When Botany Becomes a Tool of Settlement

 

The struggle over land does not always take place solely by arms and politics; it can also take place through the laboratory, the garden, the map, scientific classification, and even through the way we define the plant that grows on that land!

A recent English-language research study (21-8-2026) by researcher Mona Bieling (Mona Bieling) titled "Crafting Colonial Companions: Zionist Botany in Palestine, 1900–1930s," reveals an important and less-examined aspect of the history of the Zionist project in Palestine: the role that botany and agriculture played in serving the settlement project and in building the state of the occupation!

The study explains that plants were not, for Zionist researchers, merely an object of scientific research, but became part of a political project; the study, classification, collection, and development of Palestine's plants were linked to efforts to increase land productivity, facilitate Jewish settlement, and build scientific knowledge that reinforces the claim to the land!

Wheat and botanical gardens as "companion species":

The researcher uses the concept of "companion species" to illustrate how cultures of nature can interact with political projects. She draws on Anna Tsing's understanding that wheat and cereals contributed to the "domestication of humans" and pushed them toward settling in agricultural communities. Botanical gardens historically helped create colonial agricultural landscapes by collecting plants, acclimatizing them to new environments, and distributing them to serve colonial agricultural systems associated with European expansion!

Palestinian wheat:

Aaron Aronson, an agricultural scientist, represents one of the most prominent examples. He emigrated with his family from Romania in 1882 as part of the First Aliyah that saw the establishment of Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine!

Aronson was able to make one variety of Palestinian wheat the focus of international scientific relations and research, particularly with the United States, benefiting from attributes ascribed to it such as resistance to drought, heat, and poor soil. He also succeeded in obtaining American funding for plant research in Ottoman Palestine!

By presenting himself and Palestinian wheat as local solutions to a global agricultural problem, Aronson increased the appeal of his scientific and political project. Palestinian wheat was presented as a plant that could help make Jewish settlement in Palestine successful while at the same time offering solutions to American food security problems. Thus, according to the researcher, wheat became a "companion species" to the settlement project, benefiting from its biological traits and from being native to the land that the Zionists claimed!

This trajectory contributed to the establishment of the agricultural experiment station in Atlit in 1910 with funding from American Jews, becoming the first organized institution for agricultural and botanical research run by Zionists in Palestine!

But the study poses an important question: Was the wheat really "discovered"?

The researcher warns against using concepts like "discovery," "rediscovery," and "wild wheat," because they can ignore prior Palestinian knowledge and agricultural practices, and place Western scientific knowledge in the position of having the right to name, classify, and define the plant!

The botanical garden at the Hebrew University:

In 1931 the botanical garden at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was established. Its function was not only scientific and educational but also political and symbolic. Collecting, studying, and classifying Palestine's plants within a Jewish institution helped present Palestine as a coherent natural unit about which scientific knowledge could be produced, and demonstrated the ability of the Jewish scientific community to build its independent institutions!

Here one of the study's most important ideas emerges: control over land does not pass only through settlement; it can also pass through control over the knowledge about it; whoever studies its plants, names and classifies them, and determines their natural and scientific boundaries participates in shaping and defining the image of the land!

The colonial dimension of botanical research:

The study explains that Jewish-Zionist scientists interacted with multiple colonial influences during the Ottoman period and then the British Mandate, and strove to build their political and scientific project through relationships and alliances with various parties, also participating in efforts to draw and determine borders!

The researcher uses the concept of "colonial botany" described by Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan, as the study, naming, cultivation, and marketing of plants in colonial contexts. This concept reveals the power relations inherent in the production of knowledge and the scientific, political, and ideological objectives that can underlie botanical practices!

Land and the garden: when land becomes part of the battle

The story of the botanical garden's establishment reveals the most sensitive dimension of the relationship between science and land. The project faced the problem of the unavailability of suitable land near the university buildings on Mount Scopus. Some botanists were prepared to accept land that was not ideal botanically, because, in their view, having the garden was more important than the suitability of the land!

But acquiring the land collided with the rights of the Palestinian inhabitants. The university president Judah Magnes was informed that the British government was not at that time prepared to expropriate the lands of local Palestinians, and that purchasing 54 dunams might not be possible, and perhaps only 36 dunams would be available after great efforts to persuade the local inhabitants!

Magnes' reply revealed the priority he gave to the project, as he said that "the university is primarily interested in the botanical garden and not in Arab Lifta"!! Thus land appears here not as a neutral research space but as a fundamental element in building the institution and the settlement project!

Palestinian knowledge and the boundaries of the garden:

The establishment of the garden was also a means of delineating boundaries related to Arab Palestinian botanical knowledge. Although the garden included plants that grow in Palestine, local Palestinian knowledge was not systematically integrated into its foundation, and the botanists were not in close contact with the indigenous population and their knowledge regarding plants and their uses!

Efraim Harivini was a relative exception. He was associated with what was called "Biblical botany," and sought to recreate the landscapes mentioned in the Bible. He had closer contact with local Palestinian knowledge through his visits to Arab villages and his study of ways of using and cultivating plants, with the aim of better understanding the vegetation in the "Holy Land" in biblical times!

But the paradox is that the Palestinian knowledge Harivini benefited from was often treated as "cultural knowledge" rather than "scientific knowledge"!, a distinction that in turn reveals the locus of power in determining what is considered science and what is considered mere local knowledge!

From the garden to drawing the map and borders:

The work of botanists was not separate from the political aims of the Zionist movement during the Mandate period. In 1937 botanist Alexander Eig was asked to testify before the Peel Commission on Palestine's capacity to absorb additional population numbers, a matter related to the possibility of increasing Jewish immigration. He was also asked to prepare a map that could support Zionist claims to Palestine at the international level!

Thus the botanical garden was not merely a scientific institution; one of its main aims was linked to establishing boundaries that would appear natural to Jewish experience and to the Jewish nation in the land of Palestine. Nature itself became a field for embodying a political goal represented by building Zionist identity and nationhood!(according to the researcher in the study)!

The history of botany in Palestine reveals that science, agriculture, and nature were not domains separate from politics and settlement but were intertwined with them in building the Zionist project! Palestinian wheat became a subject of research, funding, and international scientific relations serving the success of settlement!, the botanical garden became an institution that collected, classified, and redefined Palestine's plants!, while the land needed to establish it became an issue concerning the rights of the Palestinian inhabitants!

Most importantly, the study draws attention to the fact that settlement does not operate only through physical control of the land, but also through the production of knowledge about it, naming and classifying its nature and drawing its boundaries!

From this perspective, the history of botany in Palestine becomes part of a broader history of settlement; a history in which land, plant life, science, institution, identity, and power intersect, so that nature itself can be transformed into a tool in a political project seeking to fix its presence and its relationship to the land!