Greenwashing the Nakba: How Forests Became a Weapon of Erasure

By Mohamed El Mokhtar

Today, the pines of oblivion that were meant to bury the Nakba are themselves ablaze. What burns is not only forest, but the illusion of a landscape born without violence.

More than 700,000 olive and citrus trees have been destroyed by Israeli forces. “It is a pure act of vandalism,” said Ronnie Kasrils, then South Africa’s Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, in a 2002…