TUZLU SU SALTWATER

78 Adrian Parr
Denemeler / Essays
79
of Palestinian neglect is, in the words of Said, denying ‘the Palestinians a historical
presence’. (2) This process of re-presenting Palestine under a Western image of what
constitutes Palestine-Israel means that not only are Palestinian farming traditions and
food autonomy lost, but that Palestinian memories and history are erased as well. (3)
Striation also occurs as sewerage from the settlements overflows on shabbos (Sabbath)
because no-one works at the plant on the Jewish day of rest so the toxic muck
trickles down the hillside and into Palestinian farmland. Underground water currents
are striated when they are captured and diverted to Israeli settlements by the Israeli
Administration or to more densely populated areas of the West Bank by the Palestinian
Authority, leaving rural Palestinians and the nomadic Bedouins parched with thirst.
The same applies to the underground springs that burst through the earth nourishing
farmland, for when tapped the ground is drained and the desert grows, as is the case
in Auja in the Lower Jordan Valley region.
The logic of securitisation has a temporal condition as well. The movement of Palestinians
is never routine. They are always on the verge of being arbitrarily stopped at a
checkpoint for hours and sometimes even days. The continual interruption of Palestinian
people and goods in and out of the West Bank, as Jewish settlers freely move
across the divide, fills everyday Palestinian life with uncertainty. Not even Palestinian
school buses can travel the main roads guarded by the IDF, forcing school children to
walk long distances in what is clearly dangerous traffic for a child to navigate. In this
context, any amount of routine is a welcome relief. (4)
In 2014, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon vehemently condemned Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu for the appropriation of approximately 1,000 acres of land near
Gvaot in the West Bank to establish new settlements. He explained that this ‘risks paving
the way for further settlement activity, which – as the United Nations has reiterated on
many occasions – is illegal under international law and runs totally counter to the pursuit
of a two-state solution.’ (5) Israeli land-grabs in the West Bank present obvious barriers to
peace on both sides. Despite verbally condemning the Israeli Administration, the UN,
as with so many other bodies keeping the peace and upholding human rights under
international law, does not have the power to directly stop the appropriation of West
Bank land. But this situation is nothing new. Indeed, the peacekeeping efforts of the UN
have come under heavy criticism for failing to stop, or even curb, numerous instances of
political and ethnic violence. (6) To be fair, the UN’s peacekeeping efforts are paralysed
by a lack of financial resources, a shortage of ground troops, weak political clout, and
a restrictive mandate that allows peacekeepers only to fight in self-defence. Does this
mean, as many argue, that the UN as an international body formed with the specific aim
of maintaining peace is now irrelevant? (7) Not necessarily. To assess the relevance and
effectiveness of the UN on the basis of whether or not it can safeguard civilians and property
from violence places the organisation in the ultimate Catch-22 scenario because it
gives it a reactive role, while denying it the power to react on behalf of those it is instructed
to protect. It can only react to protect itself. What would happen, then, if the emphasis
shifted away from peace-as-security onto enabling peacefulness to emerge?
The UNESCO world heritage site of Battir in the West Bank is a compelling example
of cultural-environmentalism as the basis for peace building. The widian (hillsides)
of Battir are situated a few miles southwest of Jerusalem in the Palestinian territory
of the West Bank. The approximately 4,000 year-old Roman stone walls follow the
sloping geography, forming terraces that channel water from underground springs irrigating
fields of vegetables, olive trees and grape vines that Palestinian farmers have
cultivated for hundreds of years. In Battir, the territorial boundary separating the West
Bank from Israel is perforated by the watershed and Roman terraces, as well as the Palestinians
who farm fields located on both sides of the dividing line. In the valley below
runs a railway line for the Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem train. As the geopolitical situation between
Israelis and Palestinians worsens and the living conditions of Palestinians continues
to deteriorate, the children of Battir have been taking their frustrations out on
the train as it passes through the valley by throwing rocks at it. In response, the Israeli
military planned to extend the Security Barrier through the valley, which would have
cut farmers off from the land along with inflicting irreversible damage upon an ancient
watershed. At stake was an intricate spatio-temporal distribution system of water,
farming practices, cultural memory, indigenous flora and fauna, and food autonomy.
On 13 December 2012, Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled in favour of a petition presented
to it by the non-governmental organisation Friends of the Earth Middle East
(FoEME) to halt military plans to extend the separation barrier through the valley of
Battir. (8) FoEME members include Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians, and the organisation
collaborated on the petition with the Battir Village Council and the Israel Nature
and Parks Authority (NPA). On 20 June 2014, at the 38th session of the UNESCO World
Heritage Commission, Battir was listed as a World Heritage Site, prompting the Israeli
High Court of Justice to freeze the construction of the wall on 4 January 2015. (9)
The goal of the UNESCO World Heritage programme is to protect and preserve global
heritage. This is based upon the idea that a natural or manmade wonder has a universal
cultural value that exceeds political interests and national borders and transcends
the current moment. The processes and elements of ecological and cultural production
hereby operate as singularities in a field pregnant with political potential. It is this
unlikely combination of invoking the singular character of cultural and environmental
heritage as a means through which peacefulness can occur that the 2014 UNESCO
World Heritage listing of Battir’s terraces and watershed achieves.
In Battir, blue, green and grey infrastructures combine to form complex sociocultural
ecologies. The mixture of Roman aqueducts, olive and oak trees, local produce,
springs, underground currents and stone terraces along the Battir hillsides produce
a creative matrix that consists of interplays between soft and hard surfaces out of
which a different ecological political register emerges, encouraging a spatio-temporal
condition counter to that of surveillance, dispossession and domination. Battir’s exuberant,
abundant and lush, watered vitality participates with impermeable forms and
static structures, defiantly challenging the forces of division, occupation and control
that have decisively changed local landscapes and ways of life.
If, from a Palestinian perspective, peacefulness consists of activating smooth spaces
amidst the striated spaces of occupation and dispossession and concomitantly reorganising
and routinising time, then the UNESCO World Heritage listing has provided
the conditions necessary for both to be realised. The process of nominating and listing
Battir as a UNESCO World Heritage Site treated nature and culture as singularities
whereby the flows of water and earth, conflict and peace, bordering and commoning,
colonisation and decolonisation pull against each other. (10) The UNESCO listing recognises
that the site is a conglomeration of sensitive ecological points, as Deleuze
might describe it, that in their neutrality present social ‘turning points’ that have the
capacity to inflect the political landscape differently. As hydrological cycles, irrigation,
planting, harvesting, cooking and localised memories encounter and resonate with
each other, ‘divergent series’ are generated – to paraphrase Deleuze’s thoughts on