With contributions by Mahdi Sabbagh, Hamza Hamouchene, Public Works, Hisham Younes, Nadine El-Khoury, Michelle Eid, and Munira Khayyat, EcoRove’s Land Keepers Reader brings together writers, activists, journalists, farmers, and ecologists from across Bilad al-Sham — Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine — to tell stories of green resistance in the Jabal al-Sheikh ecological zone. Spanning South Lebanon, the occupied Jawlan, and the occupied Galilee, this landscape faces ongoing ecocide, defined as the deliberate destruction of land and ecologies used by the settler-colonial regime to erode livelihoods, cultures, and environments. The Reader highlights these struggles through essays, research and testimonies that show how native communities remain rooted in place, resisting colonial environmental orientalism, greenwashing, and scorched-earth tactics. As part of a wider body of work that includes a documentary film, tapestries, and sculptural pieces, the Reader amplifies indigenous ecological knowledge and envisions regenerative futures for threatened landscapes.
From the intro by Ecorove:
"Return, Al’Awda in Arabic, signals the right of return to homeland, a central tenet of the Palestinian struggle. Al’Awda affirms the fundamental historical, legal, collective, and individual right of Palestinians to return to their homeland. But how do we return to the earth after it has been damaged and scorched? In landscapes marked by war, ruins, rubbles, and ecological destruction, can Al’Awda take another form? Can generations of Palestinian diaspora exercise Al’Awda differently? At a time when international legal systems and institutions have failed to secure justice, can return to land be understood beyond legal definitions alone? In times of mass displacement and ecological devastation, Al’Awda may therefore exceed juridical meaning, and live through those who remain on the land and their acts of love, labour, and agriculture."
Note from the publisher: Due to the ongoing aggression sparked by the genocidal actors of Israel and the United States, it will be difficult to get copies into occupied Palestine. We will do our best to get copies to the West Bank and hopefully one day into Free Palestinian-run Gaza.
Edited by Ecorove (Iyad Abou Gaida and Jumanah Abbas)
With work by Mahdi Sabbagh, Hamza Hamouchene, Public Works, Hisham Younes, Nadine El-Khoury, Michelle Eid and Munira Khayyat.
Cover illustration by Iyad Abou Gaida
Designed by GenderFail (Be Oakley)
Risograph Printed
1st Edition of 600
April 2026
