Ecologies of denial: Palestine and the struggle for emancipatory presence on the land

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Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

This paper explores how Palestine has become a site of violent and hegemonic settler state control, where indigenous Palestinian livelihoods, identities, and geographies are reconfigured within a framework of ecologies of denial. These processes are characterized by ontological misrecognition and dispossession, leading to uneven and asymmetric realities in land and water use that favour the settler colonial state. Concurrently, indigenous knowledge, norms, and beliefs are systematically devalued, reinforcing a Zionist ethno-geography that seeks to erase indigenous ontologies. The paper argues that Israeli settler colonialism functions through a paradoxical duality of presence and absence. While the state exerts control over resources, bodies, and identities through surveillance and resource management, it simultaneously neglects and marginalizes indigenous people and spaces in its land and agricultural policies. This dynamic creates hybrid geographies, where Palestinian communities are caught between striving for autonomy over land and water and being enmeshed within an exclusionary state apparatus that constrains their rights. The paradox of state presence-absence, particularly in the provision and denial of water infrastructure produces multiple layers of suffering for the indigenous population. By employing the concept of ecologies of denial in multiple geographies (the Jawlan, Galilee, the Jordan Valley and Gaza), the paper illuminates how the settler state’s impact extends beyond physical dispossession to distort the lived experiences and environmental imaginaries of Palestinian communities.