Land, Trees and Memory: Contested Landscapes in Israel-Palestine

Introduction

“Six decades ago, the nascent State of Israel was little more than a scarred landscape.
Neglected and barren, this land – so small and with so few natural resources - had to
sustain the great ingathering of Jews from the four corners of the world. The
pioneers knew then that ensuring environmental sustainability would be pivotal. And
so the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel ... was born out of this
fundamental need. We were the pioneers then and continue to spearhead
environmental efforts in Israel, today... The front line has taken on different
complexities and dimensions but the goal remains the same: Keeping the Promise of
the Promised Land” – Introduction to the English website of the Society for the
Protection of Nature in Israel, January 2011

The statement above succinctly summarises on of the founding myths of Zionism, albeit in a
modernised form. The story more or less along the following lines: Palestine was mostly empty and
its inhabitants at the time, the Palestinians, where merely one of many peoples who have conquered
the land but do not care for it. The Jews, on the other hand, were the real sons of the land, and they
are returning to protect it and restore it to its biblical glory. Such sentiment remains pervasive, and
have at many stages in the conflict, served as a justification, for establishing Jewish hegemony over
Palestine.

However, Zionism before the creation of Israel had to deal with some fundamental paradoxes.
Firstly, it was claiming a return and a revival of an ancient Jewish tradition, but was an entirely
modern movement with modern aspirations. It was also seeking to establish itself in an alien
landscape, very different from the European landscapes that most Jewish immigrants came from,
where even the names were entirely foreign. Finally, and most importantly, Zionism was building
its national project on precisely the same land that another, more concretely indigenous, nation saw
as its homeland, and thus the two nationalisms came into fierce competition over land and
legitimacy.

In light of this, the essay seeks to explore how changing the landscape – primarily using
afforestation – has helped the Jewish community resolve some of its fundamental paradoxes. The
essay examines the history of afforestation efforts in Israel-Palestine and the purposes they served
for Israeli authorities- predominantly land acquisition and the overwriting of Palestinian landscapes,
but also creating a new space that is uniquely Israeli. Moreover, the paper examines the relationship
between people and trees, in particular the symbolic association between pine trees and Jewish
presence on the one hand, and Palestinian dispossession on the other.

Contested history of a landscape

The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is replete with contested histories and events.
However, one that is relevant to this paper is the issue of the Palestinian landscape in the late
Ottoman periods, before the advent of large-scale Jewish immigration. It is important to examine
this, as it sets the stage to the continued conflict over the land- both in the symbolic sphere, and in
terms of physical space.
Descriptions of Palestine, or the Holy Land varied considerably, often depending on the background
of the writer describing it. They range from a description of a hot, scorching, treeless desolation, to
that of productive orchards and a land with great agricultural productivity without the need for
irrigation. However, some of the most widely circulated accounts were influenced by biblical
descriptions of a land flowing with milk and honey, and covered in lush, diverse forests (Cohen,
1993).

In any case, it seems that real Palestine could not live up to image the mythical Palestine, and thus
was seen as desolate relative to European expectations. In any case, the majority of Western
descriptions of Palestine from the period described a treeless, barren landscape. Whether this is an
objective view of the land and its use, or a result of the social construction of the emotive landscape
of the Holy Land, is impossible to determine given the evidence. Yet, Biblical imagery, and
comparisons to European landscapes may have had a role in forming the impression of a desolate
land. Unsurprisingly, these descriptions are often dismissed as exaggerations by Palestinian
scholars, who also state that they ignore the differences in capital and technology available to the
Jewish and Arab communities (Kucharski, 2007).

A Modernist Redemption

Walter Clay Lowdermik was an ecologist who studied soil erosion and was the assistant chief of the
Soil Conservation Service, founded in the US as a response to the Dust Bowl disaster. Lowdermilk
embarked on a journey to study soil erosion in the Mediterranean and the Near East – lands that
have been inhabited for thousands of years – to study the effects of soil erosion as a result of human
habitation. This took him to Palestine 1938, where he compared a Jewish plantation, with a
neighbouring nomadic family. Lowdermilk later published a book – Palestine Land of Promise – in
which he unequivocally accused the Arabs of “ecocide” and blamed what he perceived as the poor
state of the Palestinian landscape on “Arab invasions” and the pastoralist nature of the Arabs, while
at the same time exalting the mastery of modern technology and the “indomitable spirit” of the
Jewish settlers (Kucharski, 2007). He later came to be a prominent Christian Zionist, and a very
strong supporter of Israel (Anton, 2008).

