A comprehensive review by Morad Elsana of our book: Emptied Lands: A Legal Geography of Bedouin R... more A comprehensive review by Morad Elsana of our book: Emptied Lands: A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev.
Emptied Lands A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev Stanford University Press, 2018
Attached is a flyer with 30% discount to the European distributor of our book.
Emptied Lands in... more Attached is a flyer with 30% discount to the European distributor of our book.
Emptied Lands investigates the protracted legal, planning, and territorial conflict between the settler Israeli state and indigenous Bedouin citizens over traditional lands in southern Israel/Palestine. The authors place this dispute in historical, legal, geographical, and international-comparative perspectives, providing the first legal geographic analysis of the "dead Negev doctrine" used by Israel to dispossess and forcefully displace Bedouin inhabitants in order to Judaize the region. The authors reveal that through manipulative use of Ottoman, British and Israeli laws, the state has constructed its own version of terra nullius. Yet, the indigenous property and settlement system still functions, creating an ongoing resistance to the Jewish state.Emptied Lands critically examines several key land claims, court rulings, planning policies and development strategies, offering alternative local, regional, and international routes for justice.
Since its establishment, the Jewish State has devoted major efforts to secure control over the land of Israel. One example is the protracted legal and territorial strife between the State of Israel and its indigenous Bedouin citizens over their traditional land in the Negev in southern Israel.
Emptied Lands investigates this multifaceted land dispute, placing it in historical, legal, geographical, and comparative perspective. The authors provide the first legal geographic analysis of the "Dead Negev Doctrine," which has been used by Israel to dispossess Bedouin inhabitants of their land and Judaize the southern half of the country. Through crafty use of Ottoman and British laws, particularly the concept of "dead land," Israel has constructed its own version of terra nullius. Yet, the indigenous space and property system continue to function, creating an ongoing resistance to the Jewish state. This study examines several key land claims and rulings and alternative routes for justice promoted by indigenous communities and civil society movements.
About the authors
Alexandre Kedar is Associate Professor at Haifa University School of Law and a co-editor of The Expanding Spaces of Law (Stanford, 2014).
Ahmad Amara is a Polansky Academy Fellow, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, and a human rights lawyer, co-editor of Indigenous (In)Justice (Harvard, 2013)
Oren Yiftachel is Professor of Political Geography at Ben- Gurion University. He is the author of numerous books, including Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (2006).
"The Expanding Spaces of Law presents readers with cutting-edge scholarship on legal geography an... more "The Expanding Spaces of Law presents readers with cutting-edge scholarship on legal geography and pushes the current boundaries of the field, investigating new questions and reinvigorating previous modes of inquiry.
Legal geography has contributed a great deal to understanding the many relationships between space and law. Earlier work has explored space that is static, such as the law's interaction with concepts of the home, public space, prison, restrooms, camps, territories, and nation states. But the past few years have seen an emphasis on analyzing the dynamic workings of space, and the understanding of space in various new ways. The Expanding Spaces of Law asks readers to consider what legal geography would look like if we were to give more prominence to conceptions of space as process, space as event, or space as situation or relationship. Questions of space and time are often implicit in the work of legal geographers, and this book seeks to bring these questions to the fore.
The Expanding Spaces of Law brings together some of the most prominent names in the field, and includes new voices in the field from around the world to introduce provocative and exciting research in legal geography.
