The coloniality of the Palestinian Authority’s water governance

Keywords: Coloniality, water governance, agriculture, violence
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

During a fieldtrip in the Palestinian city of Nablus, a farmer described the Palestinian Authority (PA) as “a second colonizer”, alongside the Israeli occupying power, performing stateness through authoritative and top-down policies. Analyzing water governance reveals the environmental coloniality of the PA’s policies, perpetrating “environmental orientalism” (Davis 2011) and inflicting epistemic and infrastructural violence upon part of the Palestinian population. Palestinian water strategies portray natural resources as “under-developed” and “traditional” agricultural practices as an obstacle to the realization of the economic potential. Thus, the PA, strongly guided by international donors, perpetuates “environmental imaginaries” rooted in the British mandate and used by Israel as well to describe and governs the colonized environment. For the PA, framing water governance in terms fitting Eurocentric knowledge is part of its state-building strategy, mimicking a strong and centralized state. However, this coloniality silences effective water and agriculture practices, produces violence against its own population, and dispossesses farmers and families who do not fit into this development model. Exposing climate coloniality in the Palestinian context helps understanding the complex state-building process under colonization, and sheds light on the strategies deployed by marginalized communities to confront and navigate this situation.