Forests in Reverese
Michal Chudner Dorett Panagiotopoulou Clare Potter 2022
Once you enter the forest, you are in forever. In no-location, forests mark a threshold – environmental, political, legal, and ontological. It stands against civilization, considered as its primeval and negation. The massive scale afforestation project carried out in Israel since the beginning of the 20th century had transformed the landscape immeasurably. This essay aims to unravel the forest body in Israel to show its dual sense of naturality, meaning that even when it is planted intentionally its artificiality is concealed by the force of nature, to an extent of implying for originality. The planted forest in Israel is a place of exchange between the absent and the present, in parts it is almost invisible, in others it screams out.
Ruins of a home in Qula near Ramle
Theology, myths and other cultural canons fixed the forest through time as the place without space, geometry or direction. Most obviously, it is a large plot of land covered with trees. When inside, it seems endless. Repeated in three dimensions, four directions. Hence, the forest is the presence of the formless, casted into a chaos, in which logic dissolves. ‘A world open to any experience but also hostile to the paths of rational knowledge - closed because it is primary, not subject to any criticism or progress, as happens with dreams, obsessions, fears, and desires.’1 The forest also disables. Being absorbed into the it’s homogenous landscape, it is difficult to become familiar with it, to recognize and remember, to orient in space. Afforestation in Israel was largely enhanced after the Nakba ()ةبكنلا, the catastrophe that befell Palestinian people in 1948 which resulted the dispossession of an estimated 750,000 refugees from Palestine, and the uprooting of most of the Palestinian Arab population and their society in the creation of the State of Israel. As memories weave their way in and out of the narratives constructed in the Palestinian and Israeli context, the forest be a misting layer, an instrument of selective erasure. The Israeli forest stood for the popular mission of the new Jewish settlers of revival for the proclaimed abandoned land of Israel. This inherently meant the killing and unseeing of the pre-existing Palestinian life. 1 Bataille, Georges, Formless, Documents Magazine, 1929
The Zionist premise to redeem the land meant to bring the landscape in the country to life, which, as argued, had been neglected by the previous inhabitants. The mission was commonly referred to as making the desert bloom. When blossom would show in form of Jewish settlements. The false claim for a lifeless land was necessary then to strengthen the claim for Jewish rootedness and connection to the place and to prevent from Palestinians the right to return. This, in order to justify and portray the brutal appropriation of the land as a merely naive home coming. David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, explained this as a need to “reconstruct the ruins of poor and decrepit land... which has become desolate during hundreds of years, and has been standing in desolation for nigh two thousand years.”2 The Jewish National Fund has been one of the central institutions implementing the secular Zionist mission of reclamation of the land of Israel as a collective property of the Jewish people. It did so not only in the name of those present in it but also those living abroad. The fund was established in 1901 by the Fifth Zionist Congress, initially to collect donations from Jews in the diaspora to then purchase land in Palestine. Later the JNF became responsible for planting trees, assisting in settlement, and encouraging Jewish immigration to the country. After the establishment of the state in 1948, among immigration absorption, preparing lands for settlement and agriculture, the most vivid undertaking of the JNF was tree planting. Hardly any other Jewish organization could compete with the appeal of the fund as for many Jewish people around the world, it became synonym to their relation to the Holy land. Based on their donations, it made its first purchases of land in Palestine in 1905 in areas of Tiberias (northern part of the territory), Ramle and Lydda (centre). Between 1904 to 1950, JNF was buying land mainly from locals, leaders of Palestinian villages. At the time, still small in scale, the total area bought by the fund each year varied from few thousand dunams* a year to 67,357 dunams in its highest point in 1944.3 Clashed with the Zionist wish to reclaim the land of Palestine as the home of the Jewish people, Palestinian presence, people as well as villages, imposed a threat. It contradicted the story of Jewish belonging to the very same territory. Yosef Weitz, the director of the ‘Land and Afforestation’ Department of the JNF, was a key figure since early 1930s in acquiring land for the Israeli settlement, the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine. The following section from his diary shows the extent of anxiety around the sense of belonging to the land among the Zionist settlers at that time. “We toured this morning around Ramallah. And what we saw made us wonder. The fallahs* are cleaning, plowing and sowing, and their solid homes are caved in stone as if they are coming out of it. Their revival of the desolated land brings desolation and sorrow to our hearts. Areas which were considered un-processable turned into fruit gardens and grape vineyard. With these labors the Arabs revive the mountain and root the orchards of the land. And I was painfully jealous of them. Everything is processed.”4 2 Kadman, Noga, Erased from space and consciousness, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015,p. 37 3 Jewish National Fund, Land Purchase, https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A7%D7%A8 %D7%9F_%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%AA_%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%A9%D 7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C, accessed March19, 2022 4 Michal Weits, ‘The Blue Box’, minute 10:45, translated from Hebrew by me.