"The Expanding Spaces of Law is the first book to encapsulate the trajectory of the legal geography field and point to its future possibilities in theoretical, methodological and substantive terms. Analyzing the increasing significance of the law-space nexus, this book highlights why all sociolegal scholars should take seriously the geo-political and spatial challenges to the prevailing understandings of law."—Eve Darian-Smith, Professor, Global & International Studies; University of California, Santa Barbara
"The Expanding Spaces of Law vividly illuminates the significant contributions spatial analysis offers to sociolegal studies and to legal anthropology, making clear that an adequate analysis of law and society requires a focus on space and time. The theoretically sophisticated, wide-ranging introduction and empirically rich chapters demonstrate how legal geography enhances the analysis of sociological studies in settings as diverse as Indonesian villages, rural America, and urban Mexico. It offers a valuable introduction to the field as well as a collection of recent, path-breaking work."—Sally Engle Merry, New York University
Legal geography is a stream of scholarship that takes the interconnections between law and spatia... more Legal geography is a stream of scholarship that takes the interconnections between law and spatiality, and especially their reciprocal construction, as core objects of inquiry. Legal geographers contend that in the world of lived social relations and experience, aspects of the social that are analytically identified as either legal or spatial are conjoined and co-constituted. The legal geography scholarship highlights that nearly every aspect of law is either located, takes place, is in motion, or has some spatial frame of reference. In other words, law is always “worlded” in some way. Likewise, every bit of social space, lived places, and landscapes are inscribed with legal significance. Distinctively legal forms of meaning are projected onto every segment of the physical world. These meanings are open to interpretation and may become involved in a range of legal practices. Such fragments of a socially segmented world — the where of law — are not simply the inert sites of law, but are inextricably implicated in how law happens. This introduction to the forthcoming book The Expanding Spaces of Law: A Timely Legal Geography (Stanford University Press) identifies and elaborates on three modes of legal geographic research. The first mode of legal geography includes disciplinary work in law or in geography that is modeled on the conventional image of import and export. The second is an interdisciplinary pursuit in which scholars in the eponymous fields draw on the work of each other and seek to contribute to the development of a common project. The third mode moves beyond legal geography to trans-disciplinary, or perhaps even post-disciplinary, modes of scholarship. Although these three modes exist concurrently, the general trajectory over time has been from disciplinary to interdisciplinary and, finally, to post-disciplinary orientations. This triadic classification helps organize the rich yet eclectic legal geography scholarship that has evolved over the last thirty years or so. While this introduction contains elements of each mode, it also urges interested scholars to move legal geography beyond the disciplinary boundaries into the horizons of a post-legal geography. Ironically, then, the ultimate success of legal geography will be in its ability to transcend the bi-disciplinary focus that has characterized so much of this scholarship up to this point. In addition to the introduction, the book consists of ten chapters. In the first three, Keebet and the late Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Mariana Valverde, and Nicholas Blomley identify gaps and obstacles in existing approaches to legal geography scholarship and offer remedies. An important sub-theme in each of these chapters is the importance of being more mindful of the temporalities of social, spatial, and legal phenomena. Authored by Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar and Irus Braverman, the next two chapters ask how a critical comparative legal geography might not only draw upon but also contribute to a rejuvenated project of comparative law and the methodological stakes of legal geography scholarship. The remaining five chapters expand legal geography into new spaces and make new connections. Specifically, Michael Smith, Antonio Azuela and Rodrigo Meneses, Lisa Pruitt, Melinda Benson, and David Delaney develop novel interpretive resources with the aim of enhancing interdisciplinarity, applying these tools to particular kinds of spaces and places: war zones, the street, the workplace, American rurality, and procedural spaces.
The Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) is highly invested in maintaining a façade of adherence t... more The Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) is highly invested in maintaining a façade of adherence to International Law (IL) in Israel's continuous occupation of the West Bank, and in mitigating the contradictions and complexities in Israel's implementation of this law. Our paper proposes a unique legal-geographical perspective to the analysis of this dynamic, while anchoring the critique of the HCJ's work within an understanding of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as a settler colonial project. Empirically, we focus on the Court's evolving jurisprudence in relation to the inclusion of expansion plans for the Jewish settlements in the routing of the separation barrier. Through a close reading of the legal texts, we demonstrate how the Court strove to subject the settler colonial logic of permanent spatial transformation and settlement expansion into the IL's imperatives of temporality and conservation. Through this case-study we propose a nuanced empirical and methodological approach to the study of contemporary settler colonial legalities. This approach focuses on the intertwinement of everyday professional practices of space and law in order to unravel the weaving of settler colonial logics into contemporary imperatives.
The Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) is highly invested in maintaining a façade of adherence t... more The Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) is highly invested in maintaining a façade of adherence to International Law (IL) in Israel's continuous occupation of the West Bank, and in mitigating the contradictions and complexities in Israel's implementation of this law. Our paper proposes a unique legal-geographical perspective to the analysis of this dynamic, while anchoring the critique of the HCJ's work within an understanding of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as a settler colonial project. Empirically, we focus on the Court's evolving jurisprudence in relation to the inclusion of expansion plans for the Jewish settlements in the routing of the separation barrier. Through a close reading of the legal texts, we demonstrate how the Court strove to subject the settler colonial logic of permanent spatial transformation and settlement expansion into the IL's imperatives of temporality and conservation. Through this case-study we propose a nuanced empirical and methodological approach to the study of contemporary settler colonial legalities. This approach focuses on the intertwinement of everyday professional practices of space and law in order to unravel the weaving of settler colonial logics into contemporary imperatives.
