Description
This paper addresses the violence of settler colonialism – including environmental destruction – in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley, a historically fertile and abundant territory situated within Area C under the Oslo Accords. I will argue that this Israeli violence – against a people, their livelihoods, their animals, and lands – is made possible not only through rapidly escalating settler attacks (UN, 2025) but also through the frequently Kafkaesque hyper-legal nature of Israeli apartheid itself. To give one of many possible examples, the permit regime—a product of Israeli military law to which all West Bank Palestinians have been subject since 1967—overwhelmingly prevents Palestinians in Area C from legally building structures such as homes, farms and infrastructure, with such structures facing continual threat of demolition for want of a permit. Drawing on theorists including Georgio Agamben (1995; 2003) and Walter Benjamin (1921), I will consider how vigilante settlers and the Israeli military place all Palestinian life in the Jordan Valley within an Agambenian state of exception, and how settlers and army commit forms of mythic law-making and law-preserving environmentally destructive violence in Benjaminian terms. From the poisoning of water and livestock to the burning of acres of ancient olive groves, Palestinians of the Valley face daily attacks on their ability to live, sustain their families, and to remain on their land. Moves towards environmental justice across the territory entail exposing the Kafkaesque hyper-legalism at the heart of the Israeli apartheid regime, calling out violations of international law across Palestine, and supporting the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.