* One dunam is 1000 square meters.
* Fallah. ( ) فلاحis an Arabic word for ‘farmer’. Its racist abuse by the Eurpian zionist man in this context is a testimony for the superior mentality and the intentional erasure.
Hand in hand with physical actions of appropriation, the claim for the place’s emptiness was set in law. Absentee property law (1950) gives the State of Israel the assets of those who left it for territories of hostile countries during the war of 1948. It defines people who were expelled, fled, or who left the country after 29 November 1947, as well as their movable and immovable property, mainly land and houses, as absentees. Cynically, missing despite an expected presence. This law was the main legal instrument used by the state of Israel to possess land of internal and external Palestinian refugees. Arguing for the land’s emptiness enabled the re-narration of the landscape’s meanings by the great scale afforestation project. The forest’s locations are intentional, and in some cases, they were planted to conceal the remains of Palestinian villages. Selective erasures and suppression of collective memory of the past was essential in creating new traditions. Hence, the forest provided the ground on which a phenomenon of multiple memories inhabited in the ‘same’ site, converged in the same objects. Where the present and absent are indifferent, they constantly change places. Walking in the forest, the trees call out the absent. A year after Israel’s establishment in 1948, the largest real estate transaction, known to be called ‘the million deal’ was carried between JNF and the state. In which The Jewish National Fund had bought a million dunams size of expropriated land from the state. In this way and till now, JNF gained 12% of the total land in Israel to be assimilated into its prime mission: to prepare and develop land in Israel for settlement of Jews as well as foresting, for it to be redeemed from desolation.5 By the mere reading of the mission statement of JNF, a comparison between Jewish people and trees starts to unravel. The meanings of this analogy seeped so deep into the Jewish-Zionist collective consciousness that the construction of enormous, vast forests on previous Palestinian territory and villages appeared as a validated action. The rooting of the tree replaced a sense of human absence.
Jerusalem Forest
5 Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, https://www.adalah.org/en/law/view/531, Accessed on March 20, 2022.
JNF’s forests and parks are calm and pastoral places. The descent from the highway to a regional road and then to a dirt access rote, significantly slows down the speed of the car approaching the forest. This marks the entry to the natural, quiet and utopian place. Where stones of different sizes mark clean and carefully planned pathways, wooden picnic tables spread in a breathful pace, inviting the visitor to sit and relax, enjoy the peaceful break. The forests managed by the JNF include mostly planted pines and other coniferous trees (58%), as well as eucalyptus and other non-native broad-leaved trees (17%). Only in the remaining quarter of the planted matter does the JNF plant local species. This is an implementation of its policy of endowing the land of Palestine with a European landscape.6 The forest in Israel is the place to be visited mostly during daytime by families in holidays, military ceremonies or trainings, and school trips as part of ‘Yediat ha’aretz’ lessons*. All of which play a solid institutional role in one individual’s life. Family, community, nation. They are all fundamentally not to be questioned, as on the meanings of these definitions personality alongside a sense of security are built. The practice of these activities ties a complex bond of multiple emotional levels to the territory of the forest. As much as it is devastatingly confusing and painful to doubt each of these life assets separately, not having the forest, which blends them all together in a centered territory, becomes un-thinked-of. Questioning the forest is terrifying. It would crumble one’s identity. Because it marks a place beyond description, linked deep to answers for the question ‘who am I?’. For it to not collapse, it sands high and deeply rooted, covering the already destroyed structures of Palestinian’s stone homes. The forest facilitates a claim of originality. As the act of plantation occurred a while ago, it faded from the collective memory of Israelis and was therefore accepted as always having existed. Incidentally, cracks are traced in the configured narrative of Israeli ownership set forth by the forest. Rubbles of stone, collapsed structures, fig trees or cactuses are visual reminders of the past. An obscure impression of a violent interruption is weaved in the formless forest walk. However, for the Israeli walker, they all must be unseen in order to maintain their own preciouses, solid knowings. The presence of the remains of the mundane encounter is perceived as none. As curious, enigmatic structures with no past to be explored and with no unpleasant questions to be risen.
