“Make the desert bloom”: climate change in a settler-colonial society

Abstract

“Make the desert bloom” is the axiom that epitomizes the dichotomy between the desert as an empty space, purportedly shaped by the absence of life, humanity and reason, and the Zionist movement which proposes to occupy that void. In this paper, the relationship between the Zionist settler-colonial project, the territory of Palestine and its population will be thought through the analysis of planning and discourse, as well as the “situated practices” in the inhabited space-time of the Naqab. I refer to these practices –the material expression of the Palestinian-Bedouin relationship with the territory– as a way to r/exist outside the colonial/modern space-time and its dominant vocabularies.