Farm Warfare in Gaza: Examining Contemporary Israeli Colonial Practices
This talk examines the historical production and ongoing maintenance of the eastern 'border' of the occupied Gaza Strip with Israel in the wake of the 2018 Great March of Return. Against the backdrop of over seven decades of Israeli settler-colonialism, a 'buffer zone' has been formed along Gaza's border with Israel through the denial of Palestinian access to agricultural lands, periodic military confrontation, the uprooting and grazing of farmlands, and the latest practice of aerial herbicidal spraying. During the Great March, the slow violence of this gradual border production culminated in the fast killing of human bodies. Using a range of visual and fieldwork methodologies, this talk will unpack the link between these forms of violence and locate the destruction of the environment and the destruction of the body in time and space. In doing so, I examine the ways in which the testimony and of the land can be documented along the human testimony to confront the historical erasure of state crimes and expose forms of ongoing settler-colonial violence.
Dr. Shourideh C. Molavi is a lawyer and Assistant Professor of political science at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, specializing in critical state theory, border practices, citizenship and refugee studies and international human rights law. For over fifteen years, she has worked as a fieldworker, academic instructor, and legal researcher in Israel-Palestine. Shourideh is also the dedicated Israel-Palestine Researcher for Forensic Architecture.
forensic-architecture.org/investigation/herbicidal-warfare-in-gaza
Forensic Architecture: Herbicidal Warfare in Gaza. The results of Forensic Architecture's analysis show the distribution of concentration of herbicide as it travels westward into Gaza. Image: Forensic Architecture and Dr. Salvador Navarro Martinez.