The introduction presents the general setting and outlines the book’s main research questions. It... more The introduction presents the general setting and outlines the book’s main research questions. It does so by reviewing four key events of recent conflictual encounters between Israeli authorities and Bedouin communities, as telling entry points for the book ahead. The chapter than highlights the book's main arguments, mainly dealing with the development of a 'Dead Negev Doctrine' as an Israeli version of a colonial 'terra nullius' approach, through which most of the Bedouin tribes of the Negev (Naqab) have been thoroughly dispossessed. The introduction also outlines the book's main approaches, methods, sources and structure
The paper examines the nature of indigenous identity among Bedouin Arabs in Negev/Naqab, Israel, ... more The paper examines the nature of indigenous identity among Bedouin Arabs in Negev/Naqab, Israel, against a background of conceptual, legal and political controversy. It traces theoretically and comparatively the rise of indigeneity as a relational concept, deriving from colonial and postcolonial settings. The concept is shown to be part of the globalization of human rights struggle, with a potential of the indigeneity discourse to empower colonized and exploited minorities, as well as provide a platform for transitional justice. The heart of the paper provides a rebuttal of several arguments made by a group of scholars associated with the Israeli state, named here “the deniers”, who have worked to reject Bedouin (and general Palestinian) claims for indigenous status, thereby denying their entitlement to a range of human and communal rights. The paper offers a systematic examination of historical and geographic evidence and reveals that “the deniers” have raised several relevant ques...
I am going to discuss-from the perspective of international law-the status of the Arab Bedouins' ... more I am going to discuss-from the perspective of international law-the status of the Arab Bedouins' rights to the lands they occupy and use in Israel. This perspective is important and of increasing influence, as is evident from the opinion of the International Court of Justice regarding the separation fence/wall. Further, international law affects the de-legitimating discourse on the status of the Arab Bedouin, and has a potential influence on the Israeli legal system and on possible processes of compromise or mediation, if and when such processes commence. My look at international law focuses on the following: The principle of equality, in general, and its application regarding the rights to housing and land, in particular; The issue of internally-displaced persons; The rights of indigenous peoples.
This is a short review of a recent book about land expropriation in Israel. The article criticall... more This is a short review of a recent book about land expropriation in Israel. The article critically examines the book and places it in a social and historical perspective.
This article focuses on land rights, land law, and land administration within a multilayered colo... more This article focuses on land rights, land law, and land administration within a multilayered colonial setting by examining a major land dispute in British-ruled Palestine (1917-1948). Our research reveals that the Mandate legal system extinguished indigenous rights to much land in the Zor al-Zarqa and Barrat Qisarya regions through its use of "colonial law"-the interpretation of Ottoman law by colonial officials, the use of foreign legal concepts, and the transformation of Ottoman law through supplementary legislation. However the colonial legal system was also the site of local resistance by some Palestinian Arabs attempting to remain on their land in the face of the pressure of the Mandate authorities and Jewish colonization officials. This article sheds light on the dynamics of the Mandate legal system and colonial law in the realm of land tenure relations. It also suggests that the joint efforts of Mandate and Jewish colonization officials to appropriate Geremy Forman is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Haifa's Department of Land of Israel Studies. Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar is a Lecturer in the University of Haifa's Faculty of Law. Names of authors by alphabetical order. We would like to thank Oren Yiftachel for his contribution to this article and Michael Fischbach for his insightful remarks and suggestions. We are also grateful to Assaf Likhovsky for his feedback and constructive criticism, to Anat Fainstein for her research assistance, and to Dana Rothman of Theoretical Inquiries in Law for her expert editorial advice. Maxine Forman and the women of 'Push-Up' also provided important assistance in editing and graphics. Finally, we would like to thank the Israeli Science Foundation for its generous support, without which this research could not have been undertaken (Grant No. 761/99). Theoretical Inquiries in Law 4.2 (2003) Theoretical Inquiries in Law land and undertake "development" operations in the area were fueled by neither the interests of colonial rule nor those of Jewish colonization alone, but, rather, by the integrated impact of both forces.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2004
In this paper we examine the Israeli government's use of law to institutionalize the disposse... more In this paper we examine the Israeli government's use of law to institutionalize the dispossession of Palestinian Arabs displaced by the 1948 war and trace the legal transformation of their land during the formative years of Israel's land regime (1948–60). This legal transformation facilitated the expropriation and reallocation of formerly Arab land to primarily Jewish hands and was therefore a central component of the legal reordering of space within Israel after 1948. Based on close examination of Israeli legislation, archival documents, Knesset proceedings, and other sources we delineate a 12-year legislative process consisting of four phases, each concluding with the enactment of major legislation. The process was led by senior and second-tier Israeli officials, and the result was the construction of a new Israeli legal geography. The culmination of the process was the integration of appropriated Arab land into the country's new system of Jewish-Israeli ‘national lan...
A comprehensive review by Morad Elsana of our book: Emptied Lands: A Legal Geography of Bedouin R... more A comprehensive review by Morad Elsana of our book: Emptied Lands: A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev.
Emptied Lands A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev Stanford University Press, 2018
Attached is a flyer with 30% discount to the European distributor of our book.
Emptied Lands in... more Attached is a flyer with 30% discount to the European distributor of our book.
