An `Irreversible Conquest'? Colonial and Postcolonial Land Law in Israel/Palestine

Abstract

The authoritarian and transformative character of modernist utilitarian law, as applied in colonial contexts, has made it a key instrument of state control, and an arena for intercommunity struggle. British colonialism under the Palestinian Mandate (1923-48), deploying the complex land laws and regulations which it inherited and modified from the Ottoman land code, passed to the successor Israeli state the tools for ethnocratic control, through which Israel came to claim public ownership over virtually all its physical territory. The importation into Palestine of ready-made British-style law, drawing upon British colonial experience, contributed building blocks for the Israeli state. The colonialist dual construction of communal and individual land rights, and the power of planning and other regulations for reshaping ownership and land use patterns, are examined in the Israel/Palestine situation through certain rhetorical keywords with shifting interpretations and meanings, i.e. settlement, transfer, partition and absenteeism.