Israeli reforestation practices: power relations between myth and territory

Abstract

The first Zionist settlements were established in the Palestinian region in the late 19th century, realizing in the Ottoman province a form of coexistence between the newly arrived communities and the local population. The Jewish communities developed a strongly symbolic relation with the territory due to the realization of a political concept of localization, expressed by a dialectical relationship between the ancestral evocation of a mythical space and its empirical configuration. In particular, the practice of reforestation conducted by the pioneers represents a power paradigm that affected the political space of Palestinian society at the dawn of its modern process, contributing to the realization of the Zionist project. The analysis of land-oriented processes and institutions in charge of forestry activities can contribute to understand the causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the functional relationship between man and environment, landscape and cultural representation.