From Arab land to 'Israel Lands': the legal dispossession of the Palestinians displaced by Israel in the wake of 1948 (original) (raw)
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American Journal of International Law, 1993
In 1897 Zionism emerged as a European-wide political move ment with the first World Zionist Congress held in Basle, Switzer land, where Theodor Herzl, an editor of the influential Viennese paper, Neue Freie Presse, had emerged as a leader. Herzl's 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews) had called for a Jewish state in Palestine, and its publication in Vienna made a great impact. Not surprisingly, Zionism had its strongest following in Russia, but even there it was only one of several nationalist currents in Jewry.2 Despite the difficult circumstances of life, most Jews remained in Eastern Europe and of those leaving most still preferred the United States. 3 In Palestine, an Arab-populated country under the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, Zionist immigrants set up agricultural settlements on pur chased land. "From the very beginning," wrote Ariel Hecht, an Israeli analyst of land tenure in Palestine, "it was clear to the leaders of the Zionist movement that the acquisition of land was a sine qua non towards the realisation of their dream."4 Land was not acquired in a random fashion. The effort, wrote Israeli General Yigal Allon, was "to establish a chain of villages on one continuous area of Jewish land.'0 The Arabs, soon realizing that the immigrant's aim was to establish a Jewish state, began to oppose Zionism.6 As early as 1891 Zionist leader, Ahad Ha'am, wrote that the Arabs "understand very well what we are doing and what we are aiming at."7 In 1 90 1 the World Zionist Organization formed a company, the Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund), to buy land for Jewish settlers.8 According to its charter, the Fund would buy land in "Pal estine, Syria, and other parts of Turkey in Asia and the Peninsula of Sinai."9 The aim of the Fund was "to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people."10 Fund director, Abra ham Granovsky, called "land redemption" the "most vital operation in establishing Jewish Palestine."11 The Fund's land could not be sold to anyone and could be leased only to a Jew, an "unincorporated body of Jews," or a Jewish company that promoted Jewish settlement. A lessee was forbidden to sublease.12 Herzl considered land acquisition under a tenure system that kept it in Jewish hands as the key to establishing Zionism in Palestine. "Let the owners of immovable property believe that they are cheating us," he wrote, "selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are The British Connection 5 not going to sell them anything back."13 The Fund thus kept land as a kind of trustee for a future state.14 The Fund purchased large tracts owned by absentee landowners. Most of this land was tilled by farmers whose families had held it for generations with possessory rights recognized by customary law. Re grettably for many of these families, in the late nineteenth century Turkey had instituted a land registration system that led to wealthy absentees gaining legal title to land, often by questionable means. After this occurred, the family farmers continued in possessionas tenantsand considered themselves to retain their customary right to the land, although that was no longer legally the case.15 At the turn of the century the better farmland in Palestine was being cultivated. In 1882 a British traveler, Laurence Oliphant, reported that the Plain of Esdraelon in northern Palestine, an area in which the Fund purchased land, was "a huge green lake of waving wheat."16 This meant that the Fund could not acquire land without displacing Arab farmers. A delegate to a 1905 Zionist congress, Yitzhak Epstein, warned: "Can it be that the dispossessed will keep silent and calmly accept what is being done to them? Will they not ultimately arise to regain, with physical force, that which they were deprived of through the power of gold? Will they not seek justice from the strangers that placed themselves over their land?"17 An element of the Zionist concept of "land redemption" was that the land should be worked by Jews. This meant that Arabs should not be hired as farm laborers. While this policy was not uniformly implemented, it gained adherence. In 191 3 Ha'am objected to it. "I can't put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of behaving in such a way to men of another people ... if it is so now, what will be our relation to the others if in truth we shall achieve power?"18 But Herzl viewed the taking of land and expulsion of Arabs as complementary aspects of Zionism. It would be necessary, he thought, to get the Arabs out of Palestine. "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.. .. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."19 Some Zion ist leaders advocated moving Palestine Arabs to neighboring coun Israel as a Fact 89 draw its support for Israel's membership in the United Nations and warned against any further idf offensives.20 Under that pressure Ben-Gurion withdrew the idf from Egyptian territory and canceled plans to take Gaza and the Sinai.21 At the same time Ben-Gurion withdrew the idf from southern Lebanon, where it had penetrated. The Litani River, an important water source, flowed through southern Lebanon. General Yigal Allon criticized Ben-Gurion's decision to withdraw, complaining that the Index Aaland Islands, Abdiilhamid II (sultan of the Ottoman Empire), 7 Abdullah (emir of Transjordan, King of
An `Irreversible Conquest'? Colonial and Postcolonial Land Law in Israel/Palestine
Social & Legal Studies, 2003
The authoritarian and transformative character of modernist utilitarian law, as applied in colonial contexts, has made it a key instrument of state control, and an arena for intercommunity struggle. British colonialism under the Palestinian Mandate (1923-48), deploying the complex land laws and regulations which it inherited and modified from the Ottoman land code, passed to the successor Israeli state the tools for ethnocratic control, through which Israel came to claim public ownership over virtually all its physical territory. The importation into Palestine of ready-made British-style law, drawing upon British colonial experience, contributed building blocks for the Israeli state. The colonialist dual construction of communal and individual land rights, and the power of planning and other regulations for reshaping ownership and land use patterns, are examined in the Israel/Palestine situation through certain rhetorical keywords with shifting interpretations and meanings, i.e. set...
