2004
Volume 6, Issue 3
  • E-ISSN: 2452-1051

Abstract

Abstract

This study investigates contemporary violence and conflict in Palestine and Lebanon, critically examining how power produces contested landscapes marked by socio-ecological injustice. It focuses on acts of resistance and everyday practices that mitigate the destruction caused by warfare, occupation, and the enduring legacies of colonialism, foregrounding justice and the right to inhabit territories as articulated in the European Landscape Convention (ELC). Drawing on post-humanist perspectives—particularly “rights and responsibilities for all” (Strecker 2024)—the paper highlights the agency of human and more-than-human actors, including communities, animals, artefacts, and material ecologies in sustaining life, memory, and identity under conditions of extreme adversity. Everyday spaces are presented as vital arenas of resistance, recovery, and empowerment, where local customs and skills maintain socio-ecological knowledge and foster relational resilience (Hayley 2018). Through the lens of intertwined concepts of ecocide and genocide, the study exposes the systematic erasure of life and landscapes, while simultaneously emphasising ongoing practices of reparation as an instrument of socio-ecological justice. Finally, the paper advocates for a critical re-evaluation of the ELC after 25 years, aligning with scholarly appeals (Egoz 2011; Strecker 2024) for its global extension, positioning landscapes as spaces of survival, multispecies rights and ethical stewardship in the face of planetary crises.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.5117/JEL2025.3.013.TROV
2025-12-01
2026-04-01
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/24521051/6/3/JEL2025.3.013.TROV.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.5117/JEL2025.3.013.TROV&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Abdelal, Abeer, TarekTeba, and BarrakGharbi. 2024. “Pockets of Survival and Alleys of Livelihood: Tracking Local Practices to Sustain Urban Vitality in Cities during and Post-Conflict in the City of Homs/Syria.”Urban Research & Practice1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2024.2364592.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Abdelnour, Samer, AlaaTartir, and RamiZurayk. 2012. Farming Palestine for Freedom. Policy Brief. Washington, DC: Al-Shabaka.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Al-Shaar, W., and O.Bonin. 2021. “Factors behind the Dynamics of Land Use Evolution: Case of Lebanon.”SN Applied Sciences3 (6): 677.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Amnesty International. 2025a. Israel/OPT: New Testimonies Provide Compelling Evidence That Israel’s Starvation of Palestinians in Gaza Is a Deliberate Policy. London: Amnesty International.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Amnesty International. 2025b. Israel’s extensive destruction of Southern Lebanon. Amnesty International.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Anderson, Ben, and ColinMcFarlane. 2011. “Assemblage and Geography.”Area43: 124–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.2011.01004.x.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Antrop, Marc. 2006. “Sustainable Landscapes: Contradiction, Fiction or Utopia?”Landscape and Urban Planning75: 187–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2005.02.014.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. AP News. 2025. “With Israeli Advance Looming, Palestinians in Gaza City Ask When to Leave and Where to Go.”AP News, September4, 2025.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Baym, Nancy K.2010. Personal connections in the digital age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Barad, Karen. 2012. “Nature’s Queer Performativity.”Kvinder, Køn & Forskning1–2. https://doi.org/10.7146/kkf.v0i1-2.28067.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Barber, Daniel A., DubravkaSekulić, EmilioDistretti, StefanBouzarovski, JoyceHwang, SashaPlotnikova, MarianaMogilevich, et al. 2024. “Field Notes on Repair: 8.”Places Journal. https://placesjournal.org/article/field-notes-on-repair-8/.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Bhattacharya, Tithi. 2017. Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentring Oppression. London: Pluto Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Blanco-Wells, Gustavo. 2021. “Ecologies of Repair: A Post-human Approach to Other-Than-Human Natures.”Frontiers in Psychology12: 633737. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.633737.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Bourbeau, P., & Ryan, C. (2017). Resilience, resistance, infrapolitics and enmeshment. European Journal of International Relations, 24(1), 221-239. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066117692031 (Original work published 2018)
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Bukhari, Syed Rizwan Haider, NasirIqbal, and AmirUllah Khan. 2024. “Israel’s Military Actions in Palestine and Lebanon: A Critical Analysis of Humanitarian, Political, and Strategic Implications.”Journal of Development and Social Sciences5 (3): 577–86.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Busse, Jan. 2022. “Everyday Life in the Face of Conflict: Sumud as a Spatial Quotidian Practice in Palestine.”Journal of International Relations and Development25: 583–607. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-022-00255-1.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Clark, Cristy, NiaEmmanouil, JohnPage, and AlessandraPelizzon. 2019. “Can You Hear the Rivers Sing? Legal Personhood, Ontology, and the Nitty-Gritty of Governance.”Ecology Law Quarterly45: 787–814.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Conrad, Elisabeth, MikeChristie, and IoanFazey. 2011. “Is Research Keeping Up with Changes in Landscape Policy? A Review of the Literature.”Journal of Environmental Management92: 2097–2108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2011.04.003.