Of Trees and People: The Changing Entanglement in the Israeli Desert

ABSTRACT

This article portrays the shift experienced in the role of acacia trees during environmental–political struggles as the entanglement of trees and people. Drawing on a four-year ethnographic study around Israel’s Arava desert valley, the article narrates human interactions with these trees amid an environmental conflict fraught with personal and political conflict, opposing perspectives on natural preservation and scientific debate, as well as disputes among environmental organisations. Contrary to current approaches in anthropology that –theoretically at least – confer agency on the non-human, I refocus on the human practices that weave the non-human into the social fabric. In this article, I argue that the trees – not actors in their own right, yet inhabiting a tapestry of people and other elements – are essential to understanding a variety of social processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental struggles
• agriculture
• human-non-human
• trees
• Israel

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented in the Political Ecology Working Group, at Harvard University in October 2013 and in the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in December 2014. I would like to thank Dan Rabinowitz, Michael Fischer, Steve Caton, Anat Rosenthal, Michal Kravel-Tovi, Inna Leykin, Oded Keynan, Natalia Gutkowski and Shai Dromi for their comments on earlier versions of this article. I would also like to thank to Joseph (Mark) Thomas, Noam Ben Ishie and Maya Dworsky for the help in writing this article. I have much benefited from the constructive and provocative comments of the editor of Ethnos and three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All names in this article are pseudonyms, unless the subject is an official office holder or quoted in official protocols.

2. During the early years of the Israeli communal settlement of the Arava, the ethic of manual labour was prioritised. However, as these communities expanded, processing technology improved production efficiencies, defying the ideal of self-sufficiency. While supplementary labour was initially provided by Jewish volunteers and backpackers from overseas, by the late 1990s, these volunteers had generally been replaced by hired hands from Thailand. Employment of Thai workers in agriculture gained pace in the wake of the rising violence marking the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the early 1990s. The ensuing travel and employment restrictions imposed on Palestinians disrupted agriculture in central and northern Israel, regions that had previously sourced significant manpower from the occupied Palestinian territories. More than 3000 Thai workers are now employed in agriculture around the Arava.

3. The Arava receives no supplemental water from Israel’s National Water Carrier or any other external sources. Its water system relies entirely on regional rainfall carried underground into reservoirs and aquifers – a (virtually) closed system of comprehensive, deep ‘worlds’. Throughout its history, the Arava sustained several springs, supplying potable water for nomads and merchants. The Bedouins, for whom the Arava provided winter grazing, maintained an internal division of the area based on the distribution of wells, streams, and springs (Bailey 2006). Even the early hityashvut followed this principle, relying on the region’s natural springs. But drilling soon commenced in search of richer, more abundant water sources, causing many of the springs to run dry. Excessive pumping of water, along with seepage of contaminants, has seriously affected the quality and quantity of available water. As I show elsewhere (Shani, forthcoming), the more water allocated to farmers, the deeper the roots they strike. The development of water is therefore a topmost mission of the state, its institutions and the Arava residents, who view this vital resource as the linchpin in the realization of Jewish nationalism, the State of Israel, and its hold on the land.

4. The majority of the Bedouin population fled the Arava or were deported to Jordan after 1948 (Bailey 2006). A single Bedouin family received permission to resettle in the region in recognition of its collaboration with Israel. Their children attended the local school and family members forged professional and personal relationships with Jewish residents of the Arava. With the death of the patriarch, however, the state ordered their removal. This decision was overturned in light of a protracted popular campaign demanding they be allowed to stay. As explained by ecologist Ben-Yosef, we do not know much about the life cycle of the acacia, and therefore cannot be certain as to whether the newly planted acacia seedlings will mature to become full-fledged trees. The acacia’s typical life span ranges from 80 to 150 years. Nevertheless, preliminary project data indicate a high likelihood of success.

5. Hityashvut is the Hebrew word for settlement, mainly within the Green Line, while hitnahalut designates settlement beyond the Green Line, principally in the West Bank. The Green Line is the original demarcation set forth in the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and Jordan. Following the 1967 War and the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, the Green Line became the de facto border between Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank and the internationally-recognised territory of Israel. The difference between hityashvut and hitnahalut is central to Israeli society. While members of the hitnahalut (beyond the Green Line), see themselves as bearers of the Zionist movement traditions, members of the hityashvut (within the Green Line) mostly associate themselves with the left side of the Israeli political map. The latter view the hitnahalut as right-wing political activism and a departure from Zionism. Since my interviewees acknowledge the importance of distinguishing between the terms, and because this distinction is subsumed in the unified English term ‘settlement’, I employ the Hebrew term used by respondents themselves, hityashvut.

6. Elsewhere, I analyse the different interpretations of nature as expressed by actors operating in the Arava, and show how these interpretations can be classified within two main approaches to natural concepts: Environmentalism and Landalism (Shani 2016).

7. The Azoulays are exceptions to the Arava general landscape, not only in their relation to acacias, but also in their political sensibilities. While most residents traditionally vote for leftist parties and the Zionist center, Noa cast her vote for an extreme right-wing party, which did not even meet the Israeli parliament’s elections threshold. Interestingly, this is the fate shared by environmental activism and political left.

8. Pinus halepensis, locally known as Jerusalem pine, has been the dominant tree around forests in Israel for decades. The JNF began planting it in great numbers during the 1920s, due to the successful breeding of nursery seedlings and the good reception that this species had enjoyed on the ground. The pine was a central tool used by the JNF and later the state to conquer space and mark it out as forests. From an ecological perspective, the massive planting of pine forests through the use of non-local seeds posed a real threat to the local tree population, as well as other vegetation. This discovery, as well as the pine’s highly flammable nature, put an end to its planting enterprises.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Israel Science Foundation [grant number 0610414433].