical order.

Arriving at more recent history, this narrative may further be challenged. In 1922, nearly 10% of the Palestinian population was Christian (Said 1980, 17). In addition, in 1948, when the State of Israel was formed, amongst the Muslim Palestinians were still Christians (Said 1980, 5). Moreover, while the majority spoke Arabic or were Sunni Muslim, there were also Druzes and Shiite Muslim Palestinians (Said 1980, 12). Christian Palestinians were nevertheless seen as more modern, beautiful, and free than Muslim Palestinians (Van Oord 2008, 218).

In fact, Palestine and the Middle East was also home to Arab (Mizrahi) Jews who were subjected to cheap labour in the kibbutz settled on confiscated land by Zionist settlers (Said 1980, 21). Their gradual movement from other Arab nations to what would become the State of Israel represents a simultaneous selectivity and universality of Zionism’s judgements only possible with a hierarchical view of people with multiple classes (Daniele 2020; Penslar 2020). The Mizrahim, as Jews, were exempt from the judgements of Arabs but, as Arabs, were nevertheless seen as inferior to the Ashkenazim from Europe (Daniele 2020, 465). They were thus used for their cheap labour, geographically segregated, and politically marginalised (Daniele 2020). Meanwhile, Christian Palestinians were subject to the same orientalist views of Islam in terms of the orientalist constructions described above. These inconsistencies further undermine Zionism’s credibility in understanding Palestinians. They also reflect the continuity with coloniality which saw people, and Jews themselves, in hierarchies. It thus may be of concern when coloniality may relegate some groups to less-than-human positions.

Ottoman rule in Palestine, beginning in 1517, despite having administrative effects, was unable to shake the strong religious association with the land of Palestine held by all Abrahamic faiths (Khalidi 1997, 29). In this sense, the Holy Land included, for Muslims, “Hebron, Jericho, Nablus, al-Ramla, Safad, Ascalon, Acre, Gaza, and Nazareth” (Khalidi 1997, 29). Hence, Palestinians have possessed a strong religious identity with diverse origins.

This discussion of Palestinian identity in terms of ethnic origin or religion may not have direct implications for understanding ecocide. However, if it is further explored how this undergirded relational understandings of Palestine and its people, especially relative to Zionism, it becomes possible to see how both the people and environment of Palestine were colonially constructed.

History of Societal Development in Palestine

The identity of Palestine explored above helps inform how societal developments in Palestine were seen. Byzantine rule of Palestine established Christianity as a major religion amongst the population, who continued to espouse religious and linguistic diversity in trading hubs such as Caesarea Maritima (Masalha 2018). At this time, Gaza also boasted extensive trade, numerous scholars, and a sizeable Arab community who developed the Rhetorical School of Gaza, the Rose Festival of Gaza, and many monasteries (Masalha 2018). Following later Islamic rule, the Crusades were initiated to recapture the Holy Land. Zionist historiography saw Islamic rule as leading to the decline of Palestine, something only the Crusades may have stalled (Said 1980). The impact of the Crusades, however, were not enduring as Saladin deposed the Fatimids and conquered Egypt, then further retook Palestine from the Crusaders (Masalha 2018, 194). The Ayyubid rule of Palestine and the Muslim world which followed is contended to have espoused great cultural and scientific advancement. This runs contrary to claims in coloniality of the Eurocentric origin of useful knowledge, espoused by the immanence of Whiteness (Sabaratnam 2020, 13).

In a continuation of the turn away from the Mediterranean and the western coast of Palestine after the Crusades, the Mamluks, who controlled Palestine from 1260, emphasised the importance of al-Quds (Jerusalem) in terms of architecture, religion, learning, and infrastructure such as bath houses and fountains (Masalha 2018, 199-200). Amongst Muslims, not only was there a free-flow of pilgrims coming to the now wall-less city, but there was a free-flow of Muslims scholars around the Muslim world, including Palestine (Masalha 2018, 200). These developments were not restricted to al-Quds, and many cities in the hinterlands, such as Safad, enjoyed similar patronage (Masalha 2018). At this time, not only was the modern image of Palestine beginning to form – with buildings in Jerusalem from that period persisting – but so was the entrenchment of Palestine as a place being reiterated, despite claims to the contrary (Masalha 2018, 204). In fact, while some have claimed that Palestine was only brought back as a reinvention in the late Ottoman period, Palestine featured in the work of local writers and jurists of the time, including Muslim explorer Ibn Battuta who spoke of his travels to Filastin (Masalha 2018, 204-206).

Without concerning itself with these developments, as Said (2003, 26) contends, the orientalist demonisation of Islam and attempt to tell a history of Palestine in terms of this has been used to portray them as a threat to Zionist aims. Practically, it has also aided Zionism in achieving these aims, by for instance gaining British support for the productivity that Jewish settlement could bring to Palestine which was portrayed to be empty and unproductive (Pappe 2006; Van Oord 2008, 220). Furthermore seen as Arabs, Palestinians were seen to have represented Islamic civilisation’s hand in the decline of ancient Greco-Roman civilisation (Said 1980, 80-81). Only the Crusades had temporarily challenged this and Palestine had made no contribution to civilisation (Said 1980, 81). Islam was asserted to be incompatible with efficiency and progress because of the moral judgements predisposing them to religion, emotion, passion, and violence (Said 1980, 89).

