Besieged: Land is part of our special series on the spatial politics of settler colonialism in Palestine, which features films to raise funds for aid groups in Gaza. As part of this chapter, you also can read a conversation between Manna and geographer Noura Alkhalili on the history of property relations in Palestine, practices of commoning, the struggle for land liberation, and more. 

In Foragers, Jumana Manna mixes fiction and documentary to depict Israel’s criminalization of the quotidian ancestral practice of foraging in Palestine. Two plants commonly foraged by Palestinians have been classified endangered in the wild by the Israeli authorities, while Israeli farmers cultivate the same plants for profit. In the wild hillsides, homes, and interrogation rooms of the film, the protagonists’ persistence serves as a rejoinder to claims made in the name of nature preservation, when those claims are made by the colonizer.