20, Project
Government plan for a forest ‘wall’.
ETHNOCENTRIC ECOLOGY Palestinian villages have suffered because of Israeli conceptions of nature that are not only anthropocentric, but also ethnocentric
or a scientific one (because of genetic and biological resources). But beyond this, Israeli ecology has concealed a very unscientific hostility towards Palestinians, and their practices in the environment. In other words, the basis for nature pre s e rvation in Israel is not only anthropocentric, but ethnocentric as well. GREEN PATROL
Naama Meishar
T
hey don’t even like n a t u re and landscape; they have no real bond with this place. They don’t feel it belongs to them,” says Muhammad Abu al Hayja, resident and chairman of the cooperative association of the village of Ein Hud. He’s talking about the planning and nature pre s e rvation authorities in Israel, and their attitude towards the natural environment. For Ein Hud, like many a rural Palestinian community, has suffered its proximity to a declared Israeli nature pre s e rvation area, experiencing a loss of civil, social and planning rights, as well as restricted development. In Ein Hud’s case, the village is hemmed in by area declared (simultaneously) a nature re s e rve, a part of the Carmel National Park, and a military fire zone (a forest owned by the Israel Land Administration, under the maintenance and direction of the Jewish National Fund1).
Forest planting ceremony
UNSCIENTIFIC HOSTILITY Nature pre s e rvation in Israel is based on an anthropocentric attitude towards nature, argues Nurit Kliot (2000: 218). She points out that, until the early 1980s, nature pre s e rvation in Israel differed in character from nature preservation norms in the West. The difference was obvious, despite Israeli pretensions to an enlightened and rational approach.2 A major theme in ecology in the West is a moral commitment towards all natural species and phenomena.3 Nature pre s e rvation in Israel, however, is based upon the importance of the environment from a human point of view. Thus the central consideration for nature pre s e rvation in Israel was retaining open spaces for the sake of people, and intensifying their bond with the land. Alternatively, preserving nature was viewed as an important economic goal (because of tourism),
Until the 1990s, Israeli ecological theorists assumed that local ecological systems had suffered from centuries of human interventions4 such as fires, intensive logging, and acute overgrazing by Palestinians and Bedouins. Consequently, a vast part of the country was seen as having not reached its climax – an ecological term meaning a state of equilibrium reached by a plant community, having undergone all the phases of its succession (the succession theory being a deterministic theory5 that dominated ecology discourse until the early 1950s). The so-called Nature Preservation/Goat-Induced Damages Law had been passed in this vein in 1959. This legislation severely limited the number of goats legally acceptable in a private herd, as well as the size of grazing areas. The law added more inspections by the authorities, plus harsher penalties for what was redefined as ‘grazing felonies’. The law came into effect only in 1977, when the then-Minister of Agriculture, Mr Ariel Sharo n , decided to establish the Green Patrol whose role it was to implement the law and put an end to black-goat overgrazing. THE CYPRESS INVASION Until the 1970s, Ein Hud’s residents owned about 1,000 goats and cows. According to Muhammad Abu al Hayja, this was their main source of income and food. It was especially significant in view of the village’s inaccessibility and its remoteness from sources of food and alternative employment. Abu al Hayja recalls that the terraces on the mountain slopes