But, if occluding history is used to support this, then revealing it highlights the falsehoods of truths claiming to be universal in the pursuit of domination. Palestine has not been empty and is not only home to Muslims who are the intolerant biblical Philistines. It has featured growth, change, religious tolerance, intellectual contribution to knowledge, and migration which complicate the identity and origin of Palestinians. This disrupts aims to homogenously identify them as orientalist enemies who have no history or contribution to the world. An instance of Palestine’s contribution, linked to the environment, is gauze, used for medical dressing, which was developed from Gazan silk in England (Masalha 2008, 174). Others include Antiochus of Ashkelon’s influences on Cicero, the development of the Rhetorical School of Gaza, and advances broadly made by the Muslim world during the Ayyubid period (Masalha 2018). This disrupts the view of time in Palestine as an empty existence bookended by biblical history and Zionist settlement (Said 1980, 87) by highlighting its presence, thereby challenging the orientalist constitution of the “other”. Palestine was not simply the unchanged place where Abraham and King David had lived (Van Oord 2008, 210).

However, it has already been seen how Palestine has had an enduring presence long before the Ottomans arrived. Indeed, the Arab presence predates the Ottomans by about 19 centuries, and the history of Palestine precedes even that, with cities like Gaza originating nearly 5000 years ago (Masalha 2018). Still, the Ottoman period was significant in many ways. Under Ottoman rule in the 18th and 19th centuries, Palestine exported great amounts of cotton and wheat (Masalha 2018, 219). While the wheat staved off famine in France, the cotton contributed to the growth of British mills after the Industrial Revolution (Masalha 2018, 219). The Palestinian modernity that this ushered in included autonomous rule, agricultural innovations in the 18th century, exports of cotton, wheat, citrus, and olive oil to Europe, and the expansion of urban spaces (Masalha 2018, 221-222, 231-232). These were only parts of the modernity that Palestine was experiencing, which, contrary to discourses of its origins with Napoleon or Europeans, emerged earlier (Masalha 2018, 220). Although occurring during the Ottoman period and with interaction with Europeans, these developments were rooted in the indigenous people (Masalha 2018).

Particularly central to this were the fellahin (or agricultural workers with communal ownership of land), who were nevertheless seen as living centuries behind the contemporary time establishing their primitiveness and justifying Zionist settlement (Said 1980, 28; Abufarha 2010). In fact, even Palestinians who were “urban” or educated, the effendi, were judged by the orientalist moral standards discussed above to be too self-preserving to be efficient (Said 1980, 28). Hence, Palestine was seen as empty and sparsely cultivated even under the Ottomans (Khalidi 1997, 101). Moreover, concerted resistance to this was hard to overcome due to the divide between the urban and rural Palestinians (Khalidi 1997). Still, in the 20th century, a consciousness of Palestinian identity and resistance to Zionism began to proliferate through the growth of education outside of cities (Khalidi 1997, 175).

Aiding the aforementioned discussed moral judgements of Palestinians were thus civilisational standards, often rooted in liberalism, such as freedom and democracy, which encompassed orientalist views of Arabs and Muslims (Said 1980, 29). This was aided by the Cold War opposition to communism to justify Zionist settlement and the establishment and protection of the State of Israel (Said 1980, 29). Palestinians were seen as backward, tyrannical, and lacking democracy, such that European Jews were needed to develop the lands encompassed by a state called Israel (Said 1980, 30-32; Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2014, 279). Said (1980, 30) asserts that this brings the settler colonial project in the fold of American liberal democracy by valorising Western superiority and establishing a right to assert this. This is not inconceivable given how authors such as Krishna, Sabaratnam, Jahn and Anghie have explored trajectories of liberal entrenchment premised on abstractions and universal values establishing subject-positioned Whites as superior and possessing the right to control others to spread this. At the same time, these colonial discourses served to deny the very humanity of those encountered. Outside of modernity, Palestinians were outside of humanity itself (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2014, 288).

This can be enhanced by considering Herzl’s colonial views in developing Zionism. In addition to seeing Palestine as empty or in need of upliftment, Herzl broadly subscribed to a view that the barbarism of Asia could be contended with by the outpost of a Jewish state as a “wall of defence” between Europe and Asia (Penslar 2020, 185). This could be achieved in the land without a people, for a people without a land (Khalidi 1997, 101). Despite this, he at the same time subscribed to views of a civilisational hierarchy with Europeans at the top, followed by eastern European Yiddish- and Russian-speaking Jews susceptible to barbarism, Arabs, and at the very bottom, sub-Saharan Africans (Penslar 2020). This complicates the relative subject-positioning of Whiteness used by Zionism. This leads to insights highlighting how Zionism may have espoused anti-Semitic values towards Jews (among them eastern European and Mizrahi) as a broader way of colonial thinking valorising progress. This is evidence by the aforementioned view of Jews as advanced, but nevertheless Eastern, as well as the treatment of Mizrahi Jews by the Zionist project (Raffles 2010; Said 1980; Daniele 2020). Gentrification in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem aimed at marginalising, in addition to the Mizrahim, Ethiopian Jews or Arabs, similarly accords to Herzl’s views (Daniele 2020, 472). These instances reveal that almost no one is safe from the relative entanglements used by Whiteness towards propagating a Eurocene order premised on order and productivity. While not equating the Palestinian and Mizrahi experiences, for instance, this recognition highlight’s Zionism’s exploitation of “asymmetric power dynamics” such that a civilisational hierarchy is used as a central ordinal value (Daniele 2020, 464). This may have insights into how the environment is targeted, not directly because of race or anthropocentrism, but because of the violent ordering of a Eurocene form of life.

