Divergent visions: Intersectional water advocacy in Palestine

Abstract

This article draws lessons about environmental justice from a case study in the Jordan River Valley of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Building on notions of justice as recognition, the article argues that inclusive environmental justice agendas require the recognition of multiply marginalized groups and the fundamentally different understandings of environmental hazards and benefits they may have, and it proposes the use of intersectional analysis to do so. The village of al-Auja faces severe water-related challenges: a closed Israeli military zone blocking access to the Jordan River, which has also shrunk and grown polluted in recent decades; water wells with declining capacity and increasing salinity and a lack of permits to rehabilitate them; and the drying of a once-perennial spring. Residents, local government officials, and Palestinian staff members of a transborder nongovernmental organization agreed in identifying Israeli occupation as a key cause of water stress and articulated justice-based protests. However, while some emphasized the lack of Palestinian sovereignty over natural resources, others concentrated on the obstruction of villagers’ agricultural livelihoods and household hardships. The article demonstrates that different life experiences, particularly along lines of rural/urban residence, career, and gender, shaped divergent definitions among Palestinians of environmental benefits and harms, and thus different priorities for environmental justice work. It suggests that attending to complex, intersecting lines of social experience in the early stage of environmental campaigns, when defining problems and forming goals for improvement, can lead to more representative reparation plans, institution building, and activist agendas.