Planted Flags Trees, Land, and Law in Israel/Palestine

Author: Irus Braverman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521760027
Published In: October 2009
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: International ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Planted Flags tells an extraordinary story about the mundane uses of law and landscape in the war between Israelis and Palestinians. The book is structured around the two dominant tree landscapes in Israel/Palestine: pine forests and olive groves. The pine tree, which is usually associated with the Zionist project of afforesting the Promised Land, is contrasted with the olive tree, which Palestinians identify as a symbol of their longtime connection to the land. What is it that makes these seemingly innocuous, even natural, acts of planting, cultivating, and uprooting trees into acts of war? How is this war reflected, mediated, and, above all, reinforced through the polarization of the ‘natural’ landscape into two juxtaposed landscapes? And what is the role of law in this story? Planted Flags explores these questions through an ethnographic study. By telling the story of trees through the narratives of military and government officials, architects, lawyers, Palestinian and Israeli farmers, and Jewish settlers, the seemingly static and mute landscape assumes life, expressing the cultural, economic, and legal dynamics that constantly shape and reshape it.

• Presents a unique interdisciplinary focus between law, geography, and anthropology • Offers insight into the relationship between natural landscapes and the modern national project, and on how land still matters to the nation-state • Tells an engaging story from the intimate perspectives of multiple interviewees: from Palestinian farmers to Israeli military officers to Israeli foresters and to Jewish settlers

Contents:: Introduction: trees and war;
1. A genealogy of tree bureaucracy;
2. The Zionist pine tree project;
3. The Palestinian olive tree project;
4. ‘The tree is the enemy soldier’; Epilogue: tree wars?.