“Palestine is a climate justice issue”:

an overview of the practice of Israeli greenwashing and ways of Palestinian resistance to the occupation

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the contemporary Palestinian struggle related to recent debates on the climate crisis. Based on a bibliographical discussion and analysis of the historiographical production on the subject, we seek to draw an overview of the Palestinian historical process since the creation of the State of Israel, in 1948, with specific attention to Israeli policies around the occupation of the territory and practices of greenwashing, which seek to hide violent and illegal actions based on ecological discourse. It starts from the hypothesis that there is an overlap between the Israeli colonial process and the alteration of the landscape, understood here in a broad way, the “natural” and social. We seek to understand the relationship between occupation practices and the expulsion of Palestinians from their territory as social, economic and environmental processes. Israeli policies such as forestry projects, the exploitation of natural resources and the expansion of territorial occupation are addressed. Furthermore, the approximation of the Palestinian struggle with the climate crisis from the perspective of climate justice is discussed, based on the analysis of materials from the BDS movement - The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, as well as from the reflection of the historical and cultural meanings constructed and imagined by Palestinians in relation to their territory.