Emptied Lands investigates the protracted legal, planning, and territorial conflict between the settler Israeli state and indigenous Bedouin citizens over traditional lands in southern Israel/Palestine. The authors place this dispute in historical, legal, geographical, and international-comparative perspectives, providing the first legal geographic analysis of the "dead Negev doctrine" used by Israel to dispossess and forcefully displace Bedouin inhabitants in order to Judaize the region. The authors reveal that through manipulative use of Ottoman, British and Israeli laws, the state has constructed its own version of terra nullius. Yet, the indigenous property and settlement system still functions, creating an ongoing resistance to the Jewish state.Emptied Lands critically examines several key land claims, court rulings, planning policies and development strategies, offering alternative local, regional, and international routes for justice.
Since its establishment, the Jewish State has devoted major efforts to secure control over the land of Israel. One example is the protracted legal and territorial strife between the State of Israel and its indigenous Bedouin citizens over their traditional land in the Negev in southern Israel.
Emptied Lands investigates this multifaceted land dispute, placing it in historical, legal, geographical, and comparative perspective. The authors provide the first legal geographic analysis of the "Dead Negev Doctrine," which has been used by Israel to dispossess Bedouin inhabitants of their land and Judaize the southern half of the country. Through crafty use of Ottoman and British laws, particularly the concept of "dead land," Israel has constructed its own version of terra nullius. Yet, the indigenous space and property system continue to function, creating an ongoing resistance to the Jewish state. This study examines several key land claims and rulings and alternative routes for justice promoted by indigenous communities and civil society movements.
About the authors
Alexandre Kedar is Associate Professor at Haifa University School of Law and a co-editor of The Expanding Spaces of Law (Stanford, 2014).
Ahmad Amara is a Polansky Academy Fellow, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, and a human rights lawyer, co-editor of Indigenous (In)Justice (Harvard, 2013)
Oren Yiftachel is Professor of Political Geography at Ben- Gurion University. He is the author of numerous books, including Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (2006).
"The Expanding Spaces of Law presents readers with cutting-edge scholarship on legal geography an... more "The Expanding Spaces of Law presents readers with cutting-edge scholarship on legal geography and pushes the current boundaries of the field, investigating new questions and reinvigorating previous modes of inquiry.
Legal geography has contributed a great deal to understanding the many relationships between space and law. Earlier work has explored space that is static, such as the law's interaction with concepts of the home, public space, prison, restrooms, camps, territories, and nation states. But the past few years have seen an emphasis on analyzing the dynamic workings of space, and the understanding of space in various new ways. The Expanding Spaces of Law asks readers to consider what legal geography would look like if we were to give more prominence to conceptions of space as process, space as event, or space as situation or relationship. Questions of space and time are often implicit in the work of legal geographers, and this book seeks to bring these questions to the fore.
The Expanding Spaces of Law brings together some of the most prominent names in the field, and includes new voices in the field from around the world to introduce provocative and exciting research in legal geography.
"The Expanding Spaces of Law is the first book to encapsulate the trajectory of the legal geography field and point to its future possibilities in theoretical, methodological and substantive terms. Analyzing the increasing significance of the law-space nexus, this book highlights why all sociolegal scholars should take seriously the geo-political and spatial challenges to the prevailing understandings of law."—Eve Darian-Smith, Professor, Global & International Studies; University of California, Santa Barbara
"The Expanding Spaces of Law vividly illuminates the significant contributions spatial analysis offers to sociolegal studies and to legal anthropology, making clear that an adequate analysis of law and society requires a focus on space and time. The theoretically sophisticated, wide-ranging introduction and empirically rich chapters demonstrate how legal geography enhances the analysis of sociological studies in settings as diverse as Indonesian villages, rural America, and urban Mexico. It offers a valuable introduction to the field as well as a collection of recent, path-breaking work."—Sally Engle Merry, New York University
Legal geography is a stream of scholarship that takes the interconnections between law and spatia... more Legal geography is a stream of scholarship that takes the interconnections between law and spatiality, and especially their reciprocal construction, as core objects of inquiry. Legal geographers contend that in the world of lived social relations and experience, aspects of the social that are analytically identified as either legal or spatial are conjoined and co-constituted. The legal geography scholarship highlights that nearly every aspect of law is either located, takes place, is in motion, or has some spatial frame of reference. In other words, law is always “worlded” in some way. Likewise, every bit of social space, lived places, and landscapes are inscribed with legal significance. Distinctively legal forms of meaning are projected onto every segment of the physical world. These meanings are open to interpretation and may become involved in a range of legal practices. Such fragments of a socially segmented world — the where of law — are not simply the inert sites of law, but are inextricably implicated in how law happens. This introduction to the forthcoming book The Expanding Spaces of Law: A Timely Legal Geography (Stanford University Press) identifies and elaborates on three modes of legal geographic research. The first mode of legal geography includes disciplinary work in law or in geography that is modeled on the conventional image of import and export. The second is an interdisciplinary pursuit in which scholars in the eponymous fields draw on the work of each other and seek to contribute to the development of a common project. The third mode moves beyond legal geography to trans-disciplinary, or perhaps even post-disciplinary, modes of scholarship. Although these three modes exist concurrently, the general trajectory over time has been from disciplinary to interdisciplinary and, finally, to post-disciplinary orientations. This triadic classification helps organize the rich yet eclectic legal geography scholarship that has evolved over the last thirty years or so. While this introduction contains elements of each mode, it also urges interested scholars to move legal geography beyond the disciplinary boundaries into the horizons of a post-legal geography. Ironically, then, the ultimate success of legal geography will be in its ability to transcend the bi-disciplinary focus that has characterized so much of this scholarship up to this point. In addition to the introduction, the book consists of ten chapters. In the first three, Keebet and the late Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Mariana Valverde, and Nicholas Blomley identify gaps and obstacles in existing approaches to legal geography scholarship and offer remedies. An important sub-theme in each of these chapters is the importance of being more mindful of the temporalities of social, spatial, and legal phenomena. Authored by Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar and Irus Braverman, the next two chapters ask how a critical comparative legal geography might not only draw upon but also contribute to a rejuvenated project of comparative law and the methodological stakes of legal geography scholarship. The remaining five chapters expand legal geography into new spaces and make new connections. Specifically, Michael Smith, Antonio Azuela and Rodrigo Meneses, Lisa Pruitt, Melinda Benson, and David Delaney develop novel interpretive resources with the aim of enhancing interdisciplinarity, applying these tools to particular kinds of spaces and places: war zones, the street, the workplace, American rurality, and procedural spaces.
The Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) is highly invested in maintaining a façade of adherence t... more The Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) is highly invested in maintaining a façade of adherence to International Law (IL) in Israel's continuous occupation of the West Bank, and in mitigating the contradictions and complexities in Israel's implementation of this law. Our paper proposes a unique legal-geographical perspective to the analysis of this dynamic, while anchoring the critique of the HCJ's work within an understanding of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as a settler colonial project. Empirically, we focus on the Court's evolving jurisprudence in relation to the inclusion of expansion plans for the Jewish settlements in the routing of the separation barrier. Through a close reading of the legal texts, we demonstrate how the Court strove to subject the settler colonial logic of permanent spatial transformation and settlement expansion into the IL's imperatives of temporality and conservation. Through this case-study we propose a nuanced empirical and methodological approach to the study of contemporary settler colonial legalities. This approach focuses on the intertwinement of everyday professional practices of space and law in order to unravel the weaving of settler colonial logics into contemporary imperatives.
The Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) is highly invested in maintaining a façade of adherence t... more The Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) is highly invested in maintaining a façade of adherence to International Law (IL) in Israel's continuous occupation of the West Bank, and in mitigating the contradictions and complexities in Israel's implementation of this law. Our paper proposes a unique legal-geographical perspective to the analysis of this dynamic, while anchoring the critique of the HCJ's work within an understanding of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as a settler colonial project. Empirically, we focus on the Court's evolving jurisprudence in relation to the inclusion of expansion plans for the Jewish settlements in the routing of the separation barrier. Through a close reading of the legal texts, we demonstrate how the Court strove to subject the settler colonial logic of permanent spatial transformation and settlement expansion into the IL's imperatives of temporality and conservation. Through this case-study we propose a nuanced empirical and methodological approach to the study of contemporary settler colonial legalities. This approach focuses on the intertwinement of everyday professional practices of space and law in order to unravel the weaving of settler colonial logics into contemporary imperatives.
The introduction presents the general setting and outlines the book’s main research questions. It... more The introduction presents the general setting and outlines the book’s main research questions. It does so by reviewing four key events of recent conflictual encounters between Israeli authorities and Bedouin communities, as telling entry points for the book ahead. The chapter than highlights the book's main arguments, mainly dealing with the development of a 'Dead Negev Doctrine' as an Israeli version of a colonial 'terra nullius' approach, through which most of the Bedouin tribes of the Negev (Naqab) have been thoroughly dispossessed. The introduction also outlines the book's main approaches, methods, sources and structure
The paper examines the nature of indigenous identity among Bedouin Arabs in Negev/Naqab, Israel, ... more The paper examines the nature of indigenous identity among Bedouin Arabs in Negev/Naqab, Israel, against a background of conceptual, legal and political controversy. It traces theoretically and comparatively the rise of indigeneity as a relational concept, deriving from colonial and postcolonial settings. The concept is shown to be part of the globalization of human rights struggle, with a potential of the indigeneity discourse to empower colonized and exploited minorities, as well as provide a platform for transitional justice. The heart of the paper provides a rebuttal of several arguments made by a group of scholars associated with the Israeli state, named here “the deniers”, who have worked to reject Bedouin (and general Palestinian) claims for indigenous status, thereby denying their entitlement to a range of human and communal rights. The paper offers a systematic examination of historical and geographic evidence and reveals that “the deniers” have raised several relevant ques...