Lowdermilk's views were well aligned to the goals and perceptions of Zionist settlers in more ways
than one. In addition to favouring the way Zionist settlers were using the land, he also was a strong
believer in shaping and controlling the environment, and was disparaging of what he called the
fatalistic attitude of Arabs towards the state of the land (Kucharski, 2007). Interestingly,
Lowdermilk continued to serve the Israeli government on a pro bono basis as a consultant on water
use and irrigation for many years after the creation of the state of Israel and was instrumental in the
Huleh drainage projecti.

The significance of the imagery of a barren, neglected landscape is threefold. Firstly, it provides a
legitimizing narrative to for colonial appropriation of land – the natives are misusing it anyway.
This goes beyond the more common terra nullius colonial justification, although that is also present
(Braverman, 2009). Secondly, it serves an important symbolic purpose in terms of buildings a
common understanding of the landscape that is in line with pioneering Zionist self-image of Jewish
Settlers fighting nature and a hostile Arab presence to redeem the land, and themselves (Zerubavel,
1996). Lastly, as Mr Lowdermilk and others like him have shown, it has great appeal in rallying
support abroad and gaining sympathy for the Zionist project.
 The caption in Hebrew reads “Redeem the Land” in the imperative. The six fruits shown are
those mentioned in the biblical description of Palestine: “a land of wheat and barley, of
vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey.” The Jewish National
Fund produced this poster, among many, to raise funds and encourage Jewish immigration
to Israel. A common feature of these posters is the absence of people, perhaps to confirm the
idea of the land being empty (Liberation Graphics, 2011).

In many respects, Zionism is not very different from other nationalist and state-building
movements, particularly in their effort to modernize agriculture. That said, many groups within
Zionism wanted to identify with the past and with pre-modern modes of living, but the route of
rapid modernization was taken, in part, to distinguish the Zionist project from the pre-modern Arab
presence (Rabinowitz, 2004). Russian idealization of the Tolstoyan pure peasant – identified as the
Palestinian Fellah - ran deep in some factions of the Zionist movement, who saw working the land
as a key element of redeeming the Jewish soul, not just redeeming the land (Braverman, 2009;
Hedva Ben-Israel, 2003). In a sense, this is one of the contradictions of Zionism, a movement
claiming a direct connection with the past, while coming from a very strong modernist European
ideological and cultural tradition, and having the explicit goal of creating a new nation.

Jewish National Fund poster from the 1930s

encouraging support for the Jewish community in
the Land of Israel
How the Pine Became a Zionist Pioneer
Afforestation had been a key element of Zionist land policy since the pre-state period, and continues
to be very important today. The importance of afforestation to the Zionist project can be seen in the
following statement by the of the state of Israel, and its first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion.
Made at the opening session of the Israeli Knesset in1951 (Cohen, 1993: 61):

“We must plant hundreds of thousands of trees on an area of five million dunams1, a quarter
of the area of the state. We must wrap all the mountains of the country and their slopes in
trees, all the hills and stony lands that will not succeed in agriculture, the dunes of the
coastal valley, the dry lands of the Negev, to the east and south of Bear Sheva...We must also
plant for security reasons, along all the borders, along all the roads, routes and paths, around
public and military buildings and facilities...We will not be faithful to one of the two central
goals of the state – making the wilderness bloom – if we make do with only the needs of the
hour whose return is close and not do in our generation projects which will be a blessing for
all the generations to come. We are a state at the beginning of repairing the corruption of
generations, corruption which was done to the nation and corruption which was done to the
land...”

There are many reasons why tree planting is such an important aspect of Israeli collective identity,
and at the same time, land policy. Some of these reasons, and their implications, will be discussed in
detail; however, it is impossible to discuss afforestation in Israel and Mandate Palestine (or indeed,
any aspect of Zionist/ Israeli land policy and environmental policy) without first introducing a key
player in Zionist and later Israeli land policy – namely the Jewish National Fund (JNF). It is also
important to provide some context on the history of afforestation in Palestine/ Israel.

