Natural Resource Transformation: Incorporating Identity

Abstract

Natural resource issues provide a useful context for analysing and intervening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because environmental destruction harms both Israelis and Palestinians given their close proximity in a small, ecologically fragile landscape. This article argues that because Israeli and Palestinian national narratives both assume a special relationship between their peoples and the land, a traditional natural resources management (NRM) approach treating land as a finite resource to be ‘managed’ or divided will not help to resolve the issue. Instead, politicians, scholars and practitioners should draw upon the principles of conflict transformation in designing intervention strategies and work to create a new ‘ecological’ narrative that weaves the long-term wellbeing of the two peoples together with the environment. Looking at the conflict over land in one location along the route of the separation barrier, the author applies a natural resource transformation framework in analysing the land conflict between Israeli authorities, the settlement of Zufin and the villagers of Jayyous.