Now out with Stanford University Press is Emptied Lands: A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev by Alexandre Kedar (University of Haifa), Ahmad Amara (Van Leer Jerusalem Institute), and Oren Yiftachel (Ben-Gurion University). From the press:
Further information is available here.
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.
"People are dispossessed not only with guns and
bulldozers, but also with legal practices and strategies. Emptied Lands reveals
how the painfully named and legally invoked Dead Negev Doctrine facilitates the
continued dispossession of Bedouins in the Negev, the most intense and
protracted land dispute within Israel. Drawing from decades of activism and
scholarship, Kedar, Amara, and Yiftachel provide a powerful challenge to the
doctrine, creating space for better forms of legality." -Nicholas Blomley
"Three of the best critical scholars of contemporary
Palestine have successfully combined legal, geographical, and political
analysis into a forensic study of how Israel has weaponized the law against the
most vulnerable of all inhabitants of Palestine, the Bedouins. A remarkable
multidisciplinary feat, this book provides an essential understanding of
settler colonialism." -Eyal Weizman
Further information is available here.
