The abstract seems to celebrate a devastating 2021 fire in the forests near Jerusalem as a type of "intifada."
In August 2021, wildfires erupted in the southwestern hills of Jerusalem, engulfing and ultimately destroying up to 20,000 dunums of pine forests planted by Israeli settlers. The burned landscape revealed a stunning vista of terraced hillsides, a visual testament to the existence of Palestinian land-based relations hidden under the camouflaging foliage. In this experimental visual essay, fire is postulated as an elemental force of Indigenous Palestinian resistance to the ongoing conditions of environmental and human Nakba imposed on Palestinian lands and bodies under Zionist settler colonialism. Fire, as a transformative and atmosphere-altering medium, is thus theorized and visualized as elemental intifada.
I don't have access to the "experimental visual essay" but it references New Arab article that says:
The wildfires which ravaged Jerusalem's hills in August, and which tore through 25,000 dunams of dense woodland laid bare a long-hidden landscape, full of forgotten traces alluding to the crimes which took place in 1947-8 during the Nakba.This has served as a reminder of the ethnic cleansing which took place in the hilly region southwest of Jerusalem, in which all the Palestinian villages were destroyed and their remains concealed.The fire returned the hills to their natural state, allowing their underlying shape to become visible once more: their historic terraced slopes testifying to the work of Palestinian farmers over centuries, as they strove to cultivate the land and make it bear fruit for its inhabitants.While Israeli media mourned the burning forests and the wrecking of dozens of Israeli homes which had been built on the ruins of Palestinian villages, ancient agricultural terraces were revealed which go back more than 400 years. They alluded to the complex farming methods which Palestinian peasants developed, bringing into being flourishing agriculture.
On my trips to the West Bank and the occupied territories, when I passed by the expansive areas of Palestinian farmland, I was always awed by the sight of the long chain of terraces, mustabat or mudrajat in Arabic. I thrilled at their grandeur and the precision of the work that attests to the connection between the Palestinian fellah and his land.
The photos of the destroyed forest do show the terraces that were built into the hills.
It sure looks like proof of a deliberate Jewish plan to cover up ancient Palestinian farming methods, doesn't it?
Except that when you look a little further, you learn that:
1. The forests were planned and planted before 1948, before the "nakba."
2. They were planted with full cooperation and knowledge not only of the British but also the local Arab population.
3 The idea of terrace farming on hills and mountains in the region is at least 2,000 years old, way before "Palestinians."
An article in the San Francisco Examiner from April 11, 1920, shows a diagram of the plan by the British to return the land to the state it was in in years past - because it was ruined by the Ottoman Empire, especially during World War I. Amazingly, this diagram shows the terraces on the hillsides and the plan to bring water back to the areas because it had fallen into disuse and drought.
The article says:
A vast scheme of irrigation and reforestation, under the control of a British governmental commission, has been completed and approved both by the enlightened Jewish leaders, as well as the Arab Moslems under the guidance of the Grand Mufti, their head. The project contemplates raising the level of the Sea of Galilee, upon whose waters the Saviour walked, by damming its outlet into the River Jordan. It also contemplates subsidiary dams along the course of the Jordan and similar manipulation of other streams that run through the valleys and deep gorges of Palestine. An elaborate system of pipings from these reservoirs, great numbers of artesian wells in other regions and the planting of hundreds upon thousands of trees on the now desolate slopes of hill and mountain, are depended on to give the country the moisture that is the only thing needed to make it blossom into the garden it was when Moses looked down upon it from the top of Mount Nebo and saw the promise of Jehovah fulfilled.... How different is that picture now, which the observer can see from the same mountain top, or from one of the hills just outside Jerusalem, where, according to Dr. Simon Lowenstein, one of the American Red Cross commissioners to Palestine, one can look over the country to the Mediterranean Sea on one side and to the Red Sea on the other! "Palestine," he says. "is now a tragically barren land. One can walk for miles without seeing a tree or a shrub large enough to cast any shade, and yet this land of our ancient fathers was and can become again an agricultural paradise." It is largely the destruction of the forests that retained and fed out to Palestine the waters that made it fertile, which is the cause of its present aridity.The effect of the destruction of trees upon a land is too well known to need detailing. Forest masses act not only as reservoirs for rain, but as one of the causes of precipitation. The rainfall soaks into the ground and is retained by the roots, finding its way gradually into brook and stream. Besides this, a gradual evaporation is caused from which comes humidity to be in due course condensed into .storm and shower. When trees are ruthlessly cleared away the rain either soaks rapidly through the ground or is carried off at once along anything which provides a watercourse.For hundreds of years Turkish misgovernment caused the land to be stripped of its natural resources in the way of lumber. But during the war this process of deforestation went on at a tremendous rate. Dr. Lowenstein, before quoted, and Dr. John H. Flnley, his associate in the Red Cross Commission to Palestine, says of this: "The process of deforestation was tremendously accelerated during the great war. Whole sections of Palestine were cleared of livestock and trees. The Mount of Olives is almost denuded. In some quarters of Bethlehem and other communities the people burned everything they could spare."While the plan of irrigation is still in abeyance, that of reforestation is in actual effect. In various favorable sections, nursery gardens have been planted. Almost a quarter of a million timber and fruit trees have been set out and are growing upon the barren mountain slopes. Upon these slopes occur pockets of earth debris, left behind by the rushing floods of the winter rains. Not only do these provide excellent planting spaces, but by growing in them the trees the area of fertility is enlarged by the action of the roots in breaking up the stony soil.Concerning the wanton destruction of trees during the war, "Palestine," an Arabic journal published in Jerusalem, recounts with bitterness the repressive measures of the Turks and Germans before the liberation of the country in cutting down the olive trees for fuel for the railroads. It tells how the owners of the ancient trees, the "blessed" trees, watched the process of cutting with streaming eye and fainting hearts.When the Turkish officers were replaced by Germans, the paper says, their hopes rose that the remaining trees would be spared. But instead of clean, cutting steel which left a stump which might sprout again, dynamite was employed, utterly destroying the roots, among which the destructive energy was placed. The account closed with a well-known Arabic proverb, "'After I avenged myself upon Omar, I wept for Omar.' The Turk was more merciful than the German."The roses of Sharon have all been dead for long the plain that was once so fragrant with them being now, for almost eight months in the year, little better than a dusty desert, but under enlightened control of the country these roses will bloom again..
It is clear that the reforestation of the land was only of areas that were not being farmed because they were barren. There were no farms, no crops, in these areas. The British didn't confiscate land that was legally owned or actively farmed.
The Arab population welcomed the plans, including the Mufti who preceded the antisemitic Mufti Husseini.
But what about the terrace farming? Isn't that Palestinian?
Those specific terraces may have been built by local Arabs, but the idea pre-dates them by many centuries. The Mishna (gathered and written from the first to third century CE) lays out the laws of the sabbatical "shemitta" year, and says that building terraces ("steps") in the hills is not allowed to support farming on the seventh year:
The Hebrew word used for "steps" is "madregot" - almost certainly the source for the Arabic "mudrajat" mentioned in Haaretz as proof of the Palestinian origins of the methods.
So literally everything being claimed by the Palestinians now about these forests is a lie. It was not their innovation, Jews didn't plant trees to erase them but to save local farming, and the Arab leaders at the time supported the reforestation plan to counter the damage done under Ottoman Muslim rule.
Not only are today's Palestinians lying, but they are celebrating the destruction of forests in Israel and the environmental damage that results. When it comes down to it, all their moral posturing and supposed love of the land is outweighed by their immense hate of Jews.
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