2025/05/22 by Nadim N. Rouhana · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts #Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
paper · doi:10.1080/14623528.2025.2506162
openalex publication_date 2025/05/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/17
This paper examines the metaphor of “Mowing the Lawn” or “Mowing the Grass” that emerged in Israeli political culture around the turn of the century after the Israeli political class developed the conviction that “there is no partner for peace” among the Palestinians. Israel espoused a particular modality of violence against Palestinians, which gradually became a military-political strategy defined as regularly targeting Palestinian leadership, facilities, and infrastructure to control their growth like a lawnmower controls grass growth. I examine the historical, political, cultural, and military rationale for the emergence of this metaphor, and the construction of the self and the other that is embedded in it. I explain how the strategy that this metaphor encapsulates reflects Israel’s, and, indeed, mainstream Zionism’s apprehensive irreconcilability with the idea of Palestinian national existence in Palestine. I illustrate how the emergence of the metaphor is prescribed by this irreconcilability, manifesting within the contemporary context of Israel’s confrontation with Palestinians in general, and Palestinians in Gaza in particular – well before 7 October 2023.