The December 2010 fire in the Mt. Carmel forest reserve in Israel left an open wound in the heart of one of Israel's last remaining open spaces. For more than 73 hours the fire raged, fueled by dry easterly winds, killing 43 people, scorching villages, burning over fifteen thousand acres of forest, and causing millions of dollars in damage.
As the ash settles and the smoke clears, the Carmel case draws attention to a series of environmental and ethical issues pertaining to the relations between forest and people. These issues fall into three main areas. The first, which can be named Forest Past, addresses the political ideology underlying Israel's forestry initiatives. The central issue here is the effort to tame nature, rather than preserve it. The second area, which can be named Forest Present, addresses the environmental justice standpoint on the alienation of Israel's Druze and Arab Israeli community from their natural surroundings. Here the central issue is the use of nature as a tool for controlling indigenous populations. The third area, which can be named Forest Future, addresses the controversial debate between natural restoration and socio-economic development. The central issue here is the restoration not only of the forest but also of public trust in forest policy.
The Carmel fire, and all three issue areas of which it is an indicator, lie within a broader environmental context, one that seems absent from the minds of most Israelis. Forest fires are a frequent occurrence in Israel. The majority of them are concentrated in the summer months of June to August, when climatic conditions bring warm dry air from the Arab peninsula to the Mediterranean. The fires have never occurred in December.
Another important piece in this climatic puzzle is that in the past six years Israel has experienced one of the severest droughts it has ever known. December, which was expected to bring with it the promise of winter, failed to do so in 2010, leaving the forests parched and flammable. These details strongly suggest that while human hands lit the initial spark, this was fueled by conditions belonging to a broader climate change discussion.
Forest Past: A Jewish Zionist Tree Extends New Roots
Ecologists regard the Carmel region as one of the most diverse ecosystems in Israel; but of the 15,000 acres burnt, only small portions bore local trees. The vast majority of trees (approximately five million)[1] were planted forest, under the custody of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
From its inception in 1901, the stated goal of the JNF has been fundraising for the purpose of purchasing lands in the Ottoman and later British controlled Palestine for future Jewish inhabitance. Inspired by the leadership of Theodor Herzl, the fund accomplished groundwork in preparation for the return of the Jewish people to Zion. Following its massive land purchase, the JNF undertook a wide-scale forestry initiative to assert control over the newly purchased parcels. Herzl's saying, «the barren land should be planted with a million trees»[2], became the goal of the organization, and by the present time, more than 240 million trees have been planted.
In a land where every action has political meaning, Palestinians living in the area came to regard Jews and their trees as invasive species belonging somewhere else. Although some of the people and trees were actually indigenous, the implanted majority consisted of European men and women carrying European pine and cypress trees to which they had become accustomed back home. As the environmentalist Alon Tal writes, «The Jewish immigrants saw the land as more than barren and ugly; they saw it as abandoned and awaiting a redeemer. The trees turned the land into something more hospitable and familiar—the woods also evoked the freedom of European settler youth»[3].
During the following decades, as the new Israel was coming to fruition, the return to the land by way of reforestation signified also the return to Israel. Joining the people who were immigrating from over fifty countries were eucalyptus trees from Australia and acacias from India[4]. As Palestine moved from Ottoman hands to British rule, trees became pawns in political rivalry: Israeli forestry was intended to help the economy but also to keep the land from reverting to Arab ownership. «Since British law protected trees, it provided us with legitimacy, and there was no activity that could hold land as cheaply as forests», stated one JNF official[5]. This politicizing of trees rendered them a valid target for arson by the Arab residents of Palestine.
In the period of planting the "old-new land"[6], the Israeli debate surrounding wilderness had gone through its first stage, that of taming nature. High density pine forests gave the land a familiar European look. Eucalyptus trees were used to drain marshes for the purpose of construction. Nature was reengineered by humanly contrived natural means. Parallels might be drawn to the era of American settlement in the wake of independence, yet in the American context, «the trees were seen as a nuisance… a savage wilderness beyond the realm of (Christian) civilization»[7]. Despite this difference in outlook, forestation practices came increasingly under state regulation in both cases.
In Israel, some called for wilderness to be left untouched, as can be found also in the American environmental movement. Nonetheless, the state took over the forest. Jewish immigrants to Palestine saw themselves as required to take over nature in order to assert territorial control. This viewpoint is comparable to that seen by the environmental theorist, J. Baird Callicott, in other settlers: «The Australian bureaucratic term for wilderness is terra nullius, 'empty land'… [but] the Australian and American continents were not… empty lands when 'discovered' by Europeans and settled by English colonists»[8]. Palestine likewise contained both people and vegetation. The deceptiveness captured by the term wilderness was heightened after the War of Independence in 1948, when the JNF was entrusted to function as Israel's official forestry division, the Ministry of Agriculture having relinquished direct authority over the matter to the organization. While the JNF is forbidden to plant past the 1967 armistice line, both Jews and Palestinians in Israel have been critical of cases in which the JNF covered Palestinian villages abandoned in 1948 with lush European forests[9].
Since 1948, the JNF has changed its approach to the land from conquest to custody. It might be said that the JNF has achieved Leopold's ideal of changing "from conqueror to member" by allowing the forests and their surrounding natural areas to exist in a natural condition[10]. After assserting control over the land through extensive planting, the JNF today is the second largest owner of open lands in Israel (after the Bureau of Land Management), for which it is recognized as one of the most important environmental organizations in the country. This itself might be found puzzling, considering that the JNF is one of the largest rural real estate developers in Israel.
Forest Present: Alienating Local Populations
The Earth is closing on us.
Mahmoud Darwish[11]
My roots strike deeply, and penetrate, penetrate
Far into the depths of eternity
Together with the oak tree, I was born long ago
In the land of the Galilee.
Munib Makhoul[12]
Much like their Israeli counterparts, the Palestinian citizens of Israel regard the tree as symbolic of their own citizenship and flight, which was not to Israel after world war, but from Israel at war in 1948. Among both groups of citizens, the tree has become a symbol of persistence and determination in the effort to prove whose roots run deeper in the soil. In Palestinian iconography, it is the olive tree that is symbolic of struggle, an embodiment of longing for the fruit-laden trees that refugees left behind[13].
If pre-1948 days were marked by trees, the post-1948 period can be called that of development. During the past six decades, the human population of Israel increased from 800 thousand to 7.5 million[14]. This rapid expansion was conducive to the uncontrolled sprawl of roads, buildings, and other infrastructure. Nathan Alterman, one of Israel's most acclaimed poets and pundits, captures a newly formed attitude toward land in his poem, Morning Song: he promises the newly founded state to «cover her in a dress of silt and concrete»[15]. This masculine-socialist love song became the new theme of the Israeli proletarian, as he was sent to reclaim the land. In reaction to rapid, discordant development, a growing concern for the environment arose, together with the realization that sprawl must be stopped. In 1953, the Society for the Protection of Nature, the largest green NGO in Israel, was founded. In 1963, public pressure led the Israeli government to pass the Wildlife Reserve Bill and create the National Parks Service. A shift in perspective was occurring: the land was seen no longer simply as a "site," a blank space open for new use or occupancy, but had come to be seen as a "place," a concrete, sensory and distinctive location thick with meaning[16].
While Israelis regard the progressive shift to conservation as a positive indicator of modern society, the shift is perceived in the Arab sector as a continuation of actions intended to deprive Arab people of their land. Establishing natural reserves closed to human activity has had a severe impact on local grazing and hunting practices, and the harvesting of wild flowers for food. Moreover, the village form of residence among Arabs leaves most of their inhabitation at the edge of natural reserves, with no options for expansion and construction, enveloped in green rings allowing no escape[17]. A growing feeling of Arab alienation from Israelis ensues within ecological discourse. The land that was once sacrosanct and harmonious with the Arabic way of life has become another form of control, accompanied by environmental laws that can be wielded against the Arab minority. The sense of exclusionary ecology peaked during the riots of Arab Israeli youth in October, 2000. In the riots, forests were set on fire and natural reserves mutilated.
The discourse of environmental justice recognizes that desperately poor people tend to degrade their environments: lacking food, and the fuel needed to cook it, people will kill wildlife regardless of whether it has endangered status[18]. In the Israeli context, however, it is not strictly poverty that leads people to commit acts of environmental destruction. Instead, this results significantly from the feeling that natural surroundings are an extension of the state seeking to deprive them. By harming nature, Arabs engage in nationalist action directed against occupation. Having been relegated to lesser status within the Jewish state, they now find the ecosystem, which was nationalistically designed to their disadvantage, as but another form of oppression.
The standpoint of environmental justice includes the view that developed nations and their corporations exploit local and indigenous people[19], harvesting resources from area ecosystems and polluting entire regions. Even though it is a developed nation, this does not pertain to Israel, however. The majority of Arab Israelis lie within the lower socioeconomic component of society; but their villages are located in remote parts of Israel, unaffected by pollution. Consequently, the problem of environmental harm caused by arson in Israel is not readily resolvable through the usual analytical considerations of environmental justice.
The environmental ethicist, Holmes Rolston III, writes that «Humans win by conserving nature – and these winners include the poor and the hungry»[20]. Rolston's view would seem to be correct, but the Israeli case is an exception. Where conservation means keeping land undisturbed by Arab village expansion, it is difficult to see how conservation can restore trust between Arab Israelis and their land, which has been used purposefully in a way to alienate them. Regarding environmental justice, Robert Bullard has observed that exclusionary zoning (and rezoning) is a subtle way in which governmental authority and power may be used to foster and perpetuate discriminatory practices, including modes of environmental planning. Zoning laws may be used as legal weapons deployed in the cause of racism by excluding "undesirables" from designated areas[21]. Even if land use plans are outfitted with green purposes, the result may be that by "signing the blueprints" Arab-Israelis are conceding to Israeli dominance, further widening the political wedge between themselves and the land. To paraphrase on Munib Makhoul's poem, the roots wish to penetrate deeply but are kept from doing so by political soil.
Beyond land use plans aimed at development, ecosystem design could itself be construed as a political function – an administrative tool through which governments assert control. Here it suffices to say that if we accept the argument according to which all persons are products of a natural state, yet are naturalized in their nations, then the displacement of peoples shatters not only a basic notion of civil being, but also a deep ecological one. The environmental theorist Randolph Hester observes that just as a person from another country can become a naturalized citizen, so those who have been alienated from earth's wild processes can achieve full citizenship in the ecological world, reacclimatized to its rights and pleasures[22]. If denied this basic privilege, the alienated people are deprived not only of «feelings of beauty, joy, spontaneity, and creativity» but also of their «wild state, which seems essential for realizing our full potentials»[23].
Forest Present: Restoring Nature and People
The Mt. Carmel fire puts Israel at an environmental crossroads. The fire has opened to debate the benefits of reforesting the area using the same alien trees. Yet the fire has also led Druze and Arab villagers living on the perimeter of the forest to express their wish that the forest be scaled back to permit further development. This leaves Israel with the question of whether to persist in methods of alienation or to undertake methods of reunification in relation to the land.
In a white paper published by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, the organization's ecologists have called for the use of the Mt. Carmel fire as a basis for re-examining the current foresting protocols. They argue that the Carmel region should be restored through natural renewal as opposed to active human planting; and in any case, planting activity should not include the use of pines, since these are a species alien to the terrain involved[24]. The JNF has expressed its intention to refrain from planting pine trees, yet is using the recent fire for raising as much money as possible for planting activities in the area.
From an ethical standpoint, reforestation is concerned not only with trees but also with the ability of man to recreate nature. Restoration conveys the message, as the environmental theorist Eric Katz indicates, that humanity should repair the damage that human intervention has caused the natural environment. Wounds inflicted on the natural world by humans are impermanent: nature can be made whole again[25]. While Katz himself disagrees fundamentally with this view, arguing that the results will not be authentic, restoration remains a pressing concern. Even though the trees burnt on Mt. Carmel had been planted by humans, the fire itself reset the terrain to a natural state. Moreover, nature is known to have the ability to recover from forest fire. If humans impose their wishes back upon the terrain, they act to revoke nature's intrinsic value as a designer. From an environmentalist standpoint, it can be said that nature has already proved its critical priority as an actor; we ourselves should allow it to lead the way in its own restoration.
Yet the Carmel region is not an abandoned quarry or degraded toxic dump. The restoration issue has arisen in the wake of thriving green rather than decaying grey; but the former was man-made. Should man-made green be replaced with more of the same or with such natural green as existed prior to human intervention in the ecosystem? Both sides in the debate can ask, as Robert Elliot does in questioning restoration, why should forgery instead of the real thing be accepted?[26] The recreational user might advocate for the longstanding approach to development, while the environmentalist is likely to advocate for nature's autonomy. Despite such arguments, the further question can be raised, are we really denying nature's autonomy when we assist it in some way? All advocates of restoration might agree upon "benevolent" restoration, the goal of which is to restore the culture of nature if not nature itself[27].
If the culture of nature is the goal, a third perspective on restoration may serve to support reforestation mending the past. In this case, restoration would appear as a form of agriculture, rather than as an ecosystem of natural origin. Instead of fruits or vegetables, the produce would be a forest nourishing spiritual and psychological needs, even though it would be derived by way of human intervention – or would constitute, according to the terms of the arguments above, arti-factual nature. Distinct from what might be called real or natural nature, this artificially induced nature would serve as a tool to educate visitors to the forest about the value of real nature. To escape the problem of consisting of alien species, the new forest agriculture would use indigenous species of trees to recreate nature as it once was. While some may call such a forest fake, the experience it grants the visitor will probably be authentically natural in the emotions it evokes. This approach, which might be viewed as an adaptation of the pragmatic approach of Ben Minteer to restoration, would allow both parties to «place their intentions and actions squarely within the environment, accepting the role of human agency but also directing it into nature affirming channels»[28].
Conclusion: The Healing Power of Arti-factual Nature
In responding to the need for ecological restoration, the pragmatic approach also clears a path to the restoration of human trust. If the area is designated to be one of natural agriculture, the Arab Israeli population surrounding Mt. Carmel can become involved with developing relevant land use plans. Through participation in the work of restoring the parkland, the surrounding communities will return to the land, confronting it as the source of their trauma. After many years of estrangement from the area where they had previously lived, these people could apply their aptitude and power as restorers, recreating the land as they wish to see it. The resulting ecosystem may be viewed as an artifact, but the effort of reconstructive and recreational restoration will replace alienation with affirmation and help in the transition from an exclusionary ecology to an inclusionary one. A new land ethic will itself be created, according to which the land is not a symbol of state, politics or religion but a community, an ecosystem in which all live in civil harmony.
E-mail:
