ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on infrastructural violence in the planning process of a development project, bridging literature on infrastructural violence and land defenders. It analyzes the wastewater treatment plant project in East Nablus (Palestine), exploring practices of resistance and negotiations deployed by land defenders, as well as practices of repression used by the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian villagers mobilize several forms of resistance against a state- and donor-led development project. This chapter articulates the infrastructural violence in peri-urban areas, where marginalization and inclusion affect discourses and practices of land defenders. The protest mechanisms used in East Nablus are reminiscent of those mobilized against the Israeli occupation, while the repressive mechanisms envisaged and used by the PA also refer to certain tools used by the Israeli occupation. I argue that these constitutes signs of coloniality. Furthermore, epistemic violence represents a form of violence against land defenders as part of the overall infrastructural violence, adding up to practices of coloniality to discredit land defenders. This analysis highlights the usefulness of thinking in terms of coloniality to understand how the PA appropriated means of repression from its own experience as a colonized institution and people and is now using this against Palestinian land defenders.
