Reviews

The Conflict Shoreline: Colonialism as Climate Change in the Negev Desert by Eyal Weizman, Fazal Sheikh

ajkhn's review

5.0

Perhaps the best argument I've ever read in monograph form: desertification, state control of deserts, and forensic analysis thereof. Fazal Sheikh's photographs – and historical research – are stunning and Eyal Weizman's arguments are brilliant. It's a great several pages and opens up a unique form of argument, and you should read it.

iced_mochas's review

4.0

An essay by Eyal Weizman with accompanying aerial photographs by Fazal Sheikh, this book takes a careful evidence-based approach to map the Negev desert. It shows how changes to land and ecology can signify colonialism and conflict. With a particular focus on Israel’s “making the desert bloom” project, it demonstrates how settler colonialism displaces people and uses the environment to hide its remains – often quite literally. It explains how the Israeli state “greenwashes” to obscure history and how it has capitalised on the language of terrorism / climate change to this end. The detailed research including analysis of periodic satellite images is especially useful for academics studying postcolonial ecology.