Supporting this, archaeology has been used by Israel to uncover a history to prove their superior right to occupy the land, while selectively occluding findings which counter it (Khalidi 1997, 15). For instance, the Moroccan quarter of Jerusalem, established in 1193, was demolished in 1967 to build the plaza near the west wall, believed to be the only remaining structure from the Second Temple, which is used for nationalist gatherings (Khalidi 1997, 17). In Jerusalem, this is done more regularly (Khalidi 1997, 18). This is further reflected in the destruction, loss, or containment in Israeli archives of Palestinian sources of history, making it an inaccessible history (Khalidi 1997, 89).

Emblematic of this dynamic could be the village of Al-Khalasa which was settled by Arabs in the 4th century B.C.E. (Masalha 2018, 154). It served as a principal administrative town during both the Roman and Byzantine periods but was abandoned under the Mamluks in the 15th century before being resettled by Bedouins in the 20th century (Masalha 2018, 154). With the Zionist encounter, it was destroyed and renamed Haluza (Hebrew for pioneer), before being declared the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Haluza in Israel’s Negev desert (Masalha 2018, 154; UNESCO 2005). Here, it is the Palestinian history which is being memorialised but almost as a spectacle for it is Israel which occupies the site of that history and recognised as such.

Viewed this way, Zionism operated by orientalist modes to valorise the virtue, both in scientific and religious terms, of the occupying “self”. It did so while establishing an “other” which was religiously unvirtuous, scientifically backward, and unproductive. It both effaced some Palestinian histories and appropriated others to support a project asserting that Zionism could bring civilisation to Palestine. This reveals coloniality in thinking which operated with a network of appendages to encourage an occupying form of life. There have already been possibilities for how this may look for the environment. While its specific manifestation in terms of war is explored in the next chapter, its historical forms are discussed next.

History of the Environment in Palestine

The environment has featured in Palestine’s recorded history since at least the Roman era when Palestine was known for its production of wine and its cities with medicinal natural warm springs (Masalha 2018). For the much later Abbasid dynasty, Palestine was seen as the site of both prestige and peak revenue production (Masalha 2018, 172). Recognised for its fertility, this may represent a relationship to the land in which it is valued by an imperial power for its productive capabilities, though this was not accompanied by dispossession of the people on that land. Indeed, Palestine of the 10thcentury was producing olives, dried figs, raisins, carob-fruits, silk, cotton, apples, and pineapples (Masalha 2018, 173).

At the same time, Palestinian history does not indicate that the environment was pristinely maintained, as evidenced by the rubble dumped by the Ayyubids in the Mediterranean to fend off the Crusaders (Masalha 2018, 196). This displays that the environment has anthropocentrically featured as an appendage of war, or its avoidance, even outside of Palestine’s encounter with European colonialism. Still, while this displays environmental degradation due to the pursuit of war as a form of life, it is perhaps more defensive in nature as a response to war. This represents a discontinuity between anthropocentric use of the environment defensively and offensively, as it is subsequently contended is evident in Gaza at present. This highlights the coloniality which is more destructive of the environment as a target, and nuances the centrality of anthropocentrism by recognising its operation alongside power and offensive violence as more ecocidal. At the same time, anthropocentrism does not preclude an impact on the environment as a result of war, even in defence. Defence against the Crusades is one example, but others include the use of the environment by guerrillas during the Vietnam War, and its subsequent targeting with defoliants (Grove 2019, 42). Or, as explored below, the displacement of people in Gaza and disruptions to WASH infrastructure feature as sources of indirect impacts on the environment of the survival of people targeted by war. However, these instances do not seem to target the environment as the “other” in the same way that coloniality does. They represent a co-constituting relationship to it.

A more recent look at history leads to more specific encounters with the environment. Around the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, about 65% of Palestinians were involved in agriculture, rearing ground crops, fruits, and vegetables (Said 1980, 12). Yet, effacing this, as discussed above, Zionism saw the land as empty and awaiting blooming. From the colonial perspective, the environment was viewed for its potential for development. Hence, American soil experts were hired by the US to survey irrigation in the Jordan Valley (Van Oord 2008, 222). Yet, one of these experts, in a departure from considering the environment, suggested that Arabs who did not want to live in an industrialised Palestine could go to other parts of the Arab world (Van Oord 2008, 222). Of course, this was supported by earlier discussed views of Arabs and the state of Palestine as one of underdevelopment. More than these surveys, the political project supported by this view of the environment was one which emphasised the role of Jews in fertilising the land (Van Oord 2008, 225). For instance, returning to Palestine’s decline under the Fatimids, it contributed to an orientalist view which valorised the violence of the Crusades, and asserted that any violence was not as harmful to Palestine, its culture, and even environment, as Islam (Said 1980, 90). Here, occluded history even misrepresents the environment and asserts that it benefitted from violence. With these assumptions, the Zionist occupation subsequently progressed.

