Wasted Lands: Zionist Development and Settler Colonialism in the Naqab/Negev

Abstract

Contemporary development resonates with persistent colonial ideologies, emphasizing improvement and technocratic rule that justify and extend capitalist accumulation. However, despite the fact that critical development studies frame development as a global modality of capitalist and colonial intervention—as well as mandates that justify the rule within post-colonies—this scholarship tends to elide the question of settler colonialism’s imbrication with capitalism and colonialism on a planetary scale. This dissertation looks at the history of the Naqab/Negev region of southern Israel/Palestine as an example of a geographically specific manifestation of a novel concept, settler development. Settler development describes the way that settler colonialism mobilizes historically contingent colonial and capitalist circuits that operate through the discourses and practices of development. Utilizing a qualitative mixed-methods approach, this dissertation draws from historical collections on the desert and development, interviews with informants in key institutions and NGOs, as well as data collected from ethnographic research at Israeli development project sites and in Bedouin Palestinian villages. Zionism is a nationalist ideology that promises emancipation for the Jewish people by maintaining a nation-state in historic Palestine. Zionists have long claimed that Jewish settlers would improve the “wasteland” of Palestine—negating Palestinian claims to self-determination in the process. By settling the proclaimed “wasteland” of Palestine, Zionists claimed that Jews would become modern individuals whose industriousness stood in stark contrast to native Palestinians whom colonial powers had depicted as unproductive and singularly unfit for self-rule. Zionists celebrated the “pioneer” who shares much in common with the iconic American frontier subject. Such discourses are coupled with Zionist narratives that efface centuries of Bedouin cultivation, property ownership, and pastoral adaptation. Today, Zionism celebrates the “new pioneer”—the entrepreneur—best encapsulated in pronouncements that proclaim Israel as the “start-up nation.” Within this changing landscape, Zionist developers now seek to “make the desert bloom” by building a high-tech corridor (nicknamed “Silicon Wadi) in an effort to circumvent Bedouin land claims throughout the region. However, Bedouins refuse to be passive bystanders; indigenous NGOs endeavor to repurpose settler development for more egalitarian outcomes and partner with Jewish and international allies to preserve historical claims.