360 likes | 444 Views
The Victors and the Vanquished Forging a Hebrew Landscape from the Palestinian Exodus. Questions. How did the creation of Israel as a Jewish state reshape the landscape? How did the remaking of landscape become an integral part of the conflict?. Starting Point: 2 Questions.
E N D
The Victors and the Vanquished Forging a Hebrew Landscape from the Palestinian Exodus
Questions • How did the creation of Israel as a Jewish state reshape the landscape? • How did the remaking of landscape become an integral part of the conflict?
Starting Point: 2 Questions • How did the Naqba become part of the landscape? or alternatively • How did Independence become part of the landscape? Landscape as Legal, Cartographic, and Physical Construction, and an expression of power
Palestinian Villages Depopulated (1947-48) Source: Salman Abu Sitta, “The Towns and Villages Depopulated by the Zionist Invasion of 1948.” http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story1261.html
Dilemma of the Jewish State How to reconcile Jewish sovereignty over the territory of Israel with non-Jewish landownership?
Solving the Dilemma:Law and The Creation of an Israeli Landscape 4 Phases
Solving the Dilemma:Law and The Creation of an Israeli Landscape Phase 1: Creation of Absentee Property (1948-50) Emergency measures to classify Palestinian property in a new legal way. Created a Custodian to inventory Absentee Property.
Solving the Dilemma:Law and The Creation of an Israeli Landscape Phase 2: Development Authority Law (1951) Aim was to make permanent the status of Absentee property. Created a Development Authority to reallocate Absentee Property.
Solving the Dilemma:Law and The Creation of an Israeli Landscape Phase 3: Land Acquisition Law (1953) Aim was to acquire (seize) land of Palestinians still inside Israel classified as “present absentees.” Used the rationale of “security” for such seizures and used Finance Ministry to reallocate such land.
Solving the Dilemma:Law and The Creation of an Israeli Landscape Phase 4: Israel Lands Law (1960) Aim was to create an institutionalized system of creating state land for settlement and development.
Outcomes of Creating ‘Israel Lands’ • Transformed Dispossession into Law • Created a new spatial and demographic map • Severed connections between Palestinians and their land • Posed question of right of return
Jewish National Fund – Land Redemption Planting Settlements Planting Trees
“We must continually raise the demand that our land be returned to our possession.... If there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred to some other place… We cannot start the Jewish state with...half the population being Arab…Such a state cannot survive even half an hour... It [transfer] is most moral... I am ready to come and defend ... it before the Almighty. MenachemUssishkin 1930 / 1938 Menachem Ussishkin / Transfer?
“The historical Hebrew names of places in Eretz Israel are the most reliable testimony that these places have been our patrimony from time immemorial… If the JNF Naming Committee is convinced that a new Jewish settlement is located near a place… where there was a Jewish settlement during one of the periods when the nation of Israel dwelt in Eretz Israel, the committee shall assign to the new or restored settlement the historical Hebrew name.” MenachemUssishkin (1948) MenachemUssishkin / Renaming Land
“The geopolitical condition created in 1967 is irreversible. The situation can not be changed… You can not unscramble that egg.” Meron Benvenisti
Alexandar Kedar, Challenging the Israeli Land Regime. http://www.seamless-israel.org/images/online%20magazine/Israeli%20Land%20Regime.html Change in Land Ownership 1918-1960(white = Jewish owned land; gray = Palestinian owned)
Apartheid Defined by the 1973 UN Convention on the Crime of Apartheid as acts “maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons…designed to divide the population…by the creation of separate reserves and ghettoes for members of racial groups…or the expropriation of landed property. Articles 1 &2, http://www.anc.org.za/un/uncrime.htm
1948 Dilemma of Victory What to do with the Abandoned Palestinian Town and Property?
Phases of Colonization (Yiftachel) • 1) 1896-1947 (Early Settlement) • 2) 1947-1949 (Creation of Israel) • 3) 1949-1967 (Internal Colonization) • 4) 1967-1993 (External Colonization) • 5) 1993-Present (Consolidation)