Planted Flags: Trees, Land, and Law in Israel/Palestine tells an extraordinary story about the mundane uses of law and landscape in the war between Israelis and Palestinians. The book is structured around the two dominant tree landscapes in Israel/Palestine: pine forests and olive groves. The pine tree, which is usually associated with the Zionist project of afforesting the Promised Land, is contrasted with the olive tree, which Palestinians identify as a symbol of their steadfast connection to the land. What is it that makes these seemingly innocuous, even natural, acts of planting, cultivating, and uprooting trees into acts of war? How is this war reflected, mediated, and, above all, reinforced through the polarization of the natural landscape into two juxtaposed landscapes? And what is the role of law in this story?
Planted Flags explores these questions through an ethnographic study. By telling the story of trees through the narratives of military and government officials, architects, lawyers, Palestinian and Israeli farmers, and Jewish settlers, the seemingly static and mute landscape assumes life, expressing the cultural, economic, and legal dynamics that constantly shape and reshape it. |
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Related Articles(2012). Postscript to “Uprooted Identities.” PoLAR Virtual Edition. Link
(2012). Checkpoint Watch: Reflections on Israel’s Border Administration in the West Bank. Social & Legal Studies 21: 297-320. Link (2011). Civilized Borders: A Study of Israel’s New Crossing Administration. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 43(2): 264-295. Link (2009). Planting the Promised Landscape. Natural Resources Journal 49(2): 317-366. Link (2009). Uprooting Identities: The Regulation of Olives in the Occupied West Bank. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 32(2): 237–264. Link (2008). Everybody Loves Trees: Policing American Cities through Street Trees. Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum 19: 81-118. Link (2008). Governing Certain Things: The Regulation of Street Trees in Four North American Cities. Tulane Environmental Law Journal 22(1): 35-60. Link (2008). “The Tree is the Enemy Soldier:” A Sociolegal Making of War Landscapes in the Occupied West Bank. Law and Society Review 42(3): 449-482. Link (2007). Powers of Illegality: House Demolitions and Resistance in East Jerusalem. Law and Social Inquiry 32(2): 333-372. Link (2007). The Place of Translation in Jerusalem’s Criminal Trial Court. New Criminal Law Review 10(2): 239-277. Link (2006). Illegality in East Jerusalem: Between House Demolitions and Resistance. Theory and Criticism 28: 11-42 (Hebrew). Link (2006). House Demolitions in East Jerusalem: Illegality and Resistance (The Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace, Hebrew). Related MediaRadio: Tree Wars. ABC RN
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