Settler colonialism can be green (and nasty): Ghada Sasa, Resisting Green Colonialism: Palestinian and Islamic Strides Towards Justice and Sustainability, PhD dissertation, McMaster University, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonialism can be green (and nasty): Ghada Sasa, Resisting Green Colonialism: Palestinian and Islamic Strides Towards Justice and Sustainability, PhD dissertation, McMaster University, 2025

11Oct25

Abstract: Since the 1980s, Western academia began to thoroughly contend with anticolonialism and environmentalism, progressively connecting the two movements. At their crossroads, I make four major contributions as a Palestinian activist-scholar. Firstly, I theorize settler colonialism as an operation that is inherently genocidal, outlining ways in which it destroys human and nonhuman lives in my homeland. Secondly, I designate the absorption of environmentalism by Israel for expansionist purposes as “green colonialism.” I provide several examples of this manoeuvre, perceiving it to be a Western environmental, Orientalist, and Zionist concoction. They include Israeli construction of forests as border walls, rezoning of Palestinian localities as “protected areas,” recruitment of settlers into hiking and planting as exercises of Indigenization, and rendering of Palestinians as ecological enemies. Thirdly, I animate the stories of several demolished Palestinian localities, which have been smothered by the Zionist entity, sourcing them from oral archives. Fourthly, Indigenous rebellion in human and nonhuman forms is spotlighted. I also channel Palestinian, scientific, anticolonial, and Islamic knowledge to foster “holistic decolonization.” This notion prioritizes human rights, while attending to the abolition of White supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and anthropocentrism. The introduction of this dissertation is split into two parts: the first examines the four major foundations of green colonialism in Palestine, (Zionism, Orientalism, settler colonialism, and Western environmentalism), while the second expounds my contributions to literature on the topic. The first chapter of this thesis sketches out the colonial architecture of the Israeli park system, the second chapter largely consists of a case study, (which investigates the imposition of USA Independence Park over the remnants of 8 Jerusalemite villages by Israel), and the third chapter provides a glimpse into the paradoxical fusion of Zionist environmentalism and militarism. This dissertation closes with a summary and points to global openings for Indigenous healing, restoration, and return.

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