From Wasteland to Eden: Environmental Territoriality and the Remaking of the Political Ecology of East Jerusalem

This article tracks the relationship between waste, environmentalism, and settler territoriality and its mobilization in the remaking of East Jerusalem's political ecology.While using environmental discourses for Palestinian dispossession is as old as the colonization of Palestine, this article shows how, in recent years, the Israeli state and private settler organizations have re-imagined the natural environment of the Wadi al-Rababa neighborhood and the Hinnom Valley through the lens of Jewish biblical cultural memory to pursue territory.It draws on extensive fieldwork in the heritage tourism sector to demonstrate how conceiving the Hinnom Valley as transitioning from a neglected wasteland to a biblical Eden is used to claim a Jewish relationship to land and sever Palestinian claims to property and sovereignty.It also demonstrates how settler political ecologies are deeply tied to racialization work, producing differences vis--vis temporality and the environment.