Yair Agmon
Following the ICSZ student works-in-progress conference in August 2024, presenters were invited to write further reflections on their research. ICSZ is thrilled to present this series on emerging research.
In 2019, the Israeli Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) jump-started a long-delayed planโoriginally zoned in 1974โto open a new visitorsโ center in the Hinnom Valley as a part of the Jerusalem Walls National Park. INPA contracted Elad, a private messianic settler organization, to develop the tourism industry at the site, and in 2021, opened The Biblical Farm, an ecologically minded park that simulates First and Second Temple era farming practices in order to bring biblical agricultural heritage to the 21st-century residents of Israel. Despite touting environmentalism and nature protection, the Biblical Farm National Park was destructively built on plots of land owned by residents of nearby Wadi Rababa. Wadi Rababaโs residents have cultivated olive groves for centuries in the Valleyโs lowlands, which they used for agriculture, community gathering, and as an open green space in the heart of the densely populated and underserviced urban landscape of East Jerusalem. In many ways, these lands are not merely private property but a vital part of the communityโs sense of place and relationship to it, stretching back for generations. Wadi Rababaโs Palestinian community has resisted the encroaching territorial reach of Israeli Authorities and Elad with mixed success, losing the legal battle over the stateโs expropriation of their lands but slowing down its material encroachment and intrusion into their everyday life. Nevertheless, the Valley has seen a rapid change to its landscape.
Undergirding this transformation are environmental distinctions between the Wasteland and Eden. In the eyes of the state, before the development undertaken by INPA and Elad, the valley was an empty wasteland that failed to fulfill its intended useโa land full of waste and discard. The state of dereliction required intervention to protect the Valleyโs natural and bucolic environment hidden beneath layers of excess. In other words, to protect the heritage of the Valley and improve its conditions, the state allowed Israeli Authorities to seize control over the territory as it perceived INPA and Elad as the only agents capable of its protection.
In my time conducting fieldwork in the Hinnom Valley, which I discuss in further detail elsewhere, I documented the visual change to the landscape. While it is tempting to consider these environmental changes as part of the slow violence of settler colonialism, the rapidity in which they occurred stands in contrast to the slowness of other forms of violence. Indeed, every visit to the sliver of land introduced a new feature: another staircase to a new plot, more gated trees, roads carving the landscape to nowhere, or a giant rope bridge dangling on top. While these changes might seem small, they are nevertheless pernicious as they accumulated and changed the visual and ecological makeup of the valley. To reflect on these transformations, as well as the distinctions on which they rely, I used photo-ethnography as a way to achieve two goals: to document the process itself and to offer a visual tool to research a form of violence that relies on how we imagine the environment around us, a profoundly visual process. In what follows, I offer a short photo essay with captions that explores the political ecology of The Hinnom Valleyโan infinitely more complex and vicious process that either words or images can describe.
Figure 1: A view of the Hinnom Valley from the Wadi Rababa neighborhood. The Biblical Farm lies at the center of the image at the Valleyโs lowlands and the foothills of Abu Tur and Mount Zioni Hotel. The olive groves that stretch across the Valley have been cultivated for centuries by their Palestinian owners. Also visible in the image are plots taken over by Elad, which introduced non-native cultivation into the Valley and carved paths to and from the plots. The photo was taken in Mid-summer 2023, when only artificial irrigation, foreign to the traditional practice of Palestine, sustains the growth of Eladโs plot, seen in bright green in the middle of the photograph.
Figure 2: A view of the Hinnom Valleyโs olive groves owned by Palestinian landowners in Wadi Rababa. For many years, the olive groves remained a sleepy green enclave. The owners use the plots for seasonal cultivation and community gatherings, and it is a vital part of their sense of place and belonging that has spanned centuries and across Ottoman, British, Jordanian, and Israeli rule. The area also serves as an informal open space for the nearby residents of East Jerusalem in an otherwise densely built environment with few parks and areas for recreation.
Figure 3: A view of the Hinnom Valley taken in the early 20th Century by the American Colony Photographic Service, displaying the Valleyโs olive groves. When the British Colonized Palestine, they saw in Jerusalem a perfectly preserved relic of the past and an embodiment of the Holy Land. They sought to preserve and conserve its landscape by installing a series of policies that cleared out structures immediately outside its walls and prohibited construction by declaring a National Park. The Hinnom Valley was included in the conservation plan, which the Jordanians adopted, and the Israelis following the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967.
Figure 4: A view of construction on The Biblical Farm, setting up a staircase from a higher plot taken over in 2021 to a lower plot taken over in 2023. Since 2019, Elad, in collaboration with INPA, has slowly expanded its territorial foothold in the neighborhood, creating an archipelago of control.
Fig 5: A view of cultivation plots at the Biblical Farms irrigated through watering canals simulating ancient methods. The Farm is designed as an evergreen oasis and is often described by tour guides as an Eden compared to its environment, frequently derided as a wasteland.
Fig 6: A view of tourists collecting hay to weave baskets at the Biblical Farm. The Farmโs flora is curated according to the species that appear in biblical scripture, limiting the understanding of nature, and by extension, what is natural, to a biblical interpretation of the landscape.
Fig 7: Tourists using a traditional olive press to simulate oil making. The natural world at the Farm is introduced to tourists through biblical Jewish agricultural practices, suggesting a natural affiliation between Jewish history and Nature in Palestine.
Fig 8: Tourists dressed up in garbs meant to mimic the clothes of Jews during biblical times posing for a fridge magnet at the backdrop of East Jerusalem during their stay at The Biblical Farm National Park. The environmental imagination evoked through the natural world suggests a patrimony of Jews over nature. In many ways, this metaphor serves to claim a similar relationship between the Jewish people and the land, claiming a kind of โsettler indigeneity.โ
Fig 9: Palestinian residents of Wadi Rababa, in collaboration with the human rights organization Emek Shaveh and the local solidarity group Free Jerusalem, have resisted this land theft through legal and other means. This photograph shows visitors hearing from local landowners about their relationship to Wadi Rababa. The owners emphasize their intergenerational connection to the land, care for it, and steadfastness in staying on it, evoking territorial sovereignty and power that cannot be undone even by legal dispossession.