Zifzafa

In 1967, Israel seized and occupied 70 per cent of the Jawlan. Approximately 131,000 people living across 344 villages were forcibly displaced from their homes. Those who remained on their land have since endured military occupation.

During the summer of 2023, the residents of the occupied villages of the Jawlan protested against their occupation on a scale not seen for forty years. These demonstrations were catalysed by the initiation of an Israeli government project to build 31 land-based wind turbines, to be the largest in the world (256 meter high) on the last remaining open space for the occupied Syrians of the Jawlan (Jawlanis). These turbines will produce just 0.6 per cent of Israel's energy needs, and most of them will be built within tens of metres of Jawlani homes and farms.

Depending on the wind speed, each turbine could generate between 70dB-90dB of noise — an intensity of sound equivalent to a busy highway. The acoustic footprint of this wind turbine project will be 16 square kilometres, covering in noise a quarter of the area allocated to the Jawlanis living in the Jawlan. This noise pollution will effectively annex this plot of land, rendering it uninhabitable and impeding any future expansion of Jawlani villages, towns, and farms.

To support the Jawlani community fight this wind turbine project, Earshot collaborated closely with Al Marsad, the Arab human rights centre in the Jawlan, to develop a digital tool — Zifzafa — with two key objectives: to contest and to preserve. Zifzafa is a video game simulation that accurately models how the noise pollution caused by the wind turbines will spread and occupy space and transform the lives of this community. By using our video game simulation, users can go into the homes and farms most affected by the noise pollution and experience for themselves the force of this sonic annexation. But the turbines are not the only thing that can be heard in Zifzafa. We’ve embedded over 40 geolocated field recordings within a scale replica of the landscape of the Jawlan. In this way, the video game simulation serves as an archive of the vibrant sonic life of the Jawlani community. From songs and instruments to wildlife and weddings, we’ve created a site where the sonic memories of the Jawlani community may be preserved before they're rendered inaudible. For now, Zifzafa is the only place where the turbines can be switched on and heard. In the future, it might be the only place where they can be switched off.   

As players move through the landscape of the Jawlan, they will encounter megaphones, a symbol of the Jawlani’s sonic resistance, which are placed throughout the digital terrain. Through  these megaphones, users will hear voices from the Jawlan guiding them through their history of occupation and resistance.

The wind turbine project

In 2019, the United States officially recognised the Jawlan as belonging to Israel. Despite international law defining this as a military occupation, this recognition has allowed the occupation to cement its grip— the consequences of which are still being seen today. The first major Israeli redevelopment project in the Jawlan in the wake of this recognition was the planned construction of this wind turbine project.

The Green Police of the Minister of Environmental Protection, currently under the control of Israel’s openly racist interior Minister, Itimar Ben Gvir, has been mobilised to oversee the implementation of the wind farm ahead of its planned construction. The involvement of Ben Gvir in this project has led to further suspicions that this project is not motivated by creating renewable energy, but rather that the main purpose is the expulsion of Arabs from their land and the erasure of their traditions and culture.

This development represents the latest chapter in a protracted series of land and resource expropriation that has beset this community for over half a century. The village of S’heita was partially destroyed in 1967, and subsequently razed to the ground in 1972 to make way for an Israeli military outpost. Many of the 37 families who came from this now vanished village sought land and livelihoods in the very place where these wind turbines will be built. This wind farm will be the third time in living memory that these Jawlanis have been dispossessed of their land.

For more details on this wind turbine project, see this report from Al Marsad: WINDFALL - The exploitation of wind energy in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights

The making of Zifzafa

In August 2023, we recorded the noise generated by wind turbines in Gaildorf, Germany. This was the only accessible site in Europe with similar 256 meter high turbines. These recordings were needed to calibrate the simulation and ensure its accuracy. The intensity of the noise was measured across the frequency spectrum at multiple distances from the source of the sound — the wind turbines’ propellers. This allowed us to map how the sound propagates across the landscape. The measurements were taken on a day with a wind speed of approximately 5 knots, which correlates to the average wind speed in the Jawlan. At source, the turbines generated 70dB-80dB of noise. The measurements show that the wind turbine is the loudest source of noise in the area between 0 and 400 metres surrounding it. Our results show that it is still clearly audible at a distance of up to 1 kilometre. In Gaildorf, people residing 5 kilometres away from the wind farm can still hear the turbine noise, albeit faintly. In the Jawlan, the nearest residents will be just 35 metres away.

The recordings and measurements taken in Germany made it possible to digitally convolve the noise of the wind turbines onto the topography of the Jawlan. To further simulate how the turbines will affect the Jawlani environment, not only in terms of sound pressure, but also in terms of social impact, extensive recordings were made of the area where the wind farm will be built. Over the course of a year, Earshot worked with Jawlani composer and sound artist Busher Kanj Abu Saleh, who contributed field recordings from the Jawlan that captured the sounds of local life and the communion between the people and their land — from animals and thunderstorms to social gatherings. We geolocated the position of these recordings,  allowing players to navigate the terrain with their ears as well as their eyes.

Zifzafa serves to document the harm being enacted on the Jawlani community in the name of green and clean energy. It can also be used as a tool to demonstrate to lawyers and judges how the lives and futures of the Jawlanis will be affected. As in many places around the world, so-called green policies disproportionately affect communities already facing structural oppression. For instance, wind farms have become a point of contention for indigenous communities in Norway and Mexico. Zifzafa, which is available to download from this website, is the only publicly accessible and highly accurate simulation of wind turbine noise to date. As such, while it is primarily employed to support the Jawlanis, it can also be used in many other contexts that are confronted with similar issues.

The right to sonic self-determination

While the wind turbines create sonic borders that confine the future of the Jawlanis, and the Israeli state builds these sonic weapons to separate people from their land, certain Jawlani songs and music have survived more than a hundred years of successive practices of division and dispossession. These songs, which remind us that sound is also a potent act of resistance, have been recorded and included in Zifzafa.  

Although the noise of the turbines will not split eardrums or cause physical hearing damage, Earshot’s findings show that it will permanently separate people from their land. International law stipulates that every people have the right to self-determination on their own land. As a tool of Israeli occupation, the wind farm contravenes this principle. Similar to the concepts of economic and territorial self-determination, Earshot advocates for the right to sonic self-determination. This research project demonstrates the fundamental role of sound in the formation of a community, and asserts that land is not solely about physical attributes such as soil and territory, but also the less tangible elements that collectively define the experience of place. Zifzafa acts as a medium to safeguard the auditory life of the Jawlan against further acts of occupation and dispossession. With this project, Earshot seeks to underscore that people possess the right to determine what sound is made on the land they live on, what noise is permissible, and what sounds become definitive of their community.