Guided Reading: Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance by Shourideh Molavi
This article is being published in the midst of Israel’s most recent and deadly assault on Gaza, while the settler colonial occupation of Palestine, as well as the steadfast resistance of the Palestinian people, reaches many more decades into the past. As a collective of educators working in schools, colleges and universities, our hearts are broken–and our solidarity with the Palestinian people resolved–by the systematic destruction of Gaza’s educational infrastructure and its most important participants: students, teachers, academics, and entire families.
Before October 7th, 2023 was already the deadliest year for Palestinian children since records began. Since October 7th, hundreds of schools have been bombed, every single university has been destroyed, and the Ministry of Education itself has been targeted. Thousands of children have been killed, alongside hundreds of teachers and academics. Cultural heritage sites, libraries, archives, and museums have been plundered and incinerated. For survivors, the psychological trauma from relentless besiegement, as well as injuries and amputations, will leave lifelong scars on generations to come. While contested, the application of genocide to understand this present conjuncture is inescapable.
Scholasticide–the intentional targeting of cultural and educational infrastructure, the means of social reproduction–has proven to be an integral element of this genocide. Another core feature of historical genocides and Palestine’s present is ecocide: the destruction of habitats, land, soil and water, essentially the means of production and life. In this context, Shourideh Molavi’s new book on the role of environmental warfare in Gaza’s landscapes of colonial violence and resistance is both timely, prescient and urgent. Collecting maps, images, archival materials, drone footage, and first-hand testimonies of farmers, organisers and protesters, Molavi documents the ‘silent witnesses’ to the architectures of Israeli settler colonial violence which, again, preceded its most recent acceleration.
This document presents an extract of a chapter for guided reading and is intended as an initial contribution to a series of educational resources for educators determined to both break the silence in our workplaces on the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and to meet the inspirational movements and solidarities of the students we teach. As a collective committed to decolonisation, this moment demands nothing less.
Guided Reading: Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance by Shourideh Molavi
Mention of citrus in Palestine inevitably conjures up the oranges of Jaffa: large and aromatic ovular-shaped oranges with thick-skin and an exceptionally sweet taste. Reference to the groves in and around the Jaffa area in the modern era go as far back as Napoleon during his siege on the city in 1799, while on his voyage to Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia. In 1870, ‘Jaffa’ was first used as a brand by an export firm owned by members of a German Christian society, the Templars, who settled in Palestine and pushed forward export of the fruit to produce its global fame. When exported, oranges were sent via sailboats from the Jaffa port to cities including Alexandria, Beirut, and Constantinople—finding their way to the aristocratic tables of Western Europe and the dining rooms of upper classes in the United Kingdom to later form the international reputation of the Jaffa orange. Named locally in the middle of the nineteenth century as the Shamouti orange by citrus grower Anton Ayoub, citrus cultivation required greater material and financial investments than other agricultural goods.
Compared to other fruit-bearing orchards at the time, such as almonds, figs, and vineyards, citrus took longer for the trees to bear fruit, more water was required for cultivation, irrigation and fertilization, and more space was required for the preparation of the land for orange trees. In Palestine, local citrus industry was overseen and owned by Arabs until the end of the nineteenth century and while the concentration of Arab citriculture was in Jaffa, other cities such as Tulkarem, Beit Hanoun, Acca, and Gaza also participated in the planting of citrus groves. Control over the industry was existential to these cities, affecting the entire social fabric surrounding the community, including the development of business ties both domestic and international, control over the land, its infrastructure and development, and the formation of labour relations which forged local friendships and networks over generations of workers. The citrus industry facilitated communal links across religious segments of the communities in these cities, it brought investors and inspired migration of families in search of labour and income. Citrus formed the livelihoods and sustenance of families and inspired urban growth. Entry of Jewish entrepreneurs into the citrus industry inevitably led to the rise of a similar citriculture in the Jewish community in Palestine— particularly in and around Jaffa as the center of orange production.
Describe the history of the citrus industry in Palestine.
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Where were Jaffa’s oranges being exported to?
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Why do citrus fruits require “greater material and financial investments than other agricultural goods” to cultivate?
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In what ways is the citrus industry ‘“existential to these cities”?
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Key Terms Glossary!