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Council of Europe. 2000. European Landscape Convention (ETS 176). Strasbourg: Council of Europe. http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/Treaties/Html/176.htm.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Dal Gobbo, Alice. 2023. Everyday Ecologies: Sustainability, Crisis, Resistance. London: Lexington Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Davies, Charlotte Aull. 2008. Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Deleuze, Gilles, and ClaireParnet. 2007. Dialogues II. New York: Columbia University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Egoz, Shelley. 2011. “Landscape as a Driver for Well-Being: The ELC in the Globalist Arena.”Landscape Research36 (4): 509–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2011.582939.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Egoz, Shelley. 2015. “The Right to Landscape and the Argument for the Significance of Implementation of the European Landscape Convention.” In Mainstreaming Landscape through the European Landscape Convention, edited by K.Jørgensen, M.Clemetsen, K. H.Thorén, and T.Richardson, 111–18. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315685922-14.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Egoz, Shelley, JalaMakhzoumi, and GloriaPungetti, eds. 2011. The Right to Landscape: Contesting Landscape and Human Rights. Farnham: Ashgate. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315237350.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Elden, Stuart. 2019. “Territory/Territoriality.” In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, edited by Anthony M.Orum, 2167–77. Oxford: Wiley.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. England, Kim V. L.1994. “Getting Personal: Reflexivity, Positionality, and Feminist Research.”The Professional Geographer46 (1): 80–89.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. European Landscape Convention. 2000. http://www.pcl.eu.de/project/convention/index.php.
  30. Escobar, Arturo. 2017. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Foster, John Bellamy. 2012. “The Planetary Rift and the New Human Exemptionalism: A Political-Economic Critique of Ecological Modernization Theory.”Organization & Environment25 (3): 211–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026612459964.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Fregonese, Sara. 2020. “Modernity, Territory and Conflict in Lebanon.” In War and the City: Urban Geopolitics in Lebanon, 29–54. London: Bloomsbury.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Golanska, Dorota. 2023. Slow Urbicide: A New Materialist Account of Political Violence in Palestine. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003157687.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Graddy-Lovelace, Garrett, and MaliniRanganathan. 2024. “Geopolitical Ecology for Our Times.”Political Geography112: 103034. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.103034.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Hayley, Saul. 2018. “The Temporality of Post-Disaster Landscapes.” In The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies. London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Henderson, George L.2003. “What (Else) We Talk About When We Talk About Landscape: For a Return to the Social Imagination.” In Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies After J. B. Jackson, edited by P.Groth and C.Wilson, 178–98. Berkeley: University of California Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Higgins, Polly, DamienShort, and NigelSouth. 2013. “Protecting the Planet: A Proposal for a Law of Ecocide.”Crime, Law and Social Change59 (3): 251–66.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Hosen, Bappa. 2023. “Navigating the Borderless Horizon: A Review Study of Challenges & Opportunities of Borderless World.”International Journal of Research on Social and Natural Sciences, 8(2): 33–41.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Hourany, Dana, and YaraEl Murr. 2024. “In South Lebanon, Cultivating Resistance Against Israel’s ‘Substance from Hell.’”Public Source, March6, 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). 2025. Declaration of famine in Gaza. The Guardian.
    [Google Scholar]
  42. Illich, Ivan. 1973. Tools for Conviviality. London: Calder and Boyars.
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Inwood, Joshua, and Derek H.Alderman. 2023. “Bridging Social and Political Landscapes: American Landscapes Under Siege: A Provocation.” In The Routledge Companion to the American Landscape, 169–182. Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  44. IOM (International Organization for Migration). 2025. Lebanon Crisis Response Plan 2025. https://crisisresponse.iom.int/response/lebanon-crisis-response-plan-2025.
    [Google Scholar]
  45. Jackson, J. B.1984. Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  46. Jackson, Steven J.2014. “Rethinking Repair.” In Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality and Society, edited by TarletonGillespie, Pablo J.Boczkowski, and Kirsten A.Foot, 221–39. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  47. Jones, Michael, PeterHoward, Kenneth R.Olwig, JørgenPrimdahl, and IngridSarlöv Herlin. 2007. “Multiple Interfaces of the European Landscape Convention.”Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift – Norwegian Journal of Geography61 (4): 207–16.
    [Google Scholar]
  48. Khayyat, Munira. 2022. A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  49. Khayyat, Munira. 2023. “Resistant Ecologies: The Life of War in South Lebanon.”American Ethnologist50 (2): 181–95. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13110.
    [Google Scholar]
  50. Khayyat, Munira. 2024. “Dispatch from South Lebanon—Life as Resistance at the End of the World.”Middle East Research and Information Project313 (53).