With many Palestinians having been exiled from Palestine or internally displaced and with no access to their land, there have been symbols of their collective identity derived from this environmental history (Abufarha 2010, loc. 136 of 255). The first of these is the saber (cactus) which has traditionally been used to separate orchards and olive groves and act as a protective fence (Abufarha 2010, loc. 138 of 255). Shared between the bordering orchards, or even by villages using them, these bore fruit which was freely available to those in this collective form of ownership (Abufarha 2010, loc. 139 of 255). Reflecting Palestinian adaptation to life on the rugged terrain in the hills and mountains of Palestine, these cacti were able to adapt and thrive, even surviving attempts to destroy them in destroying Palestinian villages (Abufarha 2010, locs. 139, 162 of 255). Their social meaning is reflected in one ritual where a male elder would open the thorny fruit so that others may gather and enjoy the fruit (Abufarha 2010, loc. 140 of 255). This represents a sacrificial role of communal responsibility taken by elders towards future generations (Abufarha 2010, loc. 140 of 255). Furthermore, the fruit picked from the cacti are taken by villagers and sold in cities, representing a link between rural and urban Palestinians (Abufarha 2010, loc. 140 of 255). The cactus, cooked in the form of jams, is only one of many features in the Palestinian diet (Sharif 2014, 239).

Another symbol is located in the al-burtuqal (orange) which has been grown in groves on the coastal plains of Palestine, from as far north as Acre to Al-Majdal, just north of Gaza (Abufarha 2010, loc. 141 of 255; Hamdan 2018, 321). This represented a booming industry for export in the early 20th century, when the “Jaffa orange” became renowned in Europe (Abufarha 2010, loc. 141 of 255). As a native source of pride for Palestinians, this defied the view of Palestine as a desert awaiting bloom from Zionist settlement (Abufarha 2010, loc. 141 of 255). Jaffa itself was at this time the most populous Palestinian city, but became a target for Israel not only to occupy this city but to appropriate the orange as a symbol of Israel, when it had been a symbol of Palestine (Abufarha 2010, loc. 141 of 255; Hamdan 2018, 321). An environmental heritage firmly Palestinian is in this way stolen, reflecting Palestine’s occupation. Considering how this shapes Palestinian identity, a novel by Ghassan Kanafani considers what someone displaced from the city of Haifa where oranges have been grown would find upon returning (Abufarha 2010, loc. 144 of 255). Rather than finding a memory suspended in time, they would invariably find settlers living there (Abufarha 2010, loc. 145 of 255). They would also find that the oranges may not be as bountiful as before because the land itself comes to be worth more to Israel than the oranges growing on it (Hamdan 2018, 330). This reflects that Palestine is not to be found in a history unchanged, but in considering how the memories of what once was could shape a future (Abufarha 2010, loc. 145 of 255). The orange represents a symbol for holding this memory of national identity for Palestinians and the trauma of their dispossession, as well as the colonial view of land as an “other” for productivity (Hamdan 2018, 321-322, 330-332).

A third symbol is the al-zaytuna (olive tree) which grows in the mountainous West Bank and has been there since at least 8 000 B.C.E (Abufarha 2010, loc. 147 of 255). Unlike the orange trees of the coastal regions which were fully appropriated by Israel, resulting in the exile of Palestinians there, the olive trees represent a rootedness in the land of these ancient plants and the Palestinians of the West Bank (Abufarha 2010, loc. 147 of 255). Moreover, in communally harvesting olives from these trees or practicing traditional methods to maintain them, the olive tree is a symbol of Palestinians’ enduring relationship to the land (Abufarha 2010, loc. 149 of 255). This is reflected in the Palestinian diet where olive oil is a staple year-round, supporting the livelihoods of about 100 000 families (Abufarha 2010, loc. 150 of 255; Sharif 2014, 10). The practices used to maintain this include daily maintenance of the trees, and their growth on terraces as stacked stones encircling hills (Abufarha 2010, loc. 150 of 255). These, if cared for, hold the soil and prevent erosion, and while not allowing for ploughing and harvesting with tractors, is a central location of gathering for communities to harvest (Abufarha 2010, loc. 151 of 255). Indeed, over half of the Palestinian populations partakes in this harvest (Sharif 2014, 273).

Furthermore, their endurance as an ancient tree, where some are planted by elders to bear fruit not for themselves but for future generations, represents a non-linear, intergenerational relationship that is not concerned with productivity but community (Abufarha 2010). This is echoed in the refusal of one Palestinian man to let Israel cut his olive tree, even at the risk of losing his life (Sharif 2014, 10). Later, representing its rootedness, and that of the Palestinian people in the memory of the land, the olive tree and harvest became a symbol and activity to mobilise Palestinians during the First Intifada (Abufarha 2010, loc. 154 of 255). At the same time, Israeli bulldozers targeting these trees by uprooting them represents a specific mode by which Zionist settlement aims to sever Palestinian identity and its roots in the environment. In 2013 alone, 8000 olive trees were uprooted by the Israeli military and settlers to disrupt this rooted identity (Sharif 2014, 12). Between 1967 and 2010, 800 000 olive trees have been uprooted by Israel in the West Bank (Sharif 2014, 12).

A fourth symbol is found in the poppy flower which, possessing the colours of the Palestinian flag, and featuring a red flower, has come to symbolise the martyrdom of those resisting occupation (Abufarha 2010). It also reflects that the blood and body of those who lose their life is given to the land to nourish it (Abufarha 2010, loc. 161 of 255).

