UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Savory Politics : : Land, Memory, and the Ecological Occupation of Palestine Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/485943qz Author Sharif, Lila Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Savory Politics: Land, Memory, and the Ecological Occupation of Palestine A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Sociology and Ethnic Studies by Lila Sharif Committee in charge: Professor Yen Le Espiritu, Co-Chair Professor Ivan Evans, Co-Chair Professor Gary Fields Professor Roshanak Kheshti Professor Adria Imada Professor Richard Madsen 2014 Copyright Lila Sharif, 2014 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Lila Sharif is approved, and is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Co-Chair ________________________________________________________________________ Co-Chair University of California, San Diego 2014 iii DEDICATION For Adib and Salwa, for planting and nourishing my roots. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page…………………………………………………………………. iii Dedication……………………………………………………………………… iv Table of Contents……………………………………………………………… v List of Figures…………………………………………………………………. vi Vita…………………………………………………………………………….. viii Abstract of the Dissertation……………………………………………………. ix Introduction: Writing Alongside Decimated Trees……………….…………… 1 Chapter One: Vanishing Palestine……………………………………………… 29 Chapter Two: Visuality and the Consumption of Palestine…………………… 82 Chapter Three: The Politics of the Palate……………………………………… 146 Chapter Four: Memories and Olives…………………………………………… 212 Epilogue: To Exist is to Resist………………………………………………… 273 References……………………………………………………………………… 288 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Obama Plants Magnolia Tree in Jerusalem ………………………… 30 Figure 2: Anti-Greenwashing Campaign ……………………………………... 40 Figure 3: Abu Ghneim Transformation in Ten Years ………………………… 53 Figure 4: Architectures of Disappearance …..….………………………….…. 53 Figure 5: Architectures of Disappearance …..……………………………..…. 53 Figure 6: Marthe Keller as ‗Dahlia Iyad‘ in ―Black Sunday‖ (1977) ………… 84 Figure 7: Khaled and Said prepare for ‗special operation‘ …………………… 103 Figure 8: Khaled and Said‘s ―Last Supper‖ …………………………………... 104 Figure 9: Paradise Now Film Poster …………………………………………. 109 Figure 10: Anthony Bourdain ………………………………………………… 118 Figure 11: Anthony Bourdain walks in front of the ―separation wall‖ ……….. 122 Figure 12: Anthony Bourdain impromptu bar mitzvah ……………………….. 126 Figure 13: Anthony Bourdain poses with Betty of ―The Speed Sisters‖ ……… 139 Figure 14: Betty of ―The Speed Sisters‖ ……………………………………… 139 Figure 15: Anthony Bourdain at the Aida Refugee Camp ……………………. 144 Figure 16: Daskara olive oil tasting at Ris ……………………………………. 147 Figure 17: Daskara olive tasting features Sicilian thyme focaccia ……………. 148 Figure 18: Palestinian olive tree planted by Israeli settlement ………………… 163 Figure 19: IDF monitoring from a hill during 2012 Olive Harvest ……………. 165 Figure 20: Palestinian woman bleeding from settler attack …………………… 167 Figure 21: Canaan Fair Trade ―Press Packet‖ ………………………………… 182 Figure 22: Canaan Fair Trade olive oil products ……………………………… 186 vi Figure 23: ―From Our Fields to Your Table‖ promotional literature …………. 189 Figure 24: Abu Adnan Abed El Salam ……………………………………….. 192 Figure 25: Mahfoutha Odeh ………………………………………………….. 208 Figure 26: The Gaza Kitchen book cover ……………………………………. 218 Figure 27: Famous photograph of Leila Khalid.…………………………….... 225 Figure 28: Scarlet Johansson BDS image ……………………………………. 231 Figure 29: ―Buying Israel Goods Is Funding Apartheid‖ ……………………. 233 Figure 30: ―Don‘t Dip Into Apartheid‖ ………………………………………. 234 Figure 31: Shepherd‘s Field in Beit Sahour ……..…………………………… 242 Figure 32: Map of Separation Wall in Beit Sahour …………………………... 244 Figure 33: Village oven or ―ein taboun‖ in Palestine ………………………… 263 Figure 34: Fares Odeh ………………………………………………………... 