I am going to discuss-from the perspective of international law-the status of the Arab Bedouins' ... more I am going to discuss-from the perspective of international law-the status of the Arab Bedouins' rights to the lands they occupy and use in Israel. This perspective is important and of increasing influence, as is evident from the opinion of the International Court of Justice regarding the separation fence/wall. Further, international law affects the de-legitimating discourse on the status of the Arab Bedouin, and has a potential influence on the Israeli legal system and on possible processes of compromise or mediation, if and when such processes commence. My look at international law focuses on the following: The principle of equality, in general, and its application regarding the rights to housing and land, in particular; The issue of internally-displaced persons; The rights of indigenous peoples.
This is a short review of a recent book about land expropriation in Israel. The article criticall... more This is a short review of a recent book about land expropriation in Israel. The article critically examines the book and places it in a social and historical perspective.
This article focuses on land rights, land law, and land administration within a multilayered colo... more This article focuses on land rights, land law, and land administration within a multilayered colonial setting by examining a major land dispute in British-ruled Palestine (1917-1948). Our research reveals that the Mandate legal system extinguished indigenous rights to much land in the Zor al-Zarqa and Barrat Qisarya regions through its use of "colonial law"-the interpretation of Ottoman law by colonial officials, the use of foreign legal concepts, and the transformation of Ottoman law through supplementary legislation. However the colonial legal system was also the site of local resistance by some Palestinian Arabs attempting to remain on their land in the face of the pressure of the Mandate authorities and Jewish colonization officials. This article sheds light on the dynamics of the Mandate legal system and colonial law in the realm of land tenure relations. It also suggests that the joint efforts of Mandate and Jewish colonization officials to appropriate Geremy Forman is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Haifa's Department of Land of Israel Studies. Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar is a Lecturer in the University of Haifa's Faculty of Law. Names of authors by alphabetical order. We would like to thank Oren Yiftachel for his contribution to this article and Michael Fischbach for his insightful remarks and suggestions. We are also grateful to Assaf Likhovsky for his feedback and constructive criticism, to Anat Fainstein for her research assistance, and to Dana Rothman of Theoretical Inquiries in Law for her expert editorial advice. Maxine Forman and the women of 'Push-Up' also provided important assistance in editing and graphics. Finally, we would like to thank the Israeli Science Foundation for its generous support, without which this research could not have been undertaken (Grant No. 761/99). Theoretical Inquiries in Law 4.2 (2003) Theoretical Inquiries in Law land and undertake "development" operations in the area were fueled by neither the interests of colonial rule nor those of Jewish colonization alone, but, rather, by the integrated impact of both forces.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2004
In this paper we examine the Israeli government's use of law to institutionalize the disposse... more In this paper we examine the Israeli government's use of law to institutionalize the dispossession of Palestinian Arabs displaced by the 1948 war and trace the legal transformation of their land during the formative years of Israel's land regime (1948–60). This legal transformation facilitated the expropriation and reallocation of formerly Arab land to primarily Jewish hands and was therefore a central component of the legal reordering of space within Israel after 1948. Based on close examination of Israeli legislation, archival documents, Knesset proceedings, and other sources we delineate a 12-year legislative process consisting of four phases, each concluding with the enactment of major legislation. The process was led by senior and second-tier Israeli officials, and the result was the construction of a new Israeli legal geography. The culmination of the process was the integration of appropriated Arab land into the country's new system of Jewish-Israeli ‘national lan...
... RON HARRIS, ALEXANDRE (SANDY) KEDAR, PNINA LAHAV AND ASSAF LIKHOVSKI* ... Other young Israeli... more ... RON HARRIS, ALEXANDRE (SANDY) KEDAR, PNINA LAHAV AND ASSAF LIKHOVSKI* ... Other young Israeli scholars such as Barak-Erez, Bilsky, Kamir, Fania Oz-Salzberger, and Eli Salzberger devoted a substantial part of their academic research to legal history. ...
It is commonly claimed by Israeli authorities that Bedouins are trespassers who never acquired pr... more It is commonly claimed by Israeli authorities that Bedouins are trespassers who never acquired property or settlement rights in southern Israel/Palestine. This led to massive dispossession of Bedouins. This book sets to examine state claims by providing, for the first time, a thorough analysis of the legal geography of the Negev. It adopts critical scholarly perspectives, drawing on multidisciplinary sources from geography, law, history and the social sciences. The study defines the “Dead Negev Doctrine (DND)”—a set of legal arguments and practices founded on a manipulative use of Ottoman and British laws through which Israel constructed its own version of “'terra nullius”—the now repealed colonial doctrine denying indigenous land and political rights. The book systematically tests the doctrine, using systematic archival and geographic research, and focusing on key land cases, most notably the al-‘Uqbi claim in ‘Araqib. The analysis reveals that the DND is based on shaky, often ...