    [Google Scholar]
  51. Kothari, Ashish, ArielSalleh, ArturoEscobar, FedericoDemaria, and AlbertoAcosta. 2020. Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. New Delhi: Tulika Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  52. Laurien, Thomas, LiJönsson, PetraLilja, KhristinaLindström, ErikSandelin, and ÅsaStåhl. 2022. “An Emerging Post-humanist Design Landscape.” In Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, 469–491. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
    [Google Scholar]
  53. Lefebvre, Henri. 2014. The Critique of Everyday Life. London: Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  54. Macleod, Catriona Ida, SianBeynon-Jones, and MerranToerien. 2017. “Articulating Reproductive Justice through Reparative Justice: Case Studies of Abortion in Great Britain and South Africa.”Culture, Health & Sexuality, 19(5): 601–615.
    [Google Scholar]
  55. Madianou, M.2015. “Polymedia and ethnography: Understanding the social in social media.”Social Media + Society, 1(1), Article 578675. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115578675
    [Google Scholar]
  56. Makdisi, Karim. 2021. “Lebanon’s October 2019 Uprising.”The South Atlantic Quarterly120 (2): 436–45.
    [Google Scholar]
  57. Mason, Jennifer. Qualitative Researching. 3rd ed. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2017.
    [Google Scholar]
  58. Menatti, Laura. 2017. “Landscape: From Common Good to Human Right.”International Journal of the Commons11 (2): 641–83. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26522930.
    [Google Scholar]
  59. Menon, Ajit, and ManasiKarthik. 2017. “Beyond Human Exceptionalism: Political Ecology and the Non-Human World.”Geoforum79: 90–92.
    [Google Scholar]
  60. Mies, Maria. 2001. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour. London: Zed Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  61. Milligan, Brett. 2022. “Accelerating and Decelerated Landscapes.”Places Journal, February. Accessed February10, 2025. https://doi.org/10.22269/220208.
    [Google Scholar]
  62. Milton-Edwards, Beverley. 2018. Contemporary Politics in the Middle East. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Polity, Fourth Edition.
    [Google Scholar]
  63. Mitchell, Don. 2023. “Landscape Justice.” In Theorising Justice, 231–49. Bristol: Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529232233.ch013.
    [Google Scholar]
  64. Moores, Shaun. 2000. Media and everyday life in modern society. Edinburgh University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  65. Mora-Gámez, Fredy. 2016. “Reconocimiento de Víctimas del Conflicto Armado en Colombia: Sobre Tecnologías de Representación y Configuraciones de Estado.”Universitas Humanística, 82: 75–101.
    [Google Scholar]
  66. Morton, Timothy. 2012. “Practicing Deconstruction in the Age of Ecological Emergency.” In Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies, edited by GregGarrard. Palgrave.
    [Google Scholar]
  67. Newman, David. “The Resilience of Territorial Conflict in an Era of Globalization.” In Territoriality and Conflict in an Era of Globalization, (2006): 85–11.
    [Google Scholar]
  68. Nye, David E., and SarahElkind. 2014. The Anti-Landscape. Vol. 1. Boston: Brill.
    [Google Scholar]
  69. Olwig, Kenneth R.2007. “The Practice of Landscape ‘Conventions’ and the Just Landscape: The Case of the European Landscape Convention.”Landscape Research, 32(5): 579–594. https://doi.org/10.1080/01426390701552738.
    [Google Scholar]
  70. Papadopoulos, Dimitris, Maria Puigde la Bellacasa, and MaddalenaTacchetti. 2023. Ecological Reparation: Repair, Remediation and Resurgence in Social and Environmental Conflict. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  71. Papadopoulos, Dimitris, NiamhStephenson, and VassilisTsianos. 2008. Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the Twenty-First Century. London: Pluto Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  72. Pătru-Stupariu, Ileana, and AndreeaNiță. 2022. “Impacts of the European Landscape Convention on Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research.”Landscape Ecology, 37(5): 1211–1225.
    [Google Scholar]
  73. Plumwood, Val. 2009. “Nature in the Active Voice.”Australian Humanities Review46.
    [Google Scholar]
  74. Pries, Sean Jeffrey. 2018. “A Geographer Looks at the Landscape, Once More: Toward a Post-humanist Political Ecology Approach.”Geography Compass, 12(10).
    [Google Scholar]
  75. Primdahl, Jørgen. 2007. “The Interface with Globalization.”Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift – Norwegian Journal of Geography61: 214–15.
    [Google Scholar]
  76. Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. 2017. Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  77. Qumsiyeh, Mazin B.2024. “Impact of the Israeli Military Activities on the Environment.”International Journal of Environmental Studies81 (2): 977–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207233.2024.2323365.
    [Google Scholar]
  78. Reckwitz, Andreas. 2002. “Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Culturalist Theorizing.”European Journal of Social Theory, 5(2): 243–263.