Export: when goods or services are sold or sent to another country for sale
Cultivate: to prepare and use land for growing crops or gardening
Irrigation: the supply of water to land or crops to help growth
Existential: philosophy concerned with the nature of human existence
Labour: work, especially physical work
Zionism: a political ideology and national movement for the establishment of a Jewish state
Colonialism: a practice of domination, which involves the oppression, control and exploitation of a people and land, by another group
Microcosm: a community, place or situation which displays in miniature the characteristics of something much larger
Partition: the action or state of dividing something (e.g. a country) into parts
Summary Task
Summarise the most important things you learned from this section of the excerpt
Over time, the orange was adopted as a symbol of connection to the land through cultivation, and the industry itself propelled the establishment of Jewish settlement and social labour relations in the country. Historian Amnon Raz- Krakotzin explains how the Zionist movement mobilized the modernization and the cultivation of the citrus fruit as part of its building of a national consciousness among the Jewish community in Palestine. Colonial orange iconography helped convey an eco-imagery of a backward and uncivilized Arab-Palestinian society, with domination over the industry and Jewish development of knowledge and expertise on the cultivation of the fruit reflecting broader control over the land.
While at the initial period of Zionist colonization before World War I the national consciousness of both Jewish- and Arab-Palestinians was yet to reach its maturity, the ideology of separation and erasure did eventually dominate the dynamics of social relations in the country with the launch of the British Mandate, replacing the ethos of cooperation. A microcosm of the larger history of Palestine and the lived experience of Palestinians, what started as a largely private Arab enterprise in the mid-nineteenth century, the citrus industry suffered both with the dwindling political power and socio-economic conditions of Arab society as well as the losses over control of the land due to Ottoman rule, British control and Zionist colonization.
What became evident was the abysmal situation of Arab citrus growers who would not only have lost around 85 percent of their citrus land to be placed under Jewish control under the proposed 1947 United Nations Partition Plan, but instead had most of their citrus lands transferred to Jewish control with most of the industry’s leadership becoming refugees, refused the right to return to their original lands. Scholars have further documented that even the Arab citrus owners who were given involuntary Israeli citizenship after the state’s establishment in May 1948, and legally categorized as ‘present absentees’ were also forbidden from reclaiming their citrus orchards and property.
Which cities is Palestinian citriculture concentrated in? _________________________________________________________
How does the Zionist movement mobilise the citrus industry, according to historian Raz-Krakotzin?
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In what ways is the citrus industry a “microcosm of the larger history of Palestine”?
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How were Palestinian citrus growers affected by the UN Partition Plan and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948?
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Extracts from Chapter 2: The disappearing trees of Gaza
Composite map overlaying present-day Gaza City onto a historical map of Gaza from 1943 with the orchards that surrounded it showing the heightened and engineered density and suffocated urbanism resulting from the Israeli-imposed siege and occupation. Assisted by Ariel Caine. (Palestine Exploration Fund).
Colonial erasure of citriculture in Gaza
After the Nakba, while Arab-owned orchards fell under Zionist control in major industry cities like Jaffa, most of the citrus land in the Gaza district, which was relegated to Egyptian control, remained in Palestinian hands. The colonial harm inflicted on the ecology of the Gaza district and its cities can be traced through the disappearing citrus orchards and the forceful transition to other types and practices of cultivation instead of traditional modes of relating to the land. In this manner, the fate of the orange groves—and perhaps we can even claim trees in general—serve as ‘bio-indicators’ and ‘silent witnesses’ to Israeli eco- colonial violence.
During the 19 years of Egyptian rule, citrus production was the only growth sector with profits funneled mostly to the more middle and upper classes of indigenous residents. While in 1948 citrus production occupied around 6,000 dunams in the Gaza district, by 1966, just prior to Israeli occupation, it had extended to 70,800 dunams. Once occupied, Gaza suffered almost immediate economic and agricultural loss. Egyptian employment and markets were cut off and Gazan production and labor was redirected through colonial policies to acquire significant dependency on and integration within Israeli markets. There was a similar shift in exports: in 1968, 28 percent of Gaza’s exports went to Israel and 18 percent to Jordan, with the balance continuing to go to Eastern Europe. A decade later, two-thirds of Gaza’s exports went to Israel, 26 percent to Jordan, and 7 percent to other countries, the contracts with Eastern Europe having ended by 1975. In contrast, 91 percent of imports came from Israel, and nothing was imported from Jordan or Egypt. Dates, strawberries, and vegetables were also sold to Israel, and local industries engaged in subcontracting for Israeli firms.
Along with the major shift in the Gazan economy, its agricultural identity was similarly restructured after the Israeli occupation took hold. Gazan farmers were prevented by Israeli policymakers from producing items that would compete with Israeli goods, which meant that restrictions were imposed on the cultivation of particular produce. As a result, “melons, onions, grapes, almonds, olives, and fish has decreased” and Gazan farmers found themselves within a permit regime for planting vegetables, fruits and, in particular, trees.
How did the Israeli occupation of Gaza in 1967 affect the agriculture sector?
