Manal Shqair is a Palestinian climate activist, researcher, and former international advocacy officer of the Palestine-based Stop the Wall campaign. A PhD candidate in sociology at Scotland’s Queen Margaret University, her research examines the role of Palestinian seminomadic women’s everyday practices of sumud (steadfastness) in maintaining and reinforcing group solidarity and enabling popular resistance.
For decades, Israel has boasted of “making the desert bloom,” as if Palestinians never even existed. As Israel today pushes Gazans toward mass dehydration, we should remember its longstanding efforts to colonize land through its control of the water supply.