    [Google Scholar]
  79. Reuters. 2024. “Israel–Hezbollah Conflict Cost Lebanon $8.5 Billion, World Bank Says.”Reuters, November14, 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  80. Ryan, Caitlin. 2015. “Everyday Resilience as Resistance: Palestinian Women Practicing Sumud.”International Political Sociology9 (4): 299–315.
    [Google Scholar]
  81. Rose, Mitch, and JohnWylie. 2006. “Animating Landscape.”Environment and Planning D: Society & Space, 24(4): 475–479.
    [Google Scholar]
  82. Sands, Philippe, JacquelinePeel, Adriana FabraAguilar, and RuthMackenzie. 2012. Principles of International Environmental Law. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  83. Sandel, Michael J.2009. A New Citizenship. London, Oxford, Newcastle, and Washington, DC: BBC Reith Lectures.
    [Google Scholar]
  84. Save the Children. 2024. Lebanon: Over 400,000 Forcibly-Displaced Children at Growing Risk of Scabies, Cholera and Waterborne Diseases. October22, 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  85. Schmitz, Maria F., CristinaHerrero-Jáuregui, Cecilia ArnaizSchmitz, Iván A.Sánchez, AlejandroRescia, and Francisco D.Pineda. 2017. “Evaluating the Role of a Protected Area on Hedgerow Conservation: The Case of a Spanish Cultural Landscape.”Land Degradation & Development28: 833–842. https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.2659.
    [Google Scholar]
  86. Schneider, François, GiorgosKallis, and JoanMartinez-Alier. 2010. “Crisis or Opportunity? Economic Degrowth for Social Equity and Ecological Sustainability.”Journal of Cleaner Production18 (6): 511–18.
    [Google Scholar]
  87. Shehadeh, Raja. 2007. Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape. London: Profile Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  88. Shuker, Zeinab. 2023. “War Has Poisoned Gaza’s Land and Water. Peace Will Require Environmental Justice.”The Century Foundation, December. https://tcf.org/content/commentary/war-has-poisoned-gazas-land-and-water-peace-will-require-environmental-justice/.
    [Google Scholar]
  89. Sloterdijk, Peter. 2009. Terror from the Air. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
    [Google Scholar]
  90. Strecker, Andrea. 2011. “The ‘Right to Landscape’ in International Law.” In The Right to Landscape: Contesting Landscape and Human Rights, edited by ShelleyEgoz, JalaMakhzoumi, and GloriaPungetti, 50–70. Farnham: Ashgate.
    [Google Scholar]
  91. Strecker, Andrea. 2024. “Global Landscape Governance on the 20th Anniversary of the European Landscape Convention.” In Cultivating Continuity of the European Landscape, edited by MauroAgnoletti, S.Dobričič, T.Matteini, and J. M.Palerm, 15–32. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25713-1_3.
    [Google Scholar]
  92. Tschakert, Petra. 2022. “More-than-Human Solidarity and Multispecies Justice in the Climate Crisis.”Environmental Politics31 (2): 277–96.
    [Google Scholar]
  93. Turner, Victor. 1974. “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology.”Rice Institute Pamphlet—Rice University Studies60 (3).
    [Google Scholar]
  94. UN (United Nations). 2024. UN Special Committee Finds Israel’s Warfare Methods in Gaza Consistent with Genocide, Including Use of Starvation as a Weapon of War. November14, 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  95. United Nations. 2025. Gaza Humanitarian Response Update: 20 July–2 August 2025.
    [Google Scholar]
  96. UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 2025. The Socioeconomic Impacts of the 2024 War on Lebanon.
    [Google Scholar]
  97. UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). 2024. Environmental Impact of the Conflict in Gaza: Preliminary Assessment of Environmental Impacts.
    [Google Scholar]
  98. UN-Habitat and ESCWA (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia). 2021. State of the Lebanese Cities Report 2021.
    [Google Scholar]
  99. UNICEF. 2025. Humanitarian Situation Report No. 41.
    [Google Scholar]
  100. UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency). 2024. Situation Report No. 7 — Lebanon Emergency Response. Accessed August2025.
    [Google Scholar]
  101. UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency). 2025. Situation Report #185 on the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza. UNRWA.
    [Google Scholar]
  102. Wylie, John. 2006. “Depths and Folds: On Landscape and the Gazing Subject.”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 24: 519–535.
    [Google Scholar]
  103. Wylie, John. 2007. Landscape. London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  104. Wright, S.2014. “More-than-Human, Emergent Belongings: A Weak Theory Approach.”Progress in Human Geography39 (4): 391–411. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132514537132. (Originally published 2015).
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.5117/JEL2025.3.013.TROV
Loading
/content/journals/10.5117/JEL2025.3.013.TROV
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error