<\/p>\n
The conifers that now dominate the landscape are a symbolic stand-in for diaspora Jews around the world whom Israel claims as its own.<\/p>\n
The hills of Palestine are covered in dusty scars where olive trees once grew. In their place, rows and rows of pine trees have been planted. The metaphor almost writes itself. While olive trees are indigenous to the land, take decades to mature, and produce vital food and oil, the pines grow fast, produce no fruit, and serve as non-native nostalgia for Europe, from where many of their planters fled.<\/p>\n
The story of Israel and Palestine can be told through these trees. For the Palestinians, the uprooting of their saplings tells of their dispossession from their own land \u2014 the axes taken to their trunks tells of the thousands of torsos killed in the occupation, and the branches shorn of their olives by hands that did not plant them tells of their enduring misery at the hands of their occupier.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the conifers that now dominate the landscape are a symbolic stand-in for diaspora Jews around the world whom Israel claims as its own. The evergreens aim to ease the anxiety of their relentless rootlessness, to finally build, for a people without a land, a connection with a land that is not theirs.<\/p>\n
The uprooting of olive groves came with the negation that they were even there in the first place. Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, wrote in 1898<\/a> of Palestine that \u201cthe land is poor and neglected \u2026 and the fields lie fallow\u201d, and Israel\u2019s first prime minister stated his intention to both protect the desert and make it bloom<\/a>.<\/p>\n This task was given to the Jewish National Fund (JNF)<\/a> \u2014 possibly the most powerful parks and recreation department in the world \u2014 which fundamentally reshaped the area\u2019s entire landscape. It has taken over 90 per cent of the land<\/a> and planted over 250 million trees<\/a> since 1901, mostly pines but also the water-guzzling eucalyptus.<\/p>\n The JNF plants these in the name of diaspora Jews, whether they are celebrating births, bar mitzvahs or even Mother\u2019s Day. Irus Braverman writes:<\/a><\/p>\n Shortly after my birth, my parents received a JNF certificate indicating that, together with the Jerusalem municipality, JNF had planted a tree in my name in Jerusalem\u2019s Peace Forest \u2026The front of my certificate shows a lonely, fragile tree, while in the background, yet also at the centre of the picture, a mass of green forest prevails. Tellingly, the inscription on the certificate reads, \u201cA tree is planted in the name of the newborn in the Peace Forest in Jerusalem. We wish you the fortune of seeing it\/her grow with much pleasure and ease.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The tree is a stand-in for Jews<\/a> who can assuage their guilt for not physically being in Israel. As a venture of \u2018green colonialism\u2019,<\/a> they also fittingly hide the presence of demolished Palestinian villages.<\/a><\/p>\n