Mapping the Multiple Strategies of Eco-Social Violence by Israel Against Palestinians: Water in the Jordan Valley

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Abstract

The violence inflicted by Israel on Palestinian land and people only escalated to what international human rights organizations have referred to as “genocide” following the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023. Such violence was already underway beforehand and already escalating. In this paper I use Bacon’s notion of eco-social violence as a springboard to discuss the continuum of state sponsored violence by Israelis against the Palestinians, the Palestinian environment, and Palestinian attachment to the land. This paper will briefly discuss the current extreme violence against eco-system and the environment but will put this violence into the context of multiple strategies used to dispossess Palestinians from their land – including use of zoning to reclassify land, permit regimes to limit activity or access, barriers and limiting mobility, ecological violence, and physical violence against Palestinians working the land. Through mapping this continuum, this paper aims to highlight how eco-social violence is part and parcel of the Israeli settler colonial system. The last part of the presentation will highlight ways in which Palestinians (with international solidarity activists) engage in resistance to this violence.

Author

• Stephen Philip Gasteyer, Michigan State University