This article examines the concept of dignity takings, as developed by Bernadette Atuahene, and it... more This article examines the concept of dignity takings, as developed by Bernadette Atuahene, and its applicability to the Israeli situation, focusing on takings from the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel. Although I find dignity takings a valuable concept, as it emphasizes the interconnections between land dispossession and the denial of human dignity, I offer some qualifications and suggestions. I then examine the applicability of the concept to the dispossession of Arabs/Palestinians in Israel through two case studies: one, a close reading of the (in)famous Ikrit villagers' dispossession; the other, an examination of the dispossession of Negev (southern Israel) Bedouin citizens of Israel, which takes place, not unlike terra nullius, simultaneously with a denial of this very taking. The article concludes that with some modifications, the concept of dignity taking applies to the situation of Arab/Palestinian citizens of Israel.
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Books by Sandy Kedar
Emptied Lands investigates the protracted legal, planning, and territorial conflict between the settler Israeli state and indigenous Bedouin citizens over traditional lands in southern Israel/Palestine. The authors place this dispute in historical, legal, geographical, and international-comparative perspectives, providing the first legal geographic analysis of the "dead Negev doctrine" used by Israel to dispossess and forcefully displace Bedouin inhabitants in order to Judaize the region. The authors reveal that through manipulative use of Ottoman, British and Israeli laws, the state has constructed its own version of terra nullius. Yet, the indigenous property and settlement system still functions, creating an ongoing resistance to the Jewish state.Emptied Lands critically examines several key land claims, court rulings, planning policies and development strategies, offering alternative local, regional, and international routes for justice.
Since its establishment, the Jewish State has devoted major efforts to secure control over the land of Israel. One example is the protracted legal and territorial strife between the State of Israel and its indigenous Bedouin citizens over their traditional land in the Negev in southern Israel.
Emptied Lands investigates this multifaceted land dispute, placing it in historical, legal, geographical, and comparative perspective. The authors provide the first legal geographic analysis of the "Dead Negev Doctrine," which has been used by Israel to dispossess Bedouin inhabitants of their land and Judaize the southern half of the country. Through crafty use of Ottoman and British laws, particularly the concept of "dead land," Israel has constructed its own version of terra nullius. Yet, the indigenous space and property system continue to function, creating an ongoing resistance to the Jewish state. This study examines several key land claims and rulings and alternative routes for justice promoted by indigenous communities and civil society movements.
About the authors
Alexandre Kedar is Associate Professor at Haifa University School of Law and a co-editor of The Expanding Spaces of Law (Stanford, 2014).
Ahmad Amara is a Polansky Academy Fellow, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, and a human rights lawyer, co-editor of Indigenous (In)Justice (Harvard, 2013)
Oren Yiftachel is Professor of Political Geography at Ben- Gurion University. He is the author of numerous books, including Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (2006).
Legal geography has contributed a great deal to understanding the many relationships between space and law. Earlier work has explored space that is static, such as the law's interaction with concepts of the home, public space, prison, restrooms, camps, territories, and nation states. But the past few years have seen an emphasis on analyzing the dynamic workings of space, and the understanding of space in various new ways. The Expanding Spaces of Law asks readers to consider what legal geography would look like if we were to give more prominence to conceptions of space as process, space as event, or space as situation or relationship. Questions of space and time are often implicit in the work of legal geographers, and this book seeks to bring these questions to the fore.
The Expanding Spaces of Law brings together some of the most prominent names in the field, and includes new voices in the field from around the world to introduce provocative and exciting research in legal geography.
