ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Conservation and erasure of Palestinian environments: Agro-ecological landscape transformation in the Latrun area

• In Event: Disruptive Encounters: Historicizing More-Than-Human Lives in Palestine

English Abstract

This paper examines how Israeli nature and forest reserves have transformed Palestinian agro-ecological landscapes in the Latrun area, situating these interventions within broader histories of conservation, more-than-human life, and knowledge production. Conservation, often framed as a universal and apolitical endeavour, operates through specific epistemologies and material practices that shape landscapes and social relations. In the West Bank after 1967, reserves emerged as paradoxical spaces—preserving fragments of Palestinian agricultural environments while simultaneously marginalising and erasing the ecological and cultural foundations that sustained them. These foundations, rooted in agroecological knowledge and seasonal rhythms, were reconfigured by conservation logics that privileged forestry, zoning, and ecological management. Such practices were not merely technical; they produced authoritative narratives about nature that displaced local knowledge and legitimised territorial appropriation.
The Latrun area illustrates this dynamic vividly. Agricultural commons were reclassified as protected parks, severing access for displaced communities to grazing and cultivation. The almond tree—once integral to agroecological cycles and cultural practices—serves as a lens through which to trace these transformations. Its marginalisation and removal from orchards and commons exemplify how conservation policies disrupted multispecies relations and undermined Palestinian socio-ecological life. Oral histories, archival records, and aerial photography reveal how these interventions redefined everyday geographies and embedded settler-colonial strategies within ecological discourse.

Author

• Alaa Iktash, London School of Economics