Wild Legalities: Animals and Settler Colonialism in Palestine/Israel

This article examines the underlying biopolitical premises of wildlife management in Palestine/Israel that make, remake, and unmake this region's settler colonial landscape. Drawing on interviews with Israeli nature officials observations their work, tells several animal stories illuminate hierarchies slippages between wild domestic, culture, native settler, human nonhuman life Palestine/Israel. Animal bodies are especially apt technologies colonialism, I show here. They naturalize normalize modes existence, while criminalizing livelihoods relations. Utilizing terra nullius doctrine, creating biblical landscapes by reintroducing extirpated animals, controlling movement Palestinians animals letting Jewish settlers roam unhindered, Palestinians’ more-than-human relations, introducing restrictions engagement all an inherent part administration But they serve as tools for advancing practices, also subject to same violence afflicts humans. Understanding dimensions order is instrumental thinking about how subvert redirect its toward decolonized, or “wild,” legalities. [animal studies, biopolitics, conservation, Palestine/Israel]