"The Expanding Spaces of Law is the first book to encapsulate the trajectory of the legal geography field and point to its future possibilities in theoretical, methodological and substantive terms. Analyzing the increasing significance of the law-space nexus, this book highlights why all sociolegal scholars should take seriously the geo-political and spatial challenges to the prevailing understandings of law."—Eve Darian-Smith, Professor, Global & International Studies; University of California, Santa Barbara
"The Expanding Spaces of Law vividly illuminates the significant contributions spatial analysis offers to sociolegal studies and to legal anthropology, making clear that an adequate analysis of law and society requires a focus on space and time. The theoretically sophisticated, wide-ranging introduction and empirically rich chapters demonstrate how legal geography enhances the analysis of sociological studies in settings as diverse as Indonesian villages, rural America, and urban Mexico. It offers a valuable introduction to the field as well as a collection of recent, path-breaking work."—Sally Engle Merry, New York University
Papers by Sandy Kedar
Emptied Lands investigates the protracted legal, planning, and territorial conflict between the settler Israeli state and indigenous Bedouin citizens over traditional lands in southern Israel/Palestine. The authors place this dispute in historical, legal, geographical, and international-comparative perspectives, providing the first legal geographic analysis of the "dead Negev doctrine" used by Israel to dispossess and forcefully displace Bedouin inhabitants in order to Judaize the region. The authors reveal that through manipulative use of Ottoman, British and Israeli laws, the state has constructed its own version of terra nullius. Yet, the indigenous property and settlement system still functions, creating an ongoing resistance to the Jewish state.Emptied Lands critically examines several key land claims, court rulings, planning policies and development strategies, offering alternative local, regional, and international routes for justice.
Since its establishment, the Jewish State has devoted major efforts to secure control over the land of Israel. One example is the protracted legal and territorial strife between the State of Israel and its indigenous Bedouin citizens over their traditional land in the Negev in southern Israel.
Emptied Lands investigates this multifaceted land dispute, placing it in historical, legal, geographical, and comparative perspective. The authors provide the first legal geographic analysis of the "Dead Negev Doctrine," which has been used by Israel to dispossess Bedouin inhabitants of their land and Judaize the southern half of the country. Through crafty use of Ottoman and British laws, particularly the concept of "dead land," Israel has constructed its own version of terra nullius. Yet, the indigenous space and property system continue to function, creating an ongoing resistance to the Jewish state. This study examines several key land claims and rulings and alternative routes for justice promoted by indigenous communities and civil society movements.
About the authors
Alexandre Kedar is Associate Professor at Haifa University School of Law and a co-editor of The Expanding Spaces of Law (Stanford, 2014).
Ahmad Amara is a Polansky Academy Fellow, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, and a human rights lawyer, co-editor of Indigenous (In)Justice (Harvard, 2013)
Oren Yiftachel is Professor of Political Geography at Ben- Gurion University. He is the author of numerous books, including Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (2006).
Legal geography has contributed a great deal to understanding the many relationships between space and law. Earlier work has explored space that is static, such as the law's interaction with concepts of the home, public space, prison, restrooms, camps, territories, and nation states. But the past few years have seen an emphasis on analyzing the dynamic workings of space, and the understanding of space in various new ways. The Expanding Spaces of Law asks readers to consider what legal geography would look like if we were to give more prominence to conceptions of space as process, space as event, or space as situation or relationship. Questions of space and time are often implicit in the work of legal geographers, and this book seeks to bring these questions to the fore.
The Expanding Spaces of Law brings together some of the most prominent names in the field, and includes new voices in the field from around the world to introduce provocative and exciting research in legal geography.
"The Expanding Spaces of Law is the first book to encapsulate the trajectory of the legal geography field and point to its future possibilities in theoretical, methodological and substantive terms. Analyzing the increasing significance of the law-space nexus, this book highlights why all sociolegal scholars should take seriously the geo-political and spatial challenges to the prevailing understandings of law."—Eve Darian-Smith, Professor, Global & International Studies; University of California, Santa Barbara
"The Expanding Spaces of Law vividly illuminates the significant contributions spatial analysis offers to sociolegal studies and to legal anthropology, making clear that an adequate analysis of law and society requires a focus on space and time. The theoretically sophisticated, wide-ranging introduction and empirically rich chapters demonstrate how legal geography enhances the analysis of sociological studies in settings as diverse as Indonesian villages, rural America, and urban Mexico. It offers a valuable introduction to the field as well as a collection of recent, path-breaking work."—Sally Engle Merry, New York University
The issue of Bedouin land in the Negev is perhaps the most intense and protracted problem that has bedeviled both the Bedouin and the State of Israel for many years. Although this matter negatively affects the entire Negev population, both Arabs and Jews, it mainly has immense and direct implications for Bedouin life. While Israel continues to deny Bedouin land rights and to expropriate their land, the Bedouin continue to struggle and advocate their land rights on various levels, primarily legal and political. However, despite their many attempts, including lawsuits, petitions to the High Court of Justice, and appeals to the international community, the issue remains unresolved. It is particularly complicated since it includes many aspects from different disciplines: legal, geographic, political, and cultural. These elements stem from the history of the three states that have ruled the Negev for over the last 100 years: the Ottoman Empire, Britain, and most recently Israel. This book, based on research by three distinguished scholars from different disciplines, is a unique work that adds considerably to our understanding of this complex subject. The starting point of the book is the assertion that the Bedouin are victims of a process of deprivation and land dispossession, evictions, and Israel Studies Review, Volume 33, Issue 2, Autumn 2018: 155-174 © Association for Israel Studies