IMAGINING GEOGRAPHY Palestinian Landscape in an Historical Mirror Gary Fields University of California, San Diego Geo-Palestine 2010 Conference An-Najah University, Nablus

Imaginative Geography …the process whereby dominant groups seeking territory reinvent the meaning of territorial landscapes they covet to justify taking possession of such places. Edward Said * *”Invention, Memory and Place.”  Critical Inquiry.  Vol. 26 (2): 175-192

Bethlehem

Jayyous

Jerusalem / Abu Dis

Beit Hanina / Jerusalem

Qalqilya

“Closed in Jayyous”

Ariel (above) / Marda (below)

Power as Spatial (Foucault)

Argument Palestine as Imagined & Enclosed Palestinian landscape part of a recurrent narrative of encounters between dominant groups with territorial ambitions and subaltern groups focusing on enclosure of landscapes. Imaginative geography provides insight into situating this enclosure landscape into this wider historical frame.

Actors Imagining Enclosure England – Estate Owners N. America – Homesteaders Palestine -- Zionists

LAND STEWARDSHIP …The structures of ownership rights, use rights, and occupancy rights on land, along with rights of circulation and rules of trespass that form a foundation for material life and culture.

Enclosure 2 Instruments 1) Legal (Systems of Property Rights) 2) Material / Architectural

Homestead and Grid

Palestinian Enclosure -- Settlements

BOUNDING THE LANDSCAPE

Enclosure -- Impacts Land Ownership Systems of Circulation Population Demography

Land Improvement as Property “As much land as a man cultivates and improves so much is his property. ….land left to nature without improvement is waste. He who puts labor upon land in waste, so much is his property. … Indians possess no property because they leave land in waste… ” John Locke Second Treatise of Government (1690)

America Imagining An Empty Land “As for the Natives …they enclose no land, neither do they have any settled habitation, nor any tame cattle to improve the land by… So if we leave them sufficient [land], we may lawfully take the rest… John Winthrop Governor of Massachusetts

Divine Providence / American Destiny “The whole continent of North America appears destined by Divine Providence to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one system of religious and political principles,…” John Quincy Adams (1811)

John Melish Map of the U.S (1816)

Cartography as Manifest Destiny? The map shows at a glance the whole extent of the United States territory from sea to sea; in tracing the probable expansion of the human race from east to west, the mind finds an agreeable resting place on its western limits. It afford[s] ground for thankfulness to Divine Providence, that here at last mankind have found an asylum,…” John Melish on his 1816 Map

THE ZIONIST IMAGINATION Palestine as underdeveloped, unimproved and empty country.

EMPTY LAND? “Palestine is a country without a people… the Jews are a people without a country.” Israel Zangwill (1901)

Palestine (1920)

Jewish National Fund Blue Box “The map drawn on the blue box …introduces Jewish lands in Eretz Israel and it makes clear and concrete both the progress made, and the empty, desolate areas that we still have the duty to redeem, to provide land under our feet.” Karnenu (1934)

Empty Land? “When we built Ariel we never took one square inch of land from anybody. This land didn’t belong to anyone; it was empty…. Look at these hilltops. What do you see? They [Palestinians] don’t plant! They don’t cultivate! They don’t do anything with the land! We have built something here.” Ron Nahman Mayor of Ariel

Empty Land?

Empty Land? “In 1978 when they built Ariel, they took 20 dunums of land from me. My land was on that hillside. I had 100 olive trees on my land. That was theft.” Ahmad Marda

Enclosure in Bishop Norton (1772)

Simeon DeWitt’s Map of NY (1792)

Guy Johnson Map of 6 Nations (1771)

POWER “Modern power has as its basic principle the distribution of bodies in space” Michel Foucault Discipline and Punish (1975)

BEN-GURION / TRANSFER? “The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had….Any doubt on our part about the necessity of this transfer…may lose us an historic opportunity ….I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see in it anything immoral.” David Ben-Gurion Diaries (1937) Speech (1938)

ISRAELI SETTLEMENT POPULATION 1972 1977 1986 1991 2007 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WB 800 4,323 55,690 95,165 285,100 EJ 6900 30,300 103,900 137,400 191,000 GZA 700 740 2,150 3,900 0 Total 8400 38,323 161,740 236,465 476,100 http://www.fmep.org/settlement_info/stats_data/settler_populations/settlement_population_1972-2000.html http://www.fmep.org/reports/vol18/no1/02_2007_settlement_wrapup.html

ARIEL SHARON / SETTLEMENTS “We'll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We'll insert a strip of Jewish settlement, in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlement right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years, neither the UN, nor the USA – nobody -- will be able to tear it apart". Ariel Sharon (1973)

JNF Blue Box

LOCKE, AMERICA AND EMPTY LAND “In the beginning, all the world was America…The Native Indians possess no property because they inclose no land.” John Locke Second Treatise of Government (1690)

The Homestead Photo by John Green (1840)

THE MAP AS IMAGINED GEOGRAPHY In terms of communication and common sense, a map is an abstraction of reality. A map represents something that already exists, something objectively ‘there.’ In the history I have described, this relationship was reversed. A map anticipated spatial reality, not vice versa. In other words, a map was a model for, not a model of, what it purported to represent.

The Map As Imagined Geography Maps communicate arguments As arguments maps are representations with a point of view As arguments with a point of view, maps take sides in contests of power