285 vii VITA 2014 Ph.D, Sociology and Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego 2014 Instructor of Sociology, University of San Diego 2013 Instructor of Sociology, Cuyamaca Community College 2011-2013 Instructor of Sociology and Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego 2008 University of California, San Diego M.A. Sociology 2006 University of California, Berkeley B.A. Sociology, with Honors viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Savory Politics: Land, Memory, and the Ecological Occupation of Palestine by Lila Sharif Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology and Ethnic Studies University of California, San Diego, 2014 Professor Yen Espiritu, Co-Chair Professor Ivan Evans, Co-Chair Using the olive as an optic, I conduct multi-sited, interdisciplinary research to explore the complex manifestations of settler-colonialism, using the Occupied Palestinian ix Territories of the West Bank as my case study. Broadly, I argue that settler-colonialism relies on both material and cultural mechanisms of disappearing native peoples. I elucidate this dual nature of settler-colonialism by analyzing the neoliberal consumption of Palestinian olive oil and popular visual representations of Palestinian bodies against the ongoing material transformation of Palestinian landscapes—processes I collectively conceptualize as vanishment. The signification of the olive is not only symbolic; in fact, Palestinian livelihoods are contingent upon the thriving of the olive and its extractions for culinary, bodily, spiritual, and cultural reasons. As Palestinians continue to experience the decimation of their olive groves, the consumption of Palestinian olive oil has become increasingly popular through transnational fair trade circuits. I examine the racialized and gendered tropes of Palestinian indigeneity—thus bringing Food Studies into conversation with Cultural Studies, Critical Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies and Postcolonial Theory. I end with an alternative reading of the olive that sees it as a site where Palestinian women are able to recover and transmit memory to their children and enact a form of self- determination in the face of pending vanishment. Through performance ethnography including olive oil tasting, olive harvesting, and eating, as well as interviews with the olive producers, olive oil exporters, and living with farmers and their families, this dissertation project offers new theoretical questions about the ways in which settler colonialism, and the processes of vanishing native peoples and their subjectivities, co- resides with neoliberal, multicultural tropes of contingent humanity. x Introduction: Writing Alongside Decimated Trees1 In December 1949, David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, addressed the citizens of the newly created Jewish state. Referring to the Palestinians who had been expelled from four-fifths of now Israel, he assured his people not to worry about Palestinians returning to their homeland, famously declaring: ―The old will die and the young will forget.‖ While the old may have died, the young have not forgotten and it is the active remembrance of Palestine that continues to unsettle the Zionist project of complete Palestinian annihilation. My own story ties in with the radical urgency of memory and living/surviving in the face of this pending disappearance. As a Palestinian woman born and raised in Los Angeles, California, my home has been a fraught site of uncertainty and danger. In 1987, my home was besieged by fifty members of the SWAT team, FBI, and Sheriff‘s Department. They stormed into my parents‘ home and threw everything in the air in the middle of the night. I do not remember my screams, but my mother tells me I was yelling in terror. They passed my room and pushed aside my bewildered father who held his U.S. passport up to them in a futile effort to defend his home. His plea was unheeded and he was violently shoved out of the way. The men then entered my 29-year- old uncle‘s room as he slept. Surrounding my uncle‘s bed, one jammed a shotgun into his cheek while the others stood with their guns fixed at his face. A helicopter buzzing in circles accompanied the chaos of shouts in my once safe home. In a transient moment, my uncle was taken from our home and sealed in solitary confinement at Terminal Island. 1 Because each chapter contains within it an extensive literature review, I limit the literature review component of the Introduction except to position my work within the broader discourses on settler- colonialism and to illuminate my interventions within these discourses. 1 2 a maximum-security prison, for twenty-three days in a case that became known as the ―LA-8‖2. The raids and terror imposed upon Palestinians residing in the U.S. occurs alongside the material destruction of Palestinian lands and homes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). According to the Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolitions, since 1967, about 27,000 Palestinian homes and other structures (livestock pens and fencing for example) crucial for a family‘s livelihood have been demolished in the OPT, including East Jerusalem34.Their