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How was Gazan agricultural identity restructured by Israeli occupation?
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What has happened to the agricultural infrastructure in Gaza?
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How has access to space been restricted for Gazans and what impact did that have on agriculture and the citrus industry?
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In what ways could trees or orange groves be understood as ‘silent witnesses’ to Israeli eco-colonial violence?
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Particular pressure has been placed on the citrus sector, which provided 70 percent of the Strip’s agricultural exports and 55 percent of the value of agricultural production. However, the Israeli government has virtually never issued permits for farmers to plant new trees, even to replace old, nonproductive trees. In this fateful period, the landscape of Gazan agriculture was actively redirected by the Israeli occupation toward the focused production of specialized crops. Farmers, particularly those in Beit Lahiya, were instructed by their colonial administrators to grow strawberries so as not to be prevented from using their lands. Gazan strawberries were sent abroad using Israeli marketing channels to avoid administrative, bureaucratic, and security delays as well as higher transportation costs. Taken together, colonial administration in Gaza transitioned its agriculture from near-total dominance of the citrus industry to the introduction and production of other fruits and vegetables with an eye for export. These engineered colonial transitions in the first decades of Israeli occupation marked a path of agricultural priorities in Gaza, causing a decline in the quantity and quality of its historic citrus industry. Forced changes in production along Gaza’s engineered and encroaching peripheries contribute to the magnitude of harm done to the ecology along the ‘border’ with Israel.
Today, ecological destruction along the ‘access-restricted areas’ of Gaza, including the uprooting and bulldozing of the key agricultural infrastructure such as wells, greenhouses and irrigation instruments that existed are also part of the story of forced transitions in cultivation in Gaza. Today, like the citrus groves of Jaffa, Acca, and Tulkarem that preceded it, Gaza’s orchards are disappearing due to several key factors. To begin the water in the occupied Gaza Strip is largely saline water, heavily rejected by citrus trees. The quality of water is key to producing citrus,. Over time, and with deteriorating local Palestinian infrastructure under Israeli control, the lack of sufficient output prevents Arab citrus farmers from maintaining their livelihoods.
The second and obvious major impediment to the citrus industry in Gaza is a lack of space. Citrus orchards require large open spaces. An ongoing colonial process of land confiscation in which Palestinian farmland in Gaza is transitioned into impossible spaces of access, whether through militarized or restricted areas, and the adjacent construction of Jewish-only settlements is a root cause of its disappearing citrus orchards. Former Palestinian- controlled lush orchards are rendered off-limits to its owners with guard towers, double wired metal fences and concrete walls and other similar architectures of confinement serving as impassible partitions on the landscape. Until 2005, during the time of Israeli settlements in Gaza, many Palestinian farmers had to uproot their own orchards so that they could live on the land itself or make space other basic civilian infrastructure to serve the occupied Palestinian population. As such, around 30–40 percent of the orchards in Gaza were uprooted by Gazan farmers themselves; a difficult and painful ordeal for these families given that the successful re-cultivation of citrus fields is extremely straining.
By the time the settlements were removed and emptied there was a lot of zoning and planning needed to rebuild the orchards. The oldest and largest orchards mainly located in Gaza’s north-eastern peripheries are today practically erased and part of the Israeli-imposed ‘buffer zone.’ Located in one of the most militarized areas of the Gaza Strip, these orchards are inaccessible to farmers who are left only observing their fields but unable to harvest them without risking their lives. Indeed, during the Israeli army’s repeated incursions in Gaza, a regular part of the military operation involves the cutting of hundreds of trees. Cutting access for Palestinian farmers, the eco-occupation of Gaza therefore extends beyond moments of spectacular destruction of agriculture toward the regular surveillance and monitoring of Palestinian land use in a manner that renders it off-limits.
Guided Reading: Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance by Shourideh Molavi
Summary Task
Summarise the most important things you learned from this section of the excerpt
Key Terms Glossary!
Nakba: meaning ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians from their land in 1948.
