Dwelling in conflict: land, belonging and exclusion in the Negev

262 Pages·2016·10.854 MB·English

by  McKee, Emily

Dwelling in Conflict

Dwelling in Conflict
Negev Landscapes and the Boundaries of Belonging
Emily McKee
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
©2016 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKee, Emily (Ph. D.), author.
Dwelling in conflict : land, belonging and exclusion in the Negev / Emily McKee.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8047-9760-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8047-9830-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-8047-9832-7 (electronic)
1. Land tenure—Israel—Negev. 2. Land use, Rural—Israel—Negev. 3. Jews—Colonization—
Israel—Negev. 4. Bedouins—Civil rights—Israel—Negev. 5. Social conflict—Israel—Negev.
6. Negev (Israel)—Ethnic relations. I. Title.
HD850.Z8N446 2016
333.3095694'9--dc23
Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/14 Minion
Contents
Illustrations vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
A Note on Language xvii
Abbreviations xix
Introduction 1
1 Narrating Present Pasts 23
2 Seeking Recognition 51
Bridge: Distant Neighbors 83
3 Coping with Lost Land 95
4 Reforming Community 123
5 Challenging Boundaries 153
Conclusion 183
Glossary 193
Notes 195
References 205
Index 227

Illustrations
1. One side of Wadi al-Na‘am, next to the electricity plant 57
2. The far side of Wadi al-Na‘am 59
3. “Solidarity planting” of olive trees, east of al-‘Araqib 64
4. Café catering to visitors on a single-family farmstead 70
5. Sarah’s group on an outing in the wadi, beside Dganim 89
6. Street with high-walled family plots in ‘Ayn al-‘Azm 103
7. A mud-brick house under construction 107
8. A home garden creates a private pocket of greenery
in the township 108
9. A public playground becomes a neglected landscape 118
10. Former greenhouses in Dganim 130
11. In honor of fallen soldiers on Israel’s Memorial Day,
the flaming letters spell “remembrance” 133
12. A renovated home in Dganim 135
13. Doing arts and crafts at the elders’ club 137
14. Medwed Clinic in the village of Wadi al-Na‘am 154
15. Learning environmental interconnections in Bustan’s
Permaculture Course 173
16. Embodied learning: permaculture students build
with recycled paper 178

Preface
SITTING ON A PATCH OF GRASS IN GIVAT RAM, JERUSALEM, IN 2007, I had a meeting that
launched two years of fieldwork and initiated the network of social connections
that I trace throughout this book. Ra’ed Al-Mickawi had just taken over direc-
torship of a small environmental justice NGO called Bustan l’Shalom (“Or-
chard for Peace,” usually shortened to “Bustan”) three months earlier. We sat
together that afternoon in the chilly December sun to discuss Bustan’s work
and my research. I was starting an ethnographic study comparing practices of
environmental activism in Israel. I hoped to use environmentalism as an alter-
native lens for examining the attachments to land so commonly cited as the
cornerstone of the region’s Arab-Jewish conflict.
Bustan consisted of half a dozen Jewish and Bedouin Arab staff members
and a network of occasional volunteers. They worked with residents of the
Negev, the desert region in Israel’s south, to promote socially and environ-
mentally sustainable lifestyles, and they advocated outside the region for policy
changes that would address the Negev’s land conflict in socially and environ-
mentally responsible ways. Ra’ed leaned forward and spoke with energy as he
described the intertwined ecological and political goals of Bustan’s projects in
community gardening, sustainability classes, and installation of solar-powered
medical equipment for ill children in Bedouin Arab villages without electricity.
Realizing that my research interests fit well with Bustan’s mission of environ-
mental justice, Ra’ed invited me to join the group to conduct my research.
Five days later, I moved into Bustan’s Green Center, an apartment in the city
of Beersheba that served as the organization’s headquarters, volunteer hous-
ing, and demonstration site for sustainable living. I arrived by bus late at night
with two suitcases, and Anna, the Green Center coordinator, welcomed me and