2016 Winner: Modes of Resistance: Signs, Olives, and Fire

Project Information
Modes of Resistance: Signs, Olives, and Fire
Social Sciences
ANTH 130X Middle East Ethnography
Through the lens of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) pine forests located in Israel and the Occupied Territories of Palestine (Israel-Palestine), I examined both how the pine tree planting has created a means to establish an Israeli space, through controlling the land, recreating a landscape of European aesthetics, and concealing Palestinian history and presence on the land. The Jewish National Fund has planted pine forests over eighty-six Palestinians villages demolished and depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israel War and 1967 Six-Day War. This has created a struggle between both the State of Israel and Palestinians to maintain, or in the case of the State of Israel to establish, a history and to legitimize their presence upon the land of Palestine/Israel. It is through this struggle, I looked at how Palestinians have resisted being displaced and erased from the landscape. I chose to focus on the inclusion of Palestinian history on signage around the Jewish National Fund forests and parks. As well as how Palestinians’ livelihood of olive tree planting and harvesting has now become a mode of resistance. Lastly I focused upon how Palestinians have used deliberate fires or arson to resist one’s erasure and history upon the landscape.
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Students
  • Melissa Suzanne Otero (Merrill)
Mentors