These symbols and those reflected in Palestine’s environmental history more broadly, speak to a complex relationship to the land. While there have been instances of anthropocentric use of the land, these could be seen as deep entanglements which did not seek to destroy the land, but reflected the fluid essence of Palestine’s nature, including its human inhabitants. The specific symbols of recent Palestinian history represent various elements of this nature. It is one that is communal, intergenerational, non-linear and non-productivist, adaptive, subject to appropriation, and vitally non-dualist. This relationship to the land, while possessing a central human character, is not anthropocentric in the form of coloniality, where the land is seen as only a resource to sustain humans. It has complex meanings of cultural meaning and social practice which are mutually constitutive. This reflects the Palestinian relationship to the land which may make it a target (as orange groves, cacti, or olive trees have been) of coloniality.

This has implications, as seen above, for seeing the environment not as empty, barren, pristine, and undesirably lacking in productivity, but supporting a form of life of interdependence with Palestine, whether its people were occupied, and whatever ethnic or religious identity they held on to. Occluding this may support the orientalist objectification of the environment, in which valorising its utilitarian uses, may lead to genocide to clear the land, and use ecocide to bring it into the fold of productivist use. It is not hard to imagine this as being in line with the Eurocene order’s project to engineer the earth in North America for agriculture by exterminating its native population and targeting flora and fauna, such that the climate itself was altered (Grove 2019, 42). This is especially given Zionism’s modelling after colonialism. Before discussing how this may be at work in Gaza today, the key recent political moments informing Gaza’s Zionist occupation are discussed next.

Recent Political History of Palestine and Gaza

The longer history explored above, alongside the operation of Zionism and orientalism, help nuance the Palestinian story. Rather than an empty land of listless Arabs (Malm 2024), Palestine, for millennia, has been anything but. It has featured a diversity of religions, migrating ethnic groups, and economic activities which have had relations (often peaceful) to their environment, their neighbours, and their occupying powers (Rome, Byzantium, Islamic Empires).

As discussed above, when Zionist settlement began to accelerate, the Ottoman Empire held control of Palestine. The Ottomans, however, failed to provide the means to counter the Zionist movement by ignoring protests, petitions, and political efforts (Khalidi 1997, 187). It was then promised by the British to the hereditary ruler of Mecca that if Arabs revolted against the Ottomans, they would support Arab independence in the Middle East after the defeat of the Ottomans in the First World War (Khalidi 1997, 160). Arabs were still seen as a hegemonic group and the Palestinian place in this was not clear (Khalidi 1997). The Balfour Declaration of 1917 similarly promised Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people (Khalidi 1997, 160). However, both agreements were accompanied by the Sykes-Picot accords of 1916 dividing the Middle East between Britain and France (Khalidi 1997, 160).

The 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1923 League of Nations Mandate both gave legal force to Zionist aims and only referred to Palestinians as the “non-Jewish communities in Palestine” (Khalidi 1997, 8, 23). Not described as people, they were promised civil and religious rights, but not political ones (Khalidi 2017, 8). More than a backward people who had occupied and rendered unproductive the land of Israel, these colonial forces deemed Palestinians non-human entirely (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2014, 278). They were not the humans of coloniality deserving of political rights. Simultaneously, declarations such as these omitted Palestinians and committed the world to supporting their Zionist occupation (Khalidi 2017, 9).

Resistance to these developments and Zionist settlement emerged amongst the urban elites who were opposed to Zionism on principle (Khalidi 1997, 114). It also emerged amongst the fellahin who were beginning to feel the impacts of Zionist land seizure (Khalidi 1997, 114). This represented a shared experience of Zionism not seen in the same way before (Khalidi 1997, 114). Still, the Arab Revolt (1936-1939) was initiated from the grass-roots rather than by urban elites (Khalidi 1997, 8). Furthermore, sustained national efforts from the Palestinian side were unable to materialise due to persistent strong and fragmentary local affiliations (religious, clan, family) outside of the intellectual urban centres (Khalidi 1997, 25-26). Bombings before 1948 and the Deir Yassin massacre in April 1948, in which 100 people, mostly women, the elderly, and children were killed, represented the beginning of displacement and destruction of Palestinians and Palestine (Khalidi 2017, 10). Israel had used this opportunity and the previous Arab Revolt to weaken Palestinian resistance, such that by 1948, there was a political and military vacuum allowing Israel to emerge victorious, despite the intervention of several Arab armies (Khalidi 1997, 27, 178). This was supported by a UN partition plan concluded in 1947, as well as the earlier Holocaust which had lent strength to Zionist aims for Jewish self-determination (Khalidi 1997, 178, 190). It seemed to prove Herzl’s original prediction that Jews could not assimilate correct, and bore a reluctance amongst Western powers to deny the establishment of the State of Israel (Pappe 2006, 71-72; Maoz 2013, 35). At the same time, Palestinian resistance was viewed abroad to prove an Arab propensity for violence and hindrance to progress (Van Oord 2008, 221). This was all supported by what was ostensibly a neutral body as the United Nations. Instead, the UN reflected the power politics of the time, with P5 superpowers such as the US, the UK, and France themselves having been involved in coloniality in Palestine and the world more generally (Khalidi 2017, 10). This partition plan itself identified Palestine as an “Arab state”, reflecting its deeper adherence to the colonial views of Palestine (Khalidi 2017, 11).