Indigenous: a people who inhabit in a land from the earliest of times or before arrival of colonists
Dunams: a unit of land area measurement, approximately 1,000 square metres
Subcontracting: to pay someone else to do part of a job that you have agreed to do
Permit regime: legal arrangement that requires Palestinians in Gaza to obtain separate official documents to be allowed to do something e.g. farming
Occupation: to take control of a place by military conquest or settlement
Periphery: the outer limit or edge of an area or object
Infrastructure: the basic physical and organisational structure and facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise
Saline: containing salt
Militarised: to equip or supply a place or group with soldiers and other military resources
Settlements: communities of Israeli Jews built after 1967 in the territories occupied by Israel
Shallow roots: From the orange to the strawberry
Israeli companies had begun exporting citrus to Europe and since citrus orchards required greater labor and water, it was more economically sound for Israel to have produce like strawberries grown in Gaza. For this reason, many Gazan farmers were compelled by Israeli occupation authorities to transition to strawberry production, among other faster- growing and more economical fruits. Strawberries started to be planted more systematically in Gaza in the early-mid-1970s with an eye to its susceptibility to the local climate, soil, and irrigation water. With the arrival of the Palestinian Authority in, 1993, the crop was increasingly grown throughout the strip including in Khan Yunes, Rafah, and the Al-Mawasi area. As a result, existing citrus orchards in present-day Gaza remain largely in and around Beit Hanoun and Gaza City but they are no longer a profitable industry. During the citrus season, from November to around May, Gaza has citrus such as lemon, orange, pomelo, and grapefruit imported mainly from Israeli farms as local production is not able to remain competitive in the citrus market.
Today, strawberries have replaced much of the citrus and olive trees in the strip, and despite the relatively small area of farmland used for this sector, it enjoys high economic and social value. In all of the ways that citrus cultivation has been targeted, as a crop, strawberries seem designed to survive Israel’s eco-colonial practices. Strawberries are able to survive on partially saline water, they have faster production cycles, are easier to cultivate and replant after destruction and uprooting, are more mobile after moments of displacement, require less space and distance between each planted crop, and enable farmers in Gaza’s northern peripheries and along the buffer zones to remain visible to the observing Israeli occupation forces. As a crop, with limited historical roots in the country it adapts well and is highly versatile.
Why did Israel want Gazan farmers to grow strawberries rather than citruses?
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Why have strawberries been better suited as a crop to survive the Israeli occupation?
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What benefits have strawberries offered Palestinian farmers in surviving Israeli eco-colonialism?
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How is Gazan identity entangled with the production of citrus fruits and now strawberries?
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Why are some Palestinian farmers growing pineapple instead of strawberries now?
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The use of compost for the cultivation of strawberries enables significant increase in fruit productivity, saving Gazan farmers the use of precious water supplies and decreasing its need for the use of fertilizers. Despite this, the conditions of Gaza’s ongoing colonial isolation and erasure make it increasingly impossible for farmers to sustain their livelihoods off of the land, even with strawberry production. In today’s Gaza, as the agricultural export industry is fully reliant on the Israeli permit system, strawberries are slowly being replaced with other low-growing, fast-yielding, cost-effective and high-demand fruits and vegetables. Indeed, as a colleague at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the largest agricultural development institution in Palestine, said, the most recent crop to slowly begin its replacement of strawberries in this line of forced colonial transition is pineapple—with the first pineapple farm planted in Khan Younes in 2017.
In the Gazan case the transition, as well as local responses to it, are less pronounced and weeded through long-term colonial policies imposed by the occupation. That said, the transition to strawberry cultivation nevertheless carries a similar ecological, cultural, and socio-political impact. In place of the orange, the strawberry is surfacing as the symbol of Gaza, redrawing the boundaries of the identity of its besieged inhabitants. Whereas in the past the orange was a continuous link between Gaza and the rest of historic Palestine, with deep generational roots and a symbol of steadfast and continuous presence, the abrupt transition from oranges to strawberries distances Gaza from the constructed identity and vegetal knowledge production of Palestinian farmers elsewhere. Put differently, this symbolic and political transition at the level of fruit production can be seen as another mechanism through which Israeli neo-colonial violence reifies Gaza as an enclave: divided and partitioned from the rest of Palestine. And yet, today, while iconography of Gazan oranges is less available, remnants of the central placement of the orange in the identity of Gaza remain visually inscribed on its streets. The streets of cities throughout the occupied Gaza Strip are riddled with the images of orange and olive trees.
Guided Reading: Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance by Shourideh Molavi
Summary Task
Summarise the most important things you learned from this section of the excerpt
Key Terms Glossary!
Eco-colonial: the ways in which colonial practices have impacted the natural environments of Indigenous peoples.
Displacement: the action of moving something or someone from its place or position
Productivity: the effectiveness of productive effort as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input
Besiege: to surround a place with armed forces in order to capture it or force it to surrender
Steadfast (sumud): a Palestinian cultural value and political strategy to describe everyday resistance to Israeli colonisation and settlement through a perseverance and attachment to the land
Iconography: the visual images and symbols used to represent particular ideas
Graffiti and street art across the occupied Gaza Strip showing the interlacing of the orange, the olive and trees with resistance, liberation, justice and return in the public imaginary (Shourideh C. Molavi, 2019).