Emptied Lands: A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev

Book talk with author Oren Yiftachel, Ben-Gurion University of the Nagev

April 10, 2019 5-7 pm Brockway Room (6402)

Excerpt from the Introduction

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.

About the co-author: Oren Yiftachel teaches political geography and urban planning at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He authored Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (Penn, 2006), co-edited Indigenous (In)Justice (Harvard, 2013), and was Chair of B’tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

CO-SPONSORED BY GEOGRAPHY, SOCIOLOGY, ENVIRONMENTAL, PSYCH, POLITICAL SCIENCE AND URBAN ED