The result was that about 700 000 Palestinians were displaced in what is called the Nakba, and their lands came under the control of Israel, and to a lesser extent, Egypt and Jordan (Khalidi 1997, 179). As discussed earlier, Israel’s absentee laws then prevented their return, effectively depriving them of land and citizenship (Mock et al. 2014). Unfortunately, this was supported by the poor effort to organise nationally before 1948, and the alliance with other Arab nations, which gave strength to arguments that Palestinians were Arabs, did not constitute a nation of their own, and could thus be moved to other Arab nations (Khalidi 1997, 185). Hence, today, Gaza is largely populated by people from other parts of Palestine who had been displaced by Israel in 1948 (Khalidi 1997, 3). Furthermore, the Nakba could not be understood as a tragedy comparable to the Holocaust or the two-thousand-year Jewish exile (Sand 2009, 19). More than the religious constitutions of identity, this was supported by colonial thinking which valorised Western ideals. In keeping with the view of Arabs as undemocratic and tyrannical, Israel garnered international support by beginning to accept the role of the sole democracy in the Middle East, only possible because of Zionist colonialism (Sand 2009, 307). This was in spite of their refusal to grant Palestinians political rights – a contradiction managed by keeping them eternally occupied (Sand 2009, 308; Mock et al. 2014).

Both Israel’s victories in 1948 and 1967 continued the trend of proving Zionism’s universal validity after Herzl’s supposed prediction of the Holocaust (Sand 2009). In keeping with biblical views, these victories were sacred recurrences of David’s victory over Goliath – the small Israelite and the large Philistine enemy becoming the State of Israel and the combined Arab armies (Sand 2009, 112). The establishment of the PLO after the 1967 war was able to claim a normative basis for Palestinian identity as the sole legitimate representative (Khalidi 1997, 199). However, while not having the full effects of government, the PLO made some progress in fostering identity through publications such as newspapers, books, radio stations, and periodicals (Khalidi 1997, 199). However, this was driven by Palestinians in exile (Khalidi 1997, 200).

Despite this Israeli occupation persisted, and the First Intifada, beginning in 1987, saw a grassroots uprising in the occupied territories, leading to a resurgence of resistance from Palestinians within Palestine (Khalidi 1997, 200). The Oslo Accords, while establishing peace between the PLO and Israel after this, and ostensibly ending the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, saw the US maintain its role as a vital Israeli supporter and not a neutral mediator (Khalidi 2017, 14). The events following this were discussed earlier, but the failure of the Oslo Accords marks an effort of the West to foster an acceptance of defeat in Palestinians (Khalidi 2017, 14). This is something further perpetuated in the West’s refusal to acknowledge the electoral victory of Hamas in 2006 unless they abandoned armed resistance (Khalidi 2017, 14).

As a result of these histories, today, more than a million Palestinians are stateless, residing in Gaza and Lebanon (Khalidi 1997, 3). Palestinians in Lebanon are not entitled to carry the passports issued by the Palestinian Authority which are themselves only partially recognised (Khalidi 1997, 3). Palestinians are thus seen as refugees in documents such as Resolution 242 promoting peace after the 1967 war, but are not mentioned as Palestinians specifically, with them still being seen as Arabs more generally (Khalidi 2017, 12).

A view of Palestinians was thus enhanced from earlier Zionist narratives and policies where they shifted from absentees or backward peoples to security threats (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2014, 278). As a threat to the Israeli state and its exceptional representation of Western sovereignty, Palestinians become the inhuman threats to humanity – terrorists (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2014, 289). This occluded their resistance to occupation by pitting them against the virtues of that colonial occupation – modernity, progress, democracy (Khalidi 2017, 7). As discussed by Grovogui (2013), what is understood is human security is defined by what is considered human in the colonial sense, which, often defined by Western standards like these, justifies what is humane and what is not. Palestinians are not the subjects of human security in this case, they are the non-human objects (terrorists) opposed to state and humans security. Against the democracy of Israel, they can be no more (Khalidi 2017, 13).

At present, Israel remains supported in its military operations by the US, reflecting a continued support from the West from Britain’s support before World War II, the support of the P5 in 1948, and the weapons support of the British and French in 1967 (Khalidi 2017, 14). This allows Israel to maintain its blockade of Gaza since Hamas’s victory, as well as to bombard it significantly in 2008-9, 2012, 2014, and at present (Khalidi 2017, 15).

Khalidi (2017, 7) asserts that invasion is a structure, not an event, and has thus been ongoing in Palestine since 1917. This has been explored in terms of the history above which shows a longer history of Palestine at odds with Zionist views of Palestine as backward, empty, and uncivilised. Since 1917, this has seen colonial involvement in Palestine which resulted in the creation of the State of Israel and the Nakba in 1948. Subsequent resistance has emerged in response to this with the formation of the PLO, the First and Second Intifadas, Hamas’s political ascendance, and the blockade of Gaza. Meanwhile, Palestinians have been placed in a historicised colonial view that puts them increasingly at odds not only with their colonial occupiers but with the global order itself. Like the environment, they occupy an increasingly less-than-human space which may have dangerous implications for the ability of the Eurocene order to advance a violent power of death.

