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Validating Segregated Observers: Mapping West Bank Settlements from Without and Within

Jess Bier

in Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine: How Occupied Landscapes Shape Scientific Knowledge

Chapter 5, “Validating Segregated Observers”, explores the intricate ways that the Israeli occupation shapes empirical observations. Through a critique of feminist standpoint theory and Donna ... More

Chapter 5, “Validating Segregated Observers”, explores the intricate ways that the Israeli occupation shapes empirical observations. Through a critique of feminist standpoint theory and Donna Haraway’s work on situated knowledge, it shows how the most well meaning maps can be drastically different depending on who makes them. After 1967 Israeli settlers have increasingly moved to the West Bank, establishing diffuse but numerous settlements that dominate the landscape, engendering forms of segregation that are both rigid and complex. As a result, Palestinians see different parts of the landscape, and under tougher restrictions, than do Israelis, and vice versa. For example, cartographers in Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are able to collect map data only within Palestinian areas, and must view the Israeli settlements from without. This produces a dichotomy between, and enforces a drastically unequal separation of, Palestinians and Israelis. It also buttresses imbalances of power in international technoscience, influencing even the most apparently objective, empirical knowledge. Chapter 5 explores the (by no means straightforward) implications of this segregation in detail, while also introducing the notion of refractivity, or material and spatial reflexivity. Throughout, it seeks to understand how cartographers in organizations who use the same tools to map the same landscapes can produce different results.Less

Positive Facts of Nationhood

in Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society

The debate over the character of Israelite settlement and the work of generating an empirical body of evidence to prove or disprove one or another of the accounts (historical hypotheses, one could ... More

The debate over the character of Israelite settlement and the work of generating an empirical body of evidence to prove or disprove one or another of the accounts (historical hypotheses, one could call them) established a paradigm of archaeological practice that guided disciplinary work for decades to come. This scholarly debate is perhaps best understood as an ongoing practice of settler nationhood, one that repeatedly reenacted and reinstantiated the “national collective” in empirical form, facts of positive science that emerged as an independent evidentiary basis upon which the work of archaeology itself would henceforth rely and within which the ancient Israelite nation would emerge as visible. This chapter traces the work through which three conceivably autonomous fields of discourse and practice—nationalism, archaeology, and the Bible—converge, each stabilized and grounded through one particular scholarly dispute.Less

Jurisdictional Designs

Michael Karayanni

in Conflicts in a Conflict: A Conflict of Laws Case Study on Israel and the Palestinian Territories

This chapter discusses the legal status of the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, from both the point of view of international law and that of Israeli municipal law. As this ... More

This chapter discusses the legal status of the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, from both the point of view of international law and that of Israeli municipal law. As this status was intertwined with major peace processes that took place in the region, such as the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Peace Process, as well as other unilateral actions such as the Israeli settlements project, disengagement from the Gaza Strip, and the building of the Separation Wall/Fence, and Palestinian statehood, the implications of these processes on the status of each of these territories are also laid out here.Less

Settlements

GEOFFREY R. WATSON

in The Oslo Accords: International Law and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Agreements

This chapter asks whether the Har Homa project and other Israeli settlements violate either the Oslo Accords or any other source of international law. The first section considers whether the text of ... More

This chapter asks whether the Har Homa project and other Israeli settlements violate either the Oslo Accords or any other source of international law. The first section considers whether the text of the Oslo Accords outlaws new or existing settlements. The second section asks whether the settlements are inconsistent with any other source of law. It argues that the law of belligerent occupation is applicable to territories occupied by Israel in 1967, and that aspects of Israeli settlement policy are inconsistent with occupation law.Less

1983: A Pivotal Year

Samy Cohen

in Doves Among Hawks: Struggles of the Israeli Peace Movements

This chapter deals with the beginning of the decline of Peace Now. The leaders of the movement locate the turning point in 2000, with two significant events: the collapse in the summer of the Camp ... More

This chapter deals with the beginning of the decline of Peace Now. The leaders of the movement locate the turning point in 2000, with two significant events: the collapse in the summer of the Camp David negotiations between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, and the outbreak of the second Intifada in September, which led to the deaths of over a thousand Israelis. This interpretation, interesting as it may be, is not entirely faithful to the historical facts. Although 2000 was undoubtedly a significant year in the life of the peace movement, analysis of Peace Now's trajectory shows that its decline actually began in 1983, with the ending of the Lebanon War and Menachem Begin's withdrawal from political life. 1983 was the pivotal year, the date during which the movement appears to have reached its peak, and the moment at which its slow but steady decline began. The number and size of its demonstrations began to decrease.Less

Introduction

Mehran Kamrava

in The Impossibility of Palestine: History, Geography, and the Road Ahead

This introductory chapter sets out the book's main argument that Palestine is neither viable nor possible anymore. This lack of viability is due to developments that go beyond Palestine's mere ... More

This introductory chapter sets out the book's main argument that Palestine is neither viable nor possible anymore. This lack of viability is due to developments that go beyond Palestine's mere physical and territorial dismemberment. It is on this issue, namely the growing noncontiguity of the West Bank because of Israeli settlements, that most existing conclusions of Palestine's lack of viability are based. Not only is Palestine territorially noncontiguous and no longer viable as a physical entity, but the very fibers and ingredients that would constitute it as a national and political whole have mutated in such a way as to make state- and nation-building improbable. History, geography, and circumstances have combined to mitigate the possibility of Palestine reemerging as a meaningful national and political entity. The remainder of the chapter presents some basic statistics in terms of population numbers and percentages; makes a clear distinction between the two processes of Palestinian state-building as compared to nation-building; defines some of the key terms used to construct the book's arguments; and provides an overview of the subsequent chapters.Less