Spatial Changes in Palestine: from Colonial Project to an Apartheid System
African and Asian Studies, 2009
Th is paper addresses the socio-spatial impact of the Zionists' colonial project in Palestine, including the replacement of the indigenous Palestinian people by Jewish immigrants. At present, the Palestinians, displaced or living in the remaining part of Palestinian lands number approximately ten million. Th e continuous Israeli occupation has failed to bring stability or prosperity to either the region or the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. Projections indicate that demographic changes will transform the current situation into an apartheid system, where the majority Palestinians will be ruled by an Israeli minority. Th e objective of this paper is to suggest a just solution for the Palestinian-Israeli impasse in advocating the establishment a one-state solution, a proposition which appears to be gaining increasing support.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2015
Depending on who is speaking, the tipping point beyond which a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict becomes impossible is approaching, imminent, or passed. Raja Khalidi, in the opening to his chapter in One Land Two States, writes "[it] does not take an expert to recognize that a partition of territory and sovereignty on the basis of geo-demographic realities today is most likely not a viable solution." A binational or civic one-state democracy seems remote and undesirable, or else a formula for entrenched apartheid. As a result, those who believe the conflict must be resolved and not just managed are increasingly exploring ideas that acknowledge both the need for separation, but accept that the land is small and the populations increasingly inextricable. One Land Two States is one of the only book-length works to explore a specific separate-buttogether model in theoretical and practical depth. It adds to a slow but steady growth of academic literature considering confederal proposals for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One Land Two States grew out of the "Parallel States Project," a group of prescient academics who began their discussions in 2008; the chapters in this edited collection were written by participants in that project. The academic interest complements a similar flurry of activity on the ground. Local civil society efforts have yielded confederal projects with similar names, such as Two States, One Homeland and Two States, One Space. Benjamin Netanyahu's recent re-election in March gives the issue new urgency. The fallacy of a status quo has been shattered by a trio of wars in Gaza and Netanyahu's election-eve rejection of the two-state concept, as well as more aggressive Palestinian activity in the international arena. Israel is deepening its grip on "Area C"-60 percent of the West Bank-and coalition partner Naftali Bennett, among others, has called openly for annexation. Strict two-staters have argued that confederal approaches are unrealistic slogans. But radical political changes can indeed start as broad ideas, fleshed out over time by new proponents. This book advances that process, through theoretical discussions of sovereignty, elaborate proposals for security and economy, law, and even the role of religion. It is comprehensive, detailed, and confronts problems at every step; accusations of sloganism or naiveté do not apply. Several chapters are devoted to disaggregating the elements of sovereignty and putting them together again differently. Jens Bartelson summarizes the main criticisms of traditional sovereignty, then ups the ante: if we accept that classic territorial inviolability has been breached over history, if political ownership is increasingly delinked from land, then what? That's when the authors take the leap, in proposing sovereignty based on identity, rights, individuals, and law. The result is a tantalizing proposal for "parallel states" (which could more accurately be called layered states, since "parallel" implies side-by-side but never touching). The two states would be defined by citizenship rather than geography or borders. "Heartland" areas dominated by one of the national groups would be small and limited-all the rest is open season: "Two parallel state structures, both covering the whole territory, with one answering to Palestinians and one to Israelis regardless of where they live" (p. 2). What can this putatively simple formulation mean? Can two different governments on the same land be a fair and functional way of managing life for two integrated but hostile populations? The authors do not underestimate the theoretical challenge, calling it "conceptually demanding." Mossberg, a former diplomat, proposes that sovereign powers can be divided between shared and
1967 Bypassing 1948: A Critique of Critical Israeli Studies of Occupation
Critical Inquiry
The number of studies seeking to explain the technologies of Israeli rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) from 1967 has been on the rise in the last two decades, due in part to the persistent Israeli occupation and dwindling chances for a possible withdrawal from these territories. This possibility directly contradicts the Israeli government's agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which opened up the possibility for a Palestinian state in these areas: in other words, the two-state formula, which aimed to separate Israel from millions of Palestinians and stabilize the status quo. However, the intensified settlement process vis-à-vis the future Palestinian state has led many Israeli scholars to admit that the Israeli presence in these areas is not temporary. Critical Israeli thinkers began highlighting the contradictions between Israeli official discourse in peace negotiations and the practical policies on the ground that express opposed intentions. Others explored various dimensions of the technologies of control utilized by Israel's army and other state institutions. These studies greatly contributed to our understanding of the expanding Israeli colonization in the West Bank, thereby exposing the expansive tendencies of Zionism, something that was not seriously considered in the past. One of the central dimensions that Israeli occupation scholarship began to address is the legal and constitutional justifications for settling what is considered, in Israeli legal tradition, state land. 1 These studies demonstrated Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.
Introduction-Tracing History, Politics and Law as a Vindication of Palestinian Liberation.pdf
New Middle Eastern Studies, 2018
Today, the Zionist occupation of Palestine and the continued dislocation of Palestinians for nearly a hundred years through brute force -combined with the former's discursive hegemony over its victimsremain as major obstacles to the construction of a peaceful and stable international political order in the Middle East. The so-called Palestinian problem remains the key to understand the failure of the Middle Eastern sub-system to produce sustainable peace in the region. This brief introduction to the special issue seeks to explain the general perspective and summarise main arguments of the contributors who have approached the issue of Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lenses of various fields of study such as international law, foreign policy analysis and discourse analysis. As will be seen, all the authors offer notable critical reflections that challenge established understandings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within the mainstream Western media and scholarly literature.