A Brief History of the JNF

Forests took on an important role early in the development of the Zionist movement. Theodore
Herzl, the founding father of modern Zionism, called on Jews all around the world to donate for an
effort to plant 10 million trees in Palestine. He had expected Palestine to have many forests, like his
native Austria, but discovered he was far off the mark following his only visit to Palestine (Cohen,
1993). This rhetoric led to the founding of the JNF in 1901, as a body to provide a framework to
purchase land for the Jews in Palestine.

The JNF has evolved considerably since its creation in the early 20 th century. Firstly it became the
foremost land acquisition body for the Zionist effort in Palestine and was also involved in
afforestation during the mandate period. It’s role changed radically with the creation of the State of
Israel in 1948, but has remained completely loyal to Zionist goals (Cohen, 1993; Falah, 1996; Pape,
2006). They main trigger for this change was the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians,
who were expelled or fled but were not allowed to return by Israeli authorities, leaving behind an
estimated 418 towns and villages spread across the country.

Today, the JNF operates as a semi-governmental organization in Israel with very large land
ownership (around 13% of all land in Israel). Most of this land was transferred to the JNF by the
state using a number of legal manoeuvres aimed at changing the legal status of land previously
owned by Palestinians to Israeli control. This was essentially done by declaring the land “absentee
property”, since its owners have left it. The fact that some of the owners stayed within the borders
1 A dunam is an Ottoman unit of land area still in use in Israel/Palestine. It equates to 1,000 square meters.
of Israel and became Israeli citizens did not change the status of the land, rather Israel invented the
paradoxical legal category of “present absentees”. The upshot of the process was that the bulk of
land owned by Arabs prior to 1948 fell into the category of “Israel Lands”, much of this owned by
the JNF. Conveniently, this land was guaranteed not to return to Palestinian ownership, as the JNF
charter bans it from ever leasing or selling land to non-Jews (Forman and Kedar, 2004). Although
this is a contentious legal issue in Israel today, so far, the JNF's right not to lease land to be used by
non-Jews has been one of the key mechanisms of discrimination against the Palestinian minority in
Israelii.

The first large scale project undertaken by the JNF was the Hertzl Forest in 1908. The project was
financed by donors and took place on land purchased from Arab landholders near Lod. The forest
was planned as a mixed orchard of mainly olives, fruit trees, and some other species. The Hertzl
Forest project failed due to administrative issues, and the slow growth of the trees. However as a
result of the experience the JNF switched almost completely to planting fast growing forest species
such as pine, cypress and eucalyptus – species that grow more quickly and have a higher survival
rate compared to olives and fruit trees (Cohen, 1993; Amir and Rechtman, 2006).

Today, The JNF also manages the majority of forested areas in Israel. Historically, it has played a
key role in afforestation in Mandate Palestine, and an even greater role after the creation of the state
of Israel (Cohen, 1993; Amir and Rechtman, 2006). The JNF, throughout it's history, has planted an
estimated 240 million trees, causing huge changes to the environment, and creating an
“institutionalized landscape” that is set apart from the surrounding mediterranean vegetation (Amir
and Rechtman, 2006), and from Palestinian cultivated landscapes (Braverman, 2008). The JNF has
also been a key player in Israeli policies that lead to the erasure and overwriting of Palestinian
spaces, particularly abandoned villages and the continued dispossession of Palestinians (Pape, 2006;
Benvenisti, 2002; Falah, 1996).

The Purpose of Planting

The reasons cited in the literature the extensive afforestation effort are complex and range from the
completely mundane, such as providing work for recent immigrants and as public works
programmes (Amir and Rechtman, 2006), to highly symbolic such a (re)creating the connection
between Jewish people in the diaspora and the land (Braverman, 2009; Long, 2008),
commemorating Jewish national icons (Zerubavel, 1996). Moreover, planting was used , to great
effect, to quickly change and obscure what was a Palestinian landscape (Benvenisti, 2002; Pape,
2006; Falah, 1996; ) and to support land acquisition by the Zionist movement and later the State of
Israel, through restricting Palestinian land use. Interestingly, ecological or land use justification for
planting, although present in some of the literature (particularly Amir and Rechtman, 2006; Cohen,
1993) seem to be only a minor part of the story. Most of the literature paints a picture of
afforestation policy being completely subordinate to national and political goals (Braverman, 2008;
Cohen, 1993; Falah, 1996).

