Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance

What Eyal Weizman describes of Gaza’s geography and climate in his introduction to Shourideh Molavi’s book, Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance (Pluto Press, 2024) is reflected in the entire research study which illustrates Israel’s colonial violence and how it has altered the landscape to fit the Zionist narrative of “making the desert bloom”. In the desertification of Gaza, there are resultant “uninterrupted lines of sight and fire into Gaza” which renders Palestinians perpetually exposed to Israel’s snipers. This was seen most during the Great March of Return (2018-2019) and the book provides images to impart the truth of its statements.

Weizman notes that “the environment is one of the means by which colonial racism is enacted, land is grabbed, siege lines fortified and violence perpetuated.”

Molavi’s initial research was confined to the olive and citrus trees of Gaza, but it became apparent that the land cannot be dismissed from the study. In speaking of land and borders, the author notes that such terms in a colonial context must point back to Israel’s exploitation of borders, as well as the understanding of the term in light of colonial erasure of the indigenous Palestinians, which started well before the 1948 Nakba.

Colonial violence is “foremost an ecological violence”

Through a study of Gaza’s environment in history, the book starts by referring to the British Mandate authority’s classification of many domestic flora species of Palestine as weeds. The weed control experiment meant that the British Mandate “uprooted the household usage of plants,” Molavi notes, and in the same way the plants were designated as invasive by the colonial power, the indigenous Palestinians were also slated for erasure. Colonial violence, Molavi writes, is “foremost an ecological violence” due to the erasure of one ecology and the imposition of the colonial one on indigenous terrain.

Ecological violence in Gaza is seen mostly in how Israel has levelled the ground, imposed cultivation regulations on Palestinians that determined what crops could be planted and up to what height, thus gradually almost phasing out olive and citrus trees. The book notes that with each Israeli operation in Gaza, the landscape was altered through demolishing houses and destroying agricultural land, creating empty zones between towns and extending the existing buffer zones in Gaza’s north. Residential areas completely levelled by Israel were retained for alleged security purposes, while agricultural land was systematically destroyed by completely removing the top soil. Such domination of land, Molavi argues, is central to settler-colonies and emphasises the Western environmental imagery that creates political narratives about indigenous land, their inhabitants, and the narrative of “improving” such terrain. “Landscape,” Molavi writes, “is far from a neutral backdrop but is rather activated, serving as the medium of violence.”

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The book refers to the Orientalist narratives of Middle Eastern landscapes, notably the perceived barrenness, and how eco-colonial practices were orchestrated through the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Referring to Ben Gurion’s speech in 1951, Molavi notes how the former Israeli Prime Minister referred to lands and afforestation as planting “for security reasons”.

The 1948 Nakba and its aftermath… destroyed the Palestinian citrus industry.

Additionally, Molavi writes about the 1947 UN Partition Plan which would place 85 per cent of citrus land under Zionist control. The 1948 Nakba and its aftermath – both the dispossession and Israel’s refusal to allow Palestinians to return to their land – destroyed the Palestinian citrus industry. While the industry is largely linked to Jaffa, Gaza’s citrus orchards were also part of Palestinian identity and the book provides maps that detail citrus production in the area, dominating the landscape. The 1948 Nakba altered Gaza’s status from an active participant in the citrus industry to a dwindling venture whose markets were cut off and contracts with Eastern Europe were not renewed after Israel’s military occupation in 1967. Israel, therefore, created a rupture in Gaza’s historical links to the Mediterranean and beyond.

Israel forcing farmers in Gaza to alter crop cultivation is linked to the colonial security narrative, not only a maximum plant height is determined, but herbicides are also sprayed by the Israeli occupation forces to maintain permanent visibility. As the book notes, “the entire restricted ‘border’ area is rendered a space of permanent visibility, inducing a state of conscious observation among colonised subjects.” The subject of herbicides is discussed further in a separate chapter in the book, with Molavi noting that Israel declared “aerial herbicidal spraying on the border in Gaza to be an ‘act of warfare’.”

Attempts at decolonisation by the farmers themselves were met with repression from Israel, notably the absurd designation of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UWAC) in Gaza as a “terrorist” organisation in 2021, despite the union not being affiliated with political factions.

The book also devotes ample space to the Al-Shawwa Export Company, which was built during the British Mandate and is considered to be “the last space in Gaza to host memories of its citrus export industry”. In what remains a treasure trove for Gaza’s historical memory, the abandoned site retained documentation in the form of purchase invoices, receipts, work schedules and other administrative material that stands, as Molavi writes, as “the last remaining archive of the citrus industry.”

Molavi concludes with the Great March of Return and Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, and how the altered landscape reflected back for the coloniser and the colonised in different degrees, the former being able to see beyond Gaza and the land the refugees were displaced from, while also being in direct view of snipers. For Israel, the eco-colonial landscape facilitated attacks on Palestinian civilians. Desertification paved the way for colonial military violence against Palestinians, while Operation Al-Aqsa Flood is discussed in terms of the geophysical changes in Gaza and how Palestinians utilised the changes for the anti-colonial resistance. The latter, Molavi notes, will play into the Palestinians anti-colonial struggle – despite the erasure, Palestinians can mobilise the space that is left by unifying sections of society against Israeli colonialism and violence.