Rubbles of destroyed structure in Nabi Yusha 6 Noga, Kadman, Erased from space and consiosness, 2015 p. 42
* In direct translation ‘knowing the country’. It serves the aim of becoming acquainted with the country’s flora and fauna, geographical and geological terrain. It is institutionalized from kindergarten through primary and secondary school to the army. Considering that most of the people in the newly adopted home, came from other localities, it was necessary to speed up the process of familiarity, to retroactively fill the kind of knowledge could have gained should they been there before.
** Coming back to the notions of presence and absence, two paradoxes are found. The forest has now turned around. Slowly swallowing the village ruins, the abrupted course of past life is disappearing into the forest blurred thicket through the element of repetition. The plantation veils the belonging of Palestinian life, yes. Yet also the opposite takes place. As much as it overtakes the village remains, the same quality of repetitiveness of the forest gives it an ability to reject or to point out that which is foreign. Therefore, the layer of rooted ‘rawness’ of the forest rather accentuates the foreign stone traces within it as ‘other’, implying that the ruin is out of place when in fact it is being an earlier form of presence in the landscape. A second flip, still relating to the role of the tree in the context of showing and veiling, occurs when realised that the trees ended up protecting the walls from further destruction.7 The forest was planted in the surroundings of the village’s remaining stone structures, enclosing it, separating it from the transformation happening outside, of new contested identity, new infrastructures and cities.8 By being isolated from the outer world, the structures were perceived as ‘already taken care of’, not needing to be further destroyed or assimilated into the new Israeliness, as happened at times with Palestinian structures which were to be inside the newly built Israeli settlements and cities. It was therefore kept in the same form, still standing, frozen in time, within the forests. The power of tree planting ritual is increased when related to the action of burial. Digging the earth to create a hole, placing a thing in it, then covering it again. Birth and death are traversed through the working hands. Again and once more, the worker kneels down to shove, shoot and seed the ground, and only by its unquestioned repeatedness, the forest raises. Erected still, the vastness of the forest stands for the extent of denial needed to lead the act of planting a forest that covers the local traces of life, erasing a notion of the day-to-day maintained in the place previously. Again and again. The idea of a revival process, fertilizing the land, is carried in bare hands, seeded in the deep, airless darkness of the underground. Once the tree is rooted, the irresistible cycle of vegetation, where death merely prompts a rebirth, seemed to promise true national immortality.9 Satellite view allows to try and see the afforestation project in zoom out. Captured from above, the image allows a reading which portrays a transformation. Satellite data is restricted in Israel for a pretext of security. For the outsider, images appear in low resolution, and it is difficult to identify details. In this way, the government controls the amount as well as the resolution of information perceived by the outsider. Receding to satellite, the confusion the forest creates is echoed. Only from satellite view the erasure is successful. Wooded land covers in dark-green and undefined shapes a bare-nude colored terrain. The geometry of them is affected by the typology and areal margins. From above, the forest is a black hole, complete emptiness, where no traces of life are found. When visiting the site physically, however, they exist. One has to rely on landscape readings, to search for and notice all that remains to bring back a sense of orientation.
7 Noga, erased from space and and consiosness, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015, p.43 8 For further reading please see chaper no.5 of Erased from space and Consiouscness of Noga Kadmad. 9 Schama, Simon, Supra note 14, at 6.
Jeruslem and Jerusalem mountains forest
Reconfigurations of destroyed Palestinian villages in Israel are too numerous to cover here. While the uniqueness of such sites vary significantly, all are charged with the overlapping impulses of selective rememberings and forgettings. In the emptied village Al Mazar ()رازملا, which is located on the western slope of Carmel mountains, east to Athlith and south to Haifa, very little has remained. According to Walid Khalidi it had a square shape, and a tomb as the principal standing building at the site called Shaykh Yahya. Other remains of the site include rock cut tombs, cup marks, and a plaster bell shape cistern.10 Its inhabitants obtained their domestic water from a spring southeast. Today, Fruit trees like fig, pomegranate or lemon trees become a text to be read - remains of the village’s orchards. Clusters of prickley-pear cacti, (Sabir, Tsabar, Sabra), are one of the only visible traces. These and rubbles of stone houses are scattered in bulk over the site. Due to its spikiness, the cactus was traditionally used to delineate boundaries of village properties. Clearly overgrown now, but still in apparent linear patterns, their previous function of demarcation and authority seems to be mocked by the fact that they now rather tragically mark an ‘empty’ space, announcing a lack or an absence. Dis-attached to its initial role in Palestinian culture, the same type of cactus became a well known symbol of Israeli indigenousness.11 The defining use of the term in everyday Hebrew is that of being a ‘native born’ Jew in Palestine. Viewing the presumed toughness of the outside but softness and sweetness of the inside of the cactus fruit, the feature linking the two.
Al-Ghabisiyya, 1987 10 Andrew, Peterson, A Gazetteer of Muslim Buildings in Palestine part 1, Oxford University Press, 2001, p.216 11 Brandestein, Carol, Threads of Memory and Discourses of Root, Dartmouth Collage, 1998, p.11
In her essay, Carol Brandestein depicts several sites visits she made to emptied Palestinian villages in Israel. Because she was accompanied by a former villager, now refugee, her visit to Ghabsiyah (Al-Ghabisiyya, )ةيسباغلاin the Galilee shows another layer of memory. Being present in the place that used to be his home, the primary way in which the group navigated in the place was by reconstruction of it by the former villager’s mind, holding on to the partial, broken, traces of the past. Now, the trees of the JNF forest are being ignored and forgotten. Despite being formally defined as absent by the state, the former villager uses his own past occupancy rememberings to redraw an imagined map of the place according to which steps and turns are made. Between and among these, he recognizes the former home of the mukhtar, the head of the village. He did so by identifying the two high palm trees which used to mark the entrance, the only such trees in the village which are still standing. The bodily, immediate experience enables to witness traces that belong the past. Evidently, the missing parts come back to life, dictating a path, spouting words, visions, sounds. The familiar orientation, pointing on where was what, naming stones, distinguishing a well from a pottery surface, is a