It is worth noting that this close link political goals, afforestation and geography is personified in
Josef Weitz, who served for years as the director of afforestation at the JNF (Cohen, 1993). He was
also one of the first Zionist leaders to call for the expulsion of Palestinians to make room for a
Jewish state (Pape, 2006), as well as being one of the most active members of the committee set up
to create a Hebrew map of Palestine by replacing Arabic names with Hebrew ones (Benvenisti,
2002)iii. This relationship between ethnic cleansing, official cartography and forest policy lends
more credibility to the claims of some historians that afforestation was one component of an
integrated effort intended to erase signs of Palestinian presence and create a new physical landscape
that is entirely Israeli/ Zionist.
There are numerous examples of the practice of afforestation, or the creation of park or recreational
areas to overwrite Palestinian landscapes. An estimated 120 parks and forests in Israel are on the
sites of destroyed Palestinian villages. One high profile case within the 1948 borders of Israel
involves the village of Bir'am, A Christian Palestinian village near the border with Lebanon. The
residents were asked to leave the village and told they will be allowed to return, but were not.
However, they stayed within the borders of Israel, becoming Israeli citizens. The villagers have
been attempting to return to the village ever since, and in the 50s even had their right recognized by
Israeli courts. Yet, in 1953 the village houses were demolished and bombed from the air to prevent
their return. Due to their status as “present absentees”, their lands in the village have been
expropriated by the state and transferred to the JNF, which in turn leased some of the land to Jewish
villages in the area, creating a park on the site of the village itself. Interestingly, the only building in
the park that is marked is a ruined 3 rd century synagogue, while the remaining traces of the village
and its church are ignored (Weaver, 2009). A notable example of what Falah (1996) calls a reverse
palimpsest – the process by which features from certain periods (Jewish, Roman or Crusader) are
emphasized, while more recent elements of the landscape, those signifying Palestinian presence,
are ignored or obscured.

A well documented case of the process of expulsion, destruction and afforestation is the case of the
villages of Latrun, an outcrop of territory north of Jerusalem that remained under Jordanian rule in
1948, but was considered a part of the strategic Jerusalem Corridor. The majority of Palestinians
living in this area were forced to leave in 1948, and the area where their villages stood is now a
series of JNF forests and parks (Cohen, 1993). The fact that the Latrun remained under Jordanian
rule was considered an anomaly that needed to be corrected, and when Israel took control of the
area in 1967 its leadership decided to expel the residents of three Palestinian villages in the area –
Imwas, Yalo and Beit Nuba. The thousands of residents were ordered to march to Ramallah on foot
and were not given a chance to retrieve their belongings (Benvenisti, 2002).

The villages were later raised, and in 1973 a forested park – called Canada Park was created in the
area. It was funded by donations to the Canadian branch of the JNF (which enjoyed tax-exempt
charity status in Canada). The four photos below shows the change in the landscape in Imwas from
village to forest over a period of 30 years (Palestine Remembered, 2011).
Location of the Village in 1968, one year after the expulsion of its residents

Village of Imwas, 1958

Location of the village in 1968, 1 year after the expulsion of its residents
Location of the village in 1978, 11 years after the expulsion of its residents
Location of the village in 1988, 21 years after the expulsion of its residents

It is worth noting that similar processes continue today `and have not been confined to war
situations. The Beduin village of Al Araqib in Israel's southern Negev dessert is one of 40 Beduin
villages in the area that are not recognized by Israeli authorities despite the Beduins having
ancestral claims on the land. This month (February 2011) Al Araqib has again been demolished with
the explicit purpose of planting a JNF forest on its location (Amnesty International, 2011).

