Soil, territory, land: The spatial politics of settler organic farming in the West Bank, Israel/Palestine

Abstract

In settler colonial settings, agriculture is a means of reclaiming territorial sovereignty and indigenous identity. Turning attention to the Jewish settlers in the West Bank and their multiple uses and abuses of organic farming, this article explores epistemic and political spatial operations on the colonial frontier. Applying a relational conceptualization of three spatial modalities—soil, territory, and land—we explore the ways in which these modalities serve as political apparatuses: Soil designates the romantic perception of cultivable space, territory is concerned with borders and political sovereignty, and land is seen as a space of economic value and as a means of production. While agriculture is a well-known instrument of expansion and dispossession, organic farming contributes to the colonial operation by binding together affective attachment to the place, and new economic singularity in relation to environmental and ethical claims. We argue that organic farming practices converge claims for local authenticity, spatial appropriation, and high economic values that are embedded in what we term the colonial quality turn. Ultimately, organic farming in the West Bank normalizes the inherent violence of the colonial project and strengthens the settlers’ claim for political privilege.

Cultivating biodiverse futures at the (postcolonial) botanical garden

“…These perspectives supported a declensionist narrative that portrayed Palestinians as responsible for the environmental degradation of the previously flourishing land of Israel, before being ‘rescued’ by British and Zionist powers in the twentieth century (Gutkowski, 2018; Novick, 2014). After the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, nature continued to be instrumental to territorial expansion through multiple practices, ranging from the construction of national parks on the ruins of Palestinian villages (Sharif, 2016), organic gardening practices by illegal settlements in the West Bank (Grosglik et al, 2021), or the designation of Nature Reserves and environmental conservation (Gray & Sheikh, 2018).…”

Ideology, environment, and open space in conflict arenas: The discrepancies and harmonizing strategies of West Bank Israeli settlers

“…New settlements are often portrayed as existing settlement expansion (Peace Now, 2019). Notwithstanding, illegal residential outposts (ma'achazim in Hebrew) and farming outposts (Grosglik et al, 2021) are built by settlers throughout the West Bank. Due to the different identifications of these outposts, there is disagreement about their exact number, with estimates ranging between 88-105 (Peace Now, 2014Now, , 2019.…”

The metropolitanization of Israel's settlement policy: The colonization of the West Bank as a strategy of spatial restructuring

“…In the last few years, however, scholars have started to considerably broaden their analysis of ISP, focusing on the dynamics of the production of space (Schwake, 2021a, Schwake, 2020a, Schwake, 2021bShoked, 2020;Abreek-Zubiedat & Nitzan-Shiftan, 2021;Rokem & Allegra, 2016;Yacobi & Pullan, 2014) on the heterogeneity of settlers population (Allegra, 2017;Dalsheim, 2011;Harel, 2017;Hirschhorn, 2017), including studies on the haredi settler community (Rubin, 2015;Cahaner, 2017;Shoked, 2019); on the political economy of settlements' proliferation (Allweil, 2020;Maggor, 2015;Schwake 2020c;Schwake 2021c) and the labour relations with the Palestinians employed in the settlement's economy (Farsakh, 2005;Paz-Fuchs & Ronen, 2017;Vickery, 2017;Siegman, 2018); on the environmental and infrastructural dimension of colonization (Braverman, 2021); and on the process of banalization of Jewish presence in the West Bank Weiss, 2017), including deliberate settlers' strategies in this respect (Grosglik, Handel, & Monterescu, 2021;Handel, Rand, & Allegra, 2015;Isaac, 2018;McGonigle, 2019;Monterescu & Handel, 2020).…”