Conclusion

Who are Palestinians and what is Palestine? Palestine has never been a state in the modern international system, but Palestinian identity has been defined by borders (Khalidi 1997, 1, 10). Borders are where Palestinians are often singled out for verification because of their ambiguous defiance of security norms with no clear nationality matching their passport (Khalidi 1997, 1). In fact, Palestinian identity is contingent and dependent on relations, not on a primordial essence (Khalidi 1997, 20).

Their complicated history shows that Palestinians are moreover neither Islamic nor Christian, Ottoman nor Arab, local nor universal, family nor tribal (Khalidi 1997, 6). Instead, they traverse these designations in ways that only a diverse population could. They are united by some factors, and divided by others (Khalidi 1997, 33). Moreover, in the absence of a state structure, Palestinians have been animated by dynamics emerging from below rather than above (Khalidi 1997, 7). Indeed, many Palestinians have been identified by their attachments to local loyalties, whether to specific towns or villages (Khalidi 1997, 21). 

Palestinians have also been shaped by the relationship to the “other”, or as the “other” in the Zionist relationship (Khalidi 1997, 9). First, they had to shape an identity in resistance to European colonialism, perhaps as early as the Crusades, and then they had to shape it in resistance to Zionism and the justificatory religious claims it made (Khalidi 1997, 20; Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2014, 277). In addition, they had to shape an identity in relation to Ottoman administrative borders (Khalidi 1997, 151).

Zionism succeeded where the Crusades could not, in colonising Palestine and bringing civilisation to the backward Islamic world (Khalidi 1997, 13). This was perhaps in part due to the failures to win support from either the Ottoman or the British powers, as well as the failures to organise Palestinian society across the urban-rural divide (Khalidi 1997, 188). Khalidi (1997, 193) identifies three key stages in this. Before World War I, Palestinians were divided on traditional ethnic, religion, or local lines, though urban intellectuals resisted Zionism. This was reduced after the war with growth in education and a realisation of the realities of Zionist and British imperial domination (Khalidi 1997, 193). However, without time to bridge these gaps, 1948 saw Israel achieve victory and Palestinians displaced with a trauma further shaping their collective identity as dispossessed peoples at the mercy of others (Khalidi 1997, 194). 

With Gaza now occupied, and densely populated with both its original inhabitants and other displaced Palestinians, it is important to understand how Palestinians in Gaza are seen in terms of this complicated identity. Today, when Palestinians in Gaza are referred to as “human animals” or “monsters”, healthcare professionals and academics are pressured to remain silent about atrocities being committed in Gaza (Khan and Tinua 2024, 805), or Palestinians are seen as “two-legged beasts” representing a “cancerous growth” or inhabiting “terrorist nests” (Said 1984, 37), from what does this stem? Furthermore, while Palestinians were evicted from history, modernity, civilisation, and humanity itself, in the strategies discussed above, even their dead have been evicted from humanity. Palestinian bodies and mourning practices are suppressed by Israel and their graves are often disturbed, denying their history with the land and their very life (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2014). From what does this stem? A new dimension emerges from this – coloniality supports the construction of the non-human being as well as the non-human dead. Resisting this too, Palestinians have practiced naming the place of birth of the dead in obituaries as a form of documenting their sense of place in Palestine’s history, even if those places are now occupied by Israel (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2014, 286-287). However, Raffles’ chilling account of the ways coloniality can ascribe to the “other” non-human characteristics to preface their eradication calls to an urgent contention with how coloniality is dehumanising Palestinians. Furthermore, it calls for an urgent contention with how the longer othering of the environment places both humans and the environment in the way of the Eurocene’s savage ecology. This requires novel ways of understanding Zionist occupation.

For instance, there is a novel argument offered by Eyal Weizman (2023) suggesting that there is a politics of verticality at play in Palestine. Consistent with the discussions above, he asserts that the very landscape of Palestine becomes an arena of conflict (Weizman 2023, 123). At its basis, this describes the attempts to use archaeology to portray a version of Palestinian history privileging a religious narrative of Jewish ownership (Weizman 2023). Moreover, romanticised architectural views of Jerusalem were mandated by appropriating Palestinian vertical architecture like domes and arches, and mandating the cladding of building in slated Jerusalem stone (Weizman 2023, 126, 130-132). This was done in order to prescribe an identity of what was purely Jewish Jerusalem and what was not. For the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, proposed to be the location of the demolished Second Temple, Clinton proposed that Israel be given sovereignty over the air above it and the earth below for security and archaeological purposes (Weizman 2023, 128). Meanwhile, Palestinians would retain sovereignty over the building and access it via a tunnel (Weizman 2023, 128). Palestinians naturally saw this for its coloniality (Weizman 2023, 128).