Use or Lose it

One of the legacies of Ottoman law in Palestine/ Israel is the legal principle that use of the land
constitutes a claim of ownership, unless there is a stronger counter-claim on the land. In the period
of early Zionist settlement, this meant that it was very important for JNF and other Jewish land
owners to demonstrate land use in some way in order to stop other forms of land use and conflicting
claims of ownership arising from such land use. This Ottoman law was further strengthened by the
protection that the British Mandate authorities afforded forests and trees, making fast growing pine
forests a very effective way of holding tracts of land, and creating areas of continuous Jewish land
use (in combination with agriculture and settlement) in Mandate Palestine. After the creation of the
state in 1948, the purpose of planting shifted somewhat, but planting forests to ensure that
Palestinian lands taken over by the state do not revert to being used by Palestinian, thus
guaranteeing that no claims of ownership would arise due to renewed land use. A related objective
was also constrict the growth of the remaining Arab localities (Cohen, 1993)

The reasons for planting in the West Bank, particularly the Jerusalem periphery bear similarities to
the historical planting conducted by the JNF in previous years. Planting takes place to assert the
status of the land as state land, often on the fault line between this leads to competition with local
Palestinians who expand their use of the land in order to prevent the state from cementing its status
as state land through afforestation. The JNF officially has the mandate to only plant in state land
(declared by the process described previously), but as JNF observes an increase in Palestinian land
use after afforestation activity, it responds by asking the government to declare further areas as state
lands. These can be adjacent or unrelated to the original planting mandate. This in turn escalates
Palestinian attempts to preserve their ownership of the land, leading to a war of planting (Cohen,
1993; Braverman, 2008).

However, the underlying legal logic applied to the West Bank was different. After Israel occupied
the territory in 1967, the process of formal land registration that started under Jordanian rule was
frozen (Cohen, 1993). The Israeli authorities, expanded the interpretation of Ottoman law in the
West Bank to a principle that all land, unless proven cultivated, is state land by default. This legal
practice allowed Israel to seize large swathes of Land in the West Bank. The Palestinian response
was often to plant Olive groves to ensure legible and clear cultivation of the land, and therefore
protect it from being declared as state land. On the other hand, pine forests were interpreted by the
Israeli authorities as uncultivated land, and therefore are considered state land. This situation has led
to an intensification of this war of planting (Braverman, 2008).

Cohen (1993) touches on the cultural aspect of the land conflict – classifying the area as state land
is contentious because, in part, conflicting standards of evaluation are applied by the parties. On the
one hand, Israel imposes a Western legalistic understanding of ownership, demanding forms of
proof that may be acceptable in many countries with rigorous land registration regimes. However,
Palestinians villager are unfamiliar with this approach and do not know how to deal with the
demands of the Israeli system. When confronted with a hostile judiciary armed with aerial
photographs, archival material, and many resources, Palestinians fall back to the claim that the land
is Palestine and therefore belongs the Palestinians, and no amount of regulation imposed by Israel
will change that fact.

Braverman (2008) in her more recent study on the topic discusses the significance of the use of
aerial photographs to establish cultivation and how this has shaped the planting strategies. Trees are
much more legible and visible in aerial photographs that are extensively used in Israeli courts
dealing with land cases. Therefore planting an olive orchard is an effective way of demonstrating
cultivation within the Israeli legal system,

Trees are People Too

Due to the complex processes described above, and to the symbolism and use of trees in the
conflict, they have become part of the nation, combatants, and in some cases, enemies to be fought
and destroyed. Both sides of the conflict use trees as signposts to mark their ownership of the
landscape, but also attack and destroy trees belonging to the other landscape.

Palestinian arson attacks against pine forests have been part of the conflict since the Arab revolt
against the British Mandate authorities in 1936, and have also occurred during the first Palestinian
intifada in the late 80s (Cohen, 1993; Zerubavel, 1996). While the Israeli authorities have uprooted
tens of thousands of trees from Palestinian orchards in the West Bank. Moreover, Israeli settlers
have repeatedly attacked Palestinian agricultural land with fire, physical attack and in some cases
using herbicides (Cohen, 1993). Braverman (2008) includes an interesting description of one of her
interviewees – an Israeli inspector responsible for protecting lands declared as state lands from
“invasion” by Palestinian trees. The interviewee talks of Palestinian trees as enemies and portrays
their uprooting as a patriotic act that protects national lands, and expresses frustration with the
bureaucratic process that needs to be completed before uprooting trees is approved.

