Zionist land practices deliberately effaced Palestinian presence through demolition and renaming

Evidence

As Theodor Herzl, founding father of Zionism, observed in his allegorical manifesto/novel, ‘If I wish to substitute a new building for an old one, I must demolish before I construct.’ In a kind of realization that took place half a century later, one-time deputy-mayor of West Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti recalled, ‘As a member of a pioneering youth movement, I myself “made the desert bloom” by uprooting the ancient olive trees of al-Bassa to clear the ground for a banana grove, as required by the “planned farming” principles of my kibbutz, Rosh Haniqra.’ Renaming is central to the cadastral effacement/replacement of the Palestinian Arab presence that Benvenisti poignantly recounts. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 929

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports ‘Grafting & Growth: On Trees as Infrastructure’ — the uprooting of ancient olive trees as infrastructure-erasure is a sharp counterweight to trees as living infrastructure, and the renaming/cadastral effacement angle is a strong extension of roots-as-worldbuilding.
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘the desert bloom’ as a rhetorical frame that concealed destruction of existing agriculture — how colonial ‘improvement’ narratives erase the very landscape they claim to transform.
• XREF: connects to: The British Mandate privatized Palestinian common land toward Jewish ownership. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 310