Presentation short abstract

In this paper, I trace the ebbs and flows of agrarian mobility in the West Bank amidst the infestation of wild boars. I aim to map out indigenous, feminist, and grounded modes of endurance and adaptations, showcasing the multiple ways Palestinian villages have struggled to sustain mobility.

Presentation long abstract

Ebbs and Flows of Palestinian Agrarian Mobility amidst an Infestation:

Indigenous Ecologies and Feminist Resilience in the Palestinian Highlands of the West Bank

Entangled changes in Land and Labor, in the highlands of the West Bank, helps us recognize the impartial proleteranization of Palestinian peasants in the West bank.

Kohlbry suggests that the colonial political economy has relegated seasonal rain-fed agriculture to a subordinate source of income. Conversely, Tesdell emphasizes the persistence, durability, unpredictability, and fluctuating nature of Ba'al farming in semi-arid Palestine, making it an enduring practice that defies narrow metrics and representations prevalent within developmental discourses.

This emphasis on the agro-ecology of land and labor regimes, in the West Bank, is all-important. However, it shies away from the centrality of agrarian mobility, namely Siraha (walks, hykes, foraging, Faz’a and Ouneh). it also ignores an indigenous environmental perspective, rooted in the political ecology of agrarian Palestine.

Research Questions:

1-How can we examine Palestinian agrarian mobility, as an embodied decolonial praxis?

2-To what extent does the infestation of wild boars, and the knowledge produced about it, help us trace ebbs, flows, resistance, resilience, associated with agrarian mobility?

3-Can we devise agrarian, feminist, decolonial scales and practices that inform an agrarian present for the purposes of surviving the current genocidal wave?

Methods:

This paper will be based on multi-sited ethnographic work, conducted from 2017-2023, in the villages of Salfit, with focus on Iskaka village.