Furthermore, Jewish settlements in the West Bank are built so as to disrupt territorial continuity of Palestinians, often being based on land uncultivated by Palestinians (atop the arid hills above the fertile cultivated valleys) (Weizman 2023, 133-134). These often resemble inwardly-oriented and brightly-lit civilian fortresses which are able to overlook Palestinians, often employing blackouts at night, below (Weizman 2023, 136-137). In a way, this mirrors the use of hierarchy in coloniality, quite literally placing Israelis above Palestinians – light above dark. These vertical ways of thinking perhaps reflect an appendage of coloniality and the Eurocene. It shows a hierarchical separation of beings and selectively utilises history, imagery, and sovereignty. It furthermore develops means of control which defy a mutualist relationship to the land, instead privileging security, technology, and humans. This represents a way of thinking as part of the expansive framework, which introduces novel insights into the strategies used to sustain the colonial, Zionist, and Eurocene form of life. Thinking along these lines may help imagine how walls are used to restrict Palestinians in Gaza, how buildings are levelled in Gaza, or how tunnels are used to organise resistance. Beyond this, it is necessary to evaluate the impact of war on the environment in Gaza expansively, so that Zionist invasion as a structure can be understood in all its complexity. Verticality is one way of thinking. Others including thinking about Zionism’s ordering of life and death in Gaza and how different forms of death such as ecocide and genocide may be present.

In considering what stands in resistance to this, it remains to consider who speaks for Palestine. Or, as Said (1984) asks, do Palestinians have permission to narrate? Palestinians, seen as uncivilised terrorists with no history opposed to the civilisation of democratic Israel, are rarely offered a voice. Above, it has been discussed how orientalised views of them efface their existence and being while justifying Zionist occupation. Even in landmark historical documents such as the Balfour Declaration, the UN partition plan, or Resolution 242, they are not mentioned by name, let alone given a voice (Khalidi 2017). The mobilisation of anti-Semitism has further been used to efface the coloniality of Zionism and silence resistance to its project (Said 1984, 30-31, 35). Furthermore, the Holocaust has been used to assert that the Jewish experience of genocide is exceptional and that they cannot perform one on others (Said 1984, 33) even if there may currently be one underway. Even in including Palestinian voices, Palestinians are faced with numerous challenges. In addition to having a precarious status as either refugees, stateless people, or Palestinian Arabs, even those invited to contribute to profiling themselves such as Said must contend with simultaneously recognising Palestinians as distinct but without disconnecting them from a pan-Arab image (Said 1984, 32-33). The latter is seen by Arabs as too liberal or Western (Said 1984, 33).

Even non-Palestinian authors writing on peace in Palestine may fall prey to trying to speak a truth on behalf of Palestinians. Chomsky presumes that Jews had a right to settle in Palestine and thus considers the situation irretrievably broken-down (Said 1984). Shulman (2007) proposes a radical embrace of peace which eschews violence, even in resistance, because a second crime, retribution, or victimhood lead to a cycle of violence that will only give to Palestine a blood-stained flag. Do these perspectives represent a universal truth which can meaningfully aid resistance (Said 1984, 47)? Or, do they presume a universal standard of justice, non-violence, criminality, and peace which assumes equal relations between two groups considered to be human? In remembering Grovogui’s (2013) discussion of how what is humane is defined in relation to coloniality, it is not possible to judge what is criminal, just, or valid, without grappling with that coloniality. If Palestinians are not seen as humans, they may never be seen as equals in negotiating a peace with their occupiers. This holds true for the environment. Anthropocene discourse which aims to speak for the environment from a colonial position of power cannot yield the agency which the environment possesses. Once more, returning to the matter of who speaks, the West cannot speak for those it oppresses. Moving beyond Whiteness to presence Blackness, the environment, subalternity, and Palestinians is essential. As suggested above, Said (1984, 47) agrees that an account which properly contends with the coloniality of relations and is rooted in a collective pursuit of reciprocal knowledge, can presence these voices and assist rethinking.

In light of this complicated identity at odds with coloniality, what would the right of return look life for Palestinians? Khalidi asserts that it would be a return to the homeland which shaped their identity and upon which they were the recipient of manifold injustices by coloniality and its appendages (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2014, 287). This would signify a collective return to peoplehood, not only to statehood or to the land (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2014, 287).

Hence, understanding the environment in Palestine or mediating conflict is not a simple consideration of who possesses control of land. Precisely because land can have meaning and even being, constituting Palestinian identity, and being constituted by it, this makes considering mediation difficult (Abufarha 2010, loc. 133 of 255). This is especially given the centrality of land in Palestinian identity as a unifying feature for all Palestinians, whether in exile, fragmented, or occupied in Gaza or the West Bank (Abufarha 2010, loc. 134-135 of 255). There are certain plants which help think this relationship. However, the discussion above has more broadly tried to envision the forms of life constituting Palestine which make its nature one including Palestinians, the environment, and the forces of coloniality. Simultaneously recognising the persistence of coloniality and its occlusions of both the historical and contemporary reality of Palestine is important. This is in order to highlight occupation, violence, dispossession, and Eurocene ordering which disrupts the entanglements of life in Gaza. In rethinking these relationships between the beings constituting Palestine, and the world, more expansively, it becomes possible to deconstruct the coloniality at work. Furthermore, it helps imagine more just alternatives and engage in an ethical practice which reciprocally contributes to the collective knowledge of emancipation in which Palestine’s being is necessarily present. To continue this study’s attempt to contribute to this, the following chapter considers the impact of war on the environment in Gaza, discussing its entanglements with life and death in Gaza more broadly. In this, it is evaluated whether ecocide and genocide are entangled appendages of a Eurocene form of life.

Chapter 6: Impact of War on the Environment in Gaza

References

Contents

This represents the work from my Master’s research, which can be found in full here.