Settler Colonialism and Carceral Occupation of the Jordan River
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RETELLING NARRATIVES OF ECO-MEMORY: SETTLER COLONIALISM AND CARCERAL OCCUPATION OF THE JORDAN RIVER By Megan Rose Awwad A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Humboldt State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Social Science: Environment and Community Committee Membership Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy, Committee Chair Dr. Janelle Adsit, Committee Member Dr. Nicholas Perdue Committee Member Dr. Rosamel Benavides-Garb, Graduate Program Coordinator December 2020 ABSTRACT RETELLING NARRATIVES OF ECO-MEMORY: SETTLER COLONIALISM AND CARCERAL OCCUPATION OF THE JORDAN RIVER Megan Awwad In this thesis, I retell and reclaim stories that have been shared and passed down within my family and family history in relation to our homeland, Palestine, and more specifically to the Jordan River. I argue that the construction of the dam in the 1960s on the Jordan River, by a zionist state, is an extension of both the settler colonial state and the treatment of the land/rivers as inherently linked with the treatment of Indigenous people. The carceral spaces and geographies settler states create are part of both the destruction of the land and the genocide Indigenous people experience. The Jordan River is a sacred site that was once a natural border and has now become a militarized border. As the colonization of the River takes place, the stories, and memories shift. The river becomes an important examination of settler colonialism and the expansion of a Zionist state and occupation of Palestine. Migration between Jordan and Palestine was a part of Indigenous Palestinians and Jordanians daily experiences prior to existences of modern states. However, with the rise of Zionism, the river becomes central to controlling the landscape and erasing the memory of both migration and the river itself leading to both ecological disasters and the Nakba (catastrophe) of the Palestine people. As a displaced ii Palestinian the refusal to let go of the memory of river and the liberation of our homeland becomes central to the question of Palestine and return. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis would not have been possible without the support of my committee. For supporting me through this program, especially when institutional racism and white supremacy made it feel impossible to stay. Thank you for all of your constant empathy, guidance, kindness and the time you have spent working with me. Thank you Cutcha Risling Baldy for always providing us with a space to come talk to you, the empathy you showed us, for advocating for us, supporting us throughout every aspect of this master’s program. Thank you, Janelle Adsit, for your kindness, for providing a reassuring and gentle space throughout my thesis process, and for always guiding me when I was stuck in my writing. Thank you, Nicholas Perdue, for supporting us, providing a space to talk about everything, and for your honesty throughout this master’s program. Additionally, thank you to Sherine Hafez for guiding me throughout my undergraduate education, for teaching me about orientalism and colonialism. For always supporting me, providing a home a way from home, and the mentorship you have always offered. Additionally, I would like to thank my parents for always being there, pushing me, and believing in me. For my mother who continues to teach me what it means to be resilient and for being a constant inspiration regardless of what life has thrown at you. For my father who worked tirelessly to support us in a country that fear us. For my brother who is always there for me is my most difficult moments, who is my best friend, and the person I go to for all my annoying technologically advice and help. To both my grandmothers, the amount of care you have shown, the amount of resistances you maintain in keep our Palestinian identity iv alive even after being uprooted and displaced from your homes. Thank you. None of this would have happed without all the foundational support you have given me and taught me. Thank you to my friendships that have kept me sane the past two years. Thank you to Eman for always encouraging me, seeing me, and always believing in me. Thank you, Stefani, for our years of friendship, for being here for me at the hardest points. Thank you for the 14 years of friendship and ongoing. Thank you to Mel and Ness for always being there. For your remarkable ability to shine even after everything this program did. For your voices of inspiration, for speaking out against injustice and calling out racism. For the joy you brought throughout these two and half years. & of course, to Palestine, in hopes that one day we will see you liberated from the river to the sea. Inshallah one day our rivers will be filled once again. To our martyrs, to our political prisoners, and to the Palestinian refugees who will one day see the right to return. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgement ............................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ................................................................................................................... vii Introduction: Invaders fear of memory: Retelling and Reclaiming .................................... 1 Chapter 2: the catastrophe of colonial imagination .......................................................... 25 Invaders beginnings ...................................................................................................... 28 Colonial Imagination .................................................................................................... 31 The alteration of the land .............................................................................................. 39 The Catastrophe ............................................................................................................ 41 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 57 Chapter 3: IncarCeRation of the JorDan river .................................................................. 61 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 84 Chapter 4: Tourism: Displace and Grief .......................................................................... 87 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 112 Conclusion: Resurgence, Reclaiming and Returning ..................................................... 114 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 123 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 : Jordan River in the 1880 part of the library of congress prints and photographs. ............................................................................................................................................. 3 Figure 2 Abdennabi Leilah. “Picture of a Spring in Ein Qiniya.” 2019. .......................... 26 Figure 3: “Ruined Bridge of Semakh”. Sketch from W.F. Lynch expedition of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea ..................................................................................................... 31 Figure 4: Garden of Gethsemane. ”Sketch from W.F. Lynch expedition of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea ..................................................................................................... 35 Figure 5: Picture of a map of water in Palestine ............................................................... 50 Figure 6: Picture of the Jordan River that my cousin, Eliana Nassar, took in 2017. ........ 54 Figure 7: Picture of Jordan and the Promised Land from the Heights of Moab, Palestine 1901................................................................................................................................... 56 Figure 8 Picture of my brother, mother and myself. This is the summer my brother got sick. ................................................................................................................................... 61 Figure 9: Picture of maps of the remaining free flowing rivers. ....................................... 66 Figure 10: Picture of the national water carrier project from the Zionist archives. .......... 75 Figure 11 The national water carrier project from the Zionist archives ........................... 75 Figure 12: Picture of the Hoover Dam .............................................................................. 76 Figure 13: Picture of the Pelican Bay State Supermax Prison .......................................... 76 Figure 14 Coex, Thomas. Picture of The Zionist Separation barrier divides East Jerusalem and the West Bank town of Qalandia. ............................................................. 79 Figure 15 Picture of the Zionist side of the Jordan River ............................................... 100 Figure 16 Picture of the Jordan side of the Jordan River. ............................................... 100 Figure 17 Picture I took in Jerusalem, my mother’s home/land in 2013 ........................ 122 vii 1 INTRODUCTION: INVADERS FEAR OF MEMORY: RETELLING AND RECLAIMING “Since our history is forbidden, narratives