proof for un-erasable presence, capable of rising structures back up from the flattened plot. Memory and imagination are instruments enabling a resistance against the physical erasure. By this, the verbal, the formless, is making what’s absent present again, reverting the erasure for a brief moment. Perhaps, just as the forest erases memories, memories can erase the forest. The pine forest grew down in height, long arching trees went back to saplings. Land was exposed again, sighing with relief. Scattered rubbles started rolling back from different corners of the plot... A stone was set upright, piling one on top of the other, raised again a wall. Then workers came to each kneel next to a tree and re-dig it to be then carefully placed on a track which was heading back to the tree nursery. By the time they got there, the saplings turned to seeds again. They were then picked and collected by one attendant with two nimble fingers from the soft earth in the seedling pot. It was his task, which he then went and completed, to put it somewhere, to hide it cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
Acre; Amqa, Arab al-Samniyya, al-Bassa, al-Birwa, al-Damun, Dayr al-Qasi, al-Gabisiyya, Iqrit, Khirbat Iribbin, Khirbat Jiddin, al-Kabri, Kufr Inan, Kuwaykat, al-Manshiyya, al-Mansura, Miar, al-Nabi Rubin, al-Nahr, al-Ruways, Suhmata, al-Sumayriyya, Suruh, al-Tall, Tarbikha, Umm al-Faraj, al-Zib. Bisan; Arab al-’Arida, Arab al-Bawati, Arab al-Safa, al-Ashrafiyya, al-Birra, Danna, Farwana, al-Fatur, al-Ghazzawiyya, al-Hamidiyya, al-Hamra, Jabbul, Kafra, Kawkab al-Hawa, Arab al-Khunayzir, Masil al-Jizl, al-Murassas, Qumya, al-Sakhina, alSamiriyya, Sirin, Tall al-Shawk, Khirbat al-Taqa, al-Tira, Umm ‘Ajra, Umm Sabuna, Yubla, Zab’a, Khirbat al-Zawiya. Beersheba; Al-’Imara, al-Jammama, al-Khalasa Gaza; Arab Suqrir, Barbara, Barqa, al-Batani al-Gharbi, al-Batani al-Sharqi, Bayt ‘Affa, Bayt Daras, Bayt Jirja, Bayt Tima, Bi’lin, Burayr, Dayr Sunayd, Dimra, al-Faluja, Hamama, Hatta, Hiribya, Huj, Hulayqat, ‘Ibdis, ‘Iraq al-Manshiyya, Iraq Suwaydan, Isdud, al-Jaladiyya, al-Jiyya, Julis, al-Jura, Jusayr, Karatiyya, Kawfakha, Kawkaba, al-Khisas, al-Masmiyya al-Kabira, al-Masmiyya al-Saghira, al-Muharraqa, Najd, Ni’ilya, Qastina, al-Sawafir al-Gharbiyya, al-Sawafir al-Shamaliyya, alSawafir al-Sharqiyya, Simsim, Summayl, Tall al-Turmus, Yasur. Haifa; Abu Shusha, Abu Zurayq, Arab al-Fuqara’, Arab al-Nufay’at, Arab Dhahrat al-Dhumayri, Atlit, Ayn Ghazal, Ayn Hawd, Balad al-Shaykh, Barrat Qisarya, Burayka, Khirbat al-Burj, Khirbat al-Butaymat, Daliyat al-Rawha’, Khirbat al-Damun, Khirbat al-Ghubayya al-Fawqa, Khirbat al-Ghubayya al-Tahta, Hawsha, Ijzim, Jaba’, al-Jalama, Kabara, al-Kafrayn, Kafr Lam, Khirbat al-Kasayir, Khubbayza, Khirbat Lid, Khirbat al-Manara, al-Mansi, Khirbat al-Mansura, al-Mazar, al-Naghnaghiyya, Qannir, Qira, Qisarya, Qumbaza, al-Rihaniyya, Sabbarin, al-Sarafand, Khirbat al-Sarkas, Sa’sa’, Khirbat al-Sawamir, Khirbat al-Shuna, Khirbat al-Sindiyana, al-Tantura, al-Tira, Umm al-Shawf, Umm al-Zinat, Wa’arat al-Sarris, Wadi Ara, Yajur. Hebron; Ajjur, Barqusiya, Bayt Jibrin, Bayt Nattif, al-Dawayima, Dayr al-Dubban, Dayr Nakhkhas, Kidna, Mughallis, alQubayba, Ra’na, Tall al-Safi, Khirbat Umm Burj, Zakariyya, Zayta, Zikrin. Jaffa; al-’Abbasiyya, Abu Kishk, Bayt Dajan, Biyar ‘Adas, Fajja, al-Haram, Ijlil al-Qibliyya, Ijlil al-Shamaliyya, alJammasin al-Gharbi, al-Jammasin al-Sharqi, Jarisha, Kafr ‘Ana, al-Khayriyya, al-Mas’udiyya, al-Mirr, al-Muwaylih, Rantiya, al-Safiriyya, Salama, Saqiya, al-Sawalima, al-Sheikh Muwannis, Yazur. Jerusalem; ‘Allar, ‘Aqqur, ‘Artuf, ‘Ayn Karim, Bayt ‘Itab, Bayt Mahsir, Bayt Naqquba, Bayt Thul, Bayt Umm al-Mays, al-Burayi, Dayr Aban, Dayr ‘Amr, Dayr al-Hawa, Dayr Rafat, Dayr al-Shaykh, Dayr Yassin, Ishwa’, Islin, Khirbat Ism Allah, Khirbat Jarash, al-Jura, Kasla, Khirbat al-Lawz, Lifta, al-Maliha, Nitaf, al-Qabu, Qalunya, al-Qastal, Ras Abu ‘Ammar, Sar’a, Saris, Sataf, Suba, Sufla, Khirbat al-’Umur, al-Walaja. Jenin; Ayn al-Mansi, Khirbat al-Jawfa, al-Lajjun, al-Mazar, Nuris, Zir’in. Nazareth; Indur, Ma’lul, al-Mujaydil, Saffuriyya. Ramla; Abu al-Fadl, Abu Shusha, ‘Ajanjul, ‘Aqir, Barfiliya, al-Barriyya, Bashshit, Khirbat Bayt Far, Bayt Jiz, Bayt Nabala, Bayt Shanna, Bayt Susin, Bir Ma’in, Bir Salim, al-Burj, Khirbat al-Buwayra, Daniyal, Dayr Abu Salama, Dayr Ayyub, Dayr Muhaysin, Dayr Tarif, Khirbat al-Duhayriyya, al-Haditha, Idnibba, ‘Innaba, Jilya, Jimzu, Kharruba, al-Khayma, Khulda, al-Kunayyisa, alLatrun, al-Maghar, Majdal Yaba, al-Mansura, al-Mukhayzin, al-Muzayri’a, al-Na’ani, al-Nabi Rubin, Qatra, Qazaza, al-Qubab, Qubayba, Qula, Sajad, Salbit, Sarafand al-’Amar, Sarafand alKharab, Saydun, Shahma, Shilta, al-Tina, al-Tira, Umm Kalkha, Wadi Hunayn, Yibna, Khirbat Zakariyya, Zarnuqa. Safad; Abil al-Qamh, al-Abisiyya, Akbara, Alma, Ammuqa, ‘Arab alShamalina, Arab al-Zubayd, ‘Ayn al-Zaytun, Baysamun, Biriyya, al-Butayha, al-Buwayziyya, Dallata, al-Dawwara, Dayshum, al-Dhahiriyya al-Tahta, al-Dirbashiyya, al-Dirdara, Fara, alFarradiyya, Fir’im, Ghabbatiyya, Ghuraba, al-Hamra’, Harrawi, Hunin, al-Husayniyya, Jahula, al-Ja’una, Jubb Yusuf, Kafr Bir’im, al-Khalisa, Khan al-Duwayr, Khirbat Karraza, al-Khisas, Khiyam al-Walid, Kirad al-Baqqara, Kirad al-Ghannama, Lazzaza, Madahil, al-Malikiyya, Mallaha, al-Manshiyya, al-Mansura, Mansurat al-Khayt, Marus, Mirun, al-Muftakhira, Mughr al-Khayt, Khirbat al-Muntar, al-Nabi Yusha’, al-Na’ima, Qabba’a, Qadas, Qaddita, Qaytiyya, alQudayriyya, al-Ras al-Ahmar, Sabalan, Safsaf, Saliha, al-Salihiyya, al-Sammu’i, al-Sanbariyya, Sa’sa, al-Shawka al-Tahta, al-Shuna, Taytaba, Tulayl, al-’Ulmaniyya, al-’Urayfiyya, al-Wayziyya, Yarda, al-Zanghariyya, al-Zawiya, al-Zuq al-Fawqani, al-Zuq al-Tahtani. Tiberias; ‘Awlam, alDalhamiyya, Ghuwayr Abu Shusha, Hadatha, al-Hamma, Hittin, Kafr Sabt, Lubiya, Ma’dhar, al-Majdal, al-Manara, al-Manshiyya, al-Mansura, Khirbat Nasser al-Din, Nimrin, al-Nuqayb, Samakh, al-Samakiyya, al-Samra, al-Shajara, al-Tabigha, al-’Ubaydiyya, Wadi al-Hamam, Khirbat al-Wa’ra al-Sawda’,Yaquq. Tulkarem; Khirbat Bayt Lid, Bayyarat Hannun, Fardisya, Ghabat Kafr Sur, al-Jalama, Kafr Saba, al-Majdal, Khirbat al-Manshiyya, Miska, Qaqun, Raml Zayta, Tabsur, Umm Khalid, Wadi al-Hawarith, Wadi Qabbani, Khirbat al-Zababida, Khirbat Zalafa. ‘All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948’, Ed. Walid Khalidi. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
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