Unpacking the complex nature of cooperative interactions: case studies of Israeli–Palestinian environmental cooperation in the greater Bethlehem area

Abstract

In the last few decades, a growing number of theorists have suggested that the natural environment can be a platform for promoting cooperation between former adversaries and can perhaps contribute to peacebuilding. However, environmental cooperation has not lived up to these claims. In many cases, such cooperation has largely been ineffective and/or inequitable. Therefore, there is a growing awareness that we cannot be overly optimistic at the first signs of 'cooperation'. It is argued that this reality results from the great complexity inherent in cooperative interactions. This paper explores the nature of such cooperation in two Israeli-Palestinian case studies. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the longest-running protracted conflicts in the modern era and is currently characterised by a political stalemate. However, there is also a willingness by some at the local level to cooperate. Therefore Israel/Palestine provides an ideal case study. The findings of the paper illuminate the complex nature of environmental cooperation and reveal that even with the presence of good intentions, cooperation at the subnational level is impacted by the broader socio-political structures and contexts within which it is embedded. In these case studies, this is negatively affecting both the nature and scale of the processes and outcomes.Ultimately, these factors are making such interactions limited, unstable and/or prone to collapse. The paper concludes that only by conducting in-depth multitiered and context-specific analyses of cooperative processes and subsequently finding ways to overcome the identified barriers can we move towards more successful environmental cooperation.

Education and Environmental Peacebuilding: Insights from Three Projects in Israel and Palestine

“…A focus on cross-border interaction (and education), for example, assigns a secondary role to questions of territoriality, which are key for many Palestinians. Similarly, Reynolds (2017) notes that environmental peacebuilding (including the related education activities) often provides little benefits to the weaker Palestinian parties, but directs attention away from more pressing and contentious political issues.…”

“…And an employee of the Arava Institute explained that Palestinian alumni "get a lot of push back from their families, from their peers, from society in general" (interview Arava Institute, 15/04/2018). Naturally, this also raises a reentry problem, that is, it limits the ability of Palestinian alumni of all three projects to act as mediators in their societies, and hence to "scale up" peace dynamics (Reynolds 2017).…”

“…On the intra-state level, there are also several studies claiming that the provision of sustainable livelihoods through resource management and that building trust by cooperating on joint environmental challenges had a number of positive effects on peacebuilding processes, for instance in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Burt and Keiru 2011), Iraq (Aoki, Al-Lami, and Kugaprasatham 2011) and Ghana (Bukari, Sow, and Scheffran 2018). Other scholars, in contrast, claim that environmental peacebuilding has been largely unsuccessful in cases like Cyprus (Akçalı and Antonsich 2009), Kosovo (Krampe 2016) and Israel/Palestine (Reynolds 2017).…”

Environmental justice, settler colonialism, and more-than-humans in the occupied West Bank: An introduction

“…The Separation Wall, one of the more visible materialities in this place, both creates violence and also serves to obscure it (Bishara, 2020). The Wall constantly erases old, and produces new, states of exception, while at the same time fostering hopeful yet lopsided anti-Wall and pro-Nature affinities and networks (Reynolds, 2016). Which brings up the question: can shared understandings over the necessity of nature protection and collaborative actions inspire a way out of the imperial ruin (Stoler, 2013; Tsing, 2015), or are such environmental imaginaries and practices merely technologies for furthering, justifying, and even institutionalizing such ruin?…”

Nof kdumim: Remaking the ancient landscape in East Jerusalem’s national parks

“…The involvement of local Palestinian farmers in the protection of the allegedly ancient terrace landscape is also an inherent part of an ecotourism scheme that draws on the historical uniqueness of the area—solidified under UNESCO’s designation of one such terrace system as a world heritage site—to celebrate and promote it as a normal and legitimate recreational site rather than as one of dispossession and elimination. Relatedly, in the name of protecting the terrace culture of this place (and the adam ba’har ideal), Jewish settlers from Gush Etzion and Palestinians from the neighboring villages have come together to oppose the construction of the Separation Wall in this area (Reynolds, 2017; Noam, interview). They were later joined by none other than INPA in a dramatic statement to the Supreme Court against the Israeli government’s position—which pitted one government agency against the other (Katz-Mink, 2012).…”