Int. J. Middle East Stud. 50 (2018), 471–492 doi:10.1017/S002074381800079X Natalia Gutkowski GOVERNING THROUGH TIMESCAPE: ISRAELI SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE POLICY AND THE PALESTINIAN-ARAB CITIZENS Abstract Social scientists commonly know that time is a social construct and a tool for governing by those holding power. Yet, how exactly is time used for governing? This article examines how timescape (embodiment of approaches to time) works in practice as a tool of power by considering multi- ple networks of time that manifest in al-Batuf/Beit Netofa Valley planning policy. This valley’s agriculture, mostly owned by Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel, is considered by ecologists and officials a unique traditional agriculture landscape and wetland habitat that has become scarce in Israel due to its development and wetland drainage. Assembling separate modes of anthropologi- cal inquiry that attend to time as a technique, I show that knowledge, ethics, and time management are not separate spheres of governance but rather interwoven as one timescape tool of governing. Thus, the case of al-Batuf/Beit Netofa elucidates the ways in which time is used for governing in the context of an agricultural-environmental development policy and plan. Keywords: agriculture; anthropology; governance; Israel/Palestine; time In the summer of 2012, the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture was at the peak of its an- nounced policy endeavor to achieve sustainable agriculture. 1 A marker of policy change was the ministry’s choice in 2012 to fund a program of sustainable agriculture for Palestinian-Arab communities in Sahl al-Batuf/Beit Netofa Valley in the Galilee. 2 This pilot program aimed to develop a smaller area of al-Batuf called Maslakhit. In the years that followed, a larger sustainable development regional plan for al-Batuf/Beit Netofa was advanced by the Ministry of Agriculture in planning procedures in the state’s North- ern District Committee for Planning in 2013–18. The Sahl al-Batuf/Beit Netofa area comprises a seasonal wetland formed in winter floods and a biodiversity hotspot sus- tained through what officials call “traditional agriculture” on small agrarian plots. State ecologists are enthusiastic about preserving this area due to its ecosystem and landscape characteristics. About the program for Beit Netofa, Ofer, a new ecologist at the Ministry of Agriculture, said: We did not think of them [Palestinian-Arabs of al-Batuf] at all, and then they submitted a proposal and we said, Wow [enthusiastically], those little agricultural plots, rain-fed agriculture, they don’t Natalia Gutkowski is an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; e-mail: ngutkowski@fas.harvard.edu © Cambridge University Press 2018 0020-7438/18 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002074381800079X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Harvard-Smithsonian Centerfor Astrophysics, on 06 Sep 2018 at 14:09:31, subject to the Cambridge Core