A Tale of Two Regions: Diffusion of the Israeli “50 Percent Rule” from the Galilee to the Occupied West Bank

Abstract

The “50 percent rule” is an Israeli judicial doctrine that has played a pivotal role since the early 1960s in deciding disputes between the Israeli government and Palestinian landholders under Article 78 of the Ottoman Land Code. It was first institutionalized during a government land‐claiming campaign aimed at providing state land for settlement‐based Judaization of Israel's predominantly Palestinian Galilee region. Two decades later, during a similar state land‐claiming campaign, the doctrine diffused into the occupied West Bank. Drawing on spatial components of social science diffusion literature and work in the field of legal geography, this article offers a legal‐historical‐geographical analysis of the evolution and diffusion of the 50 percent rule. Its conclusions suggest a new spatialized approach to the study of legal transfers and transplants that conceptualizes law's movement across international borders as one component of a broader process of legal diffusion, in which internal diffusion also plays an important role.