Omar Jabary Salamanca, Université libre de Bruxelles
Muna Dajani, LSE
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Abstract
In this contribution we engage with what lies beneath the debris of apocalyptic landscapes to foreground the threads that hold together fragments of land and life in the face of imperial forces that seek to erase indigenous existence. We introduce the term ecology of siege as an analytic to explore the relations that bind genocidal violence, lived environments and anticolonial resistance in Palestine. Thinking with Gaza and its peoples, we consider how ecologies of siege are assembled and sustained in ways that attempt to conceal the history, nature and resistance of its own reproduction. Ecologies of siege feature here as haunted sites of organised abandonment where soil, sea, air and bodies bear witness and embody the traces of colonial capitalism. They also function as spatial repositories where life crafting practices and liberatory relations are enacted and revealed. In centring the question of how life is made in nominally uninhabitable worlds, our contribution challenges colonial imaginaries and practices that obfuscate everyday realities on the ground, paving the path to the rationalisation of mass violence. In the current historical juncture, we hope to convey a critical understanding of embodied and affective political ecologies that can inform liberatory futures in Palestine and far beyond.