The Struggle for Land Under Israeli Law

Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive examination of land law for Arab Palestinians under Israeli law. Land is one of the core resources of human existence, development and activity. Therefore, it is also a key basis of political power and of social and economic status. Land regimes and planning regulations play a dynamic role in deciding how competing claims over resources will be resolved. According to legal geography, spatial ordering impacts legal regimes; whilst legal rules form social and human space. Through the lenses of international law, colonisation and legal geography, the book examines the land regime in Israel. More specifically, it endeavours to understand the spatial strategies adopted by Israel to organise the entire territorial expanse of the country as Jewish, while also excluding Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of East Jerusalem from the landscape. The book then details how the systematic nature and processes of marginalisation are mapped out across the civil, political and socio-economic landscape. This monograph will be of interest to international legal theorists, legal geographers, land lawyers and human rights practitioners and students; as well as to international scholars, NGOs and others focusing on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.