For Israelis, planting trees remains a symbol of national revival redemption and the planting on the
holiday of Tu Bishvat continues to be an important patriotic ritual in contemporary Israeli culture
(Zerubavel, 1996). Donations to the JNF for tree planting provide a way for the Jewish diaspora to
establish a sense of connection to Israel and a sense of rootedness in the land, this also includes the
tree planting certificates for newborns, among other methods of donation (Long, 2009). Trees have
also been used to commemorate the lives of children who were murdered during the holocaust and
Jewish communities that were destroyed. Forests are also planted in the memory of Israeli national
heroes. (Cohen, 1993; Zerubavel, 1996).

The importance of forests to the Israeli collective identity manifests itself in literature and in visual
culture. Particularly in literature, there are examples of the portrayal of forests as having a shared
destiny with Zionist pioneers – a mutual interdependence between the forest and the Zionist settler
that is threatened by Arab arson (Zerubavel, 1996). In 1936, when a Jewish-planted forest was set
on fire during the Arab revolt, posters with yizkor, the Jewish prayer for the dead were distributed in
memory of the trees (Zerubavel, 1996). Israeli responses to the deliberate burning of forest by
Palestinians is always extreme, with expressions of moral outrage, accusations of betrayal, and
threats of extreme reprisal, even from sectors of Israeli society, such as kibbutzim, that are
comparative dovish and moderate (Cohen, 1993; Braverman, 2008). The official response to a
series of forest fires around Jerusalem during the first intifada was an operation called “Tree for a
Tree” (borrowing from the Biblical phrasing, Eye for an Eye), which involved the planting of ten
trees for each one burned, and a plan to protect forests that brought together the ministries of police,
interior, defence, and (perhaps the odd one out) agriculture (Cohen, 1993).

As for Palestinians, trees are also very important symbolically. The olive tree in particular, seen as
hardy and long lived has become to symbolize Palestinian attachment to the land (Braverman 2008,
Weaver, 2009). Trees also serve as signposts of memory fruit trees and cactus plants, associated
with Palestinian villages, remain when those villages are destroyed and “stand out, functioning as
texts to be read, signposts for the reconstruction and maintenance of the refugees’ mental maps”
(Weaver, 2009: 4).

Conclusion
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a conflict over land, in terms of physical presence, ownership and
sovereignty. But it is also a conflict of competing claims over the history of the land, and its future,
competing claims of indigenousness and stewardship. In any case, the existence of trees that denote
Palestinian or Israeli presence can be seen as projections of the conflict on to the landscape, and
trees become soldiers in the war, and representatives of the nation.

Israel has been consistently winning the fight, and afforestation has been part of a constellation of
legal, social, military, environmental and planning practices that have helped Israel cement its
victory. Afforestation has been particularly important in transforming landscapes to make them
more 'Jewish' and erase their Palestinian past. Afforestation as part of a wider narrative of
environmental stewardship and redemption of the land has also been a major legitimizing narrative
for the Zionist movement, and has enabled it in some cases to 'greenwash' Palestinian dispossession
– with JNF donations being a prime example of this. What could possibly be bad about planting
trees? But Palestinian resistance is there (albeit to a very limited degree) – the burning of pine
forests is a symbolic gesture, but the planting of Olive groves has been effective in maintaining
Palestinian land use and ownership if the West Bank. However, the greatest act of Palestinian
resistance seems to be in the past: That of maintaining and strengthening their claim to
indigenousness by creating a counter-map of the land that emphasizes the Palestine that was.
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i Lake Huleh and its surrounding wetlands was a unique ecosystem inhabited by Palestinian who lived off the
marshland through a combination of keeping herds of water buffalo and geese, weaving papyrus baskets, and small-
scale cultivation. From the modernist perspective of the Zionist movement, the lake was seen as a reservoir of
malaria and a waste of water. The lake was drained in the 1950s with the water being diverted to irrigation in the
Negev desert and the drained marshes were used for intensive agriculture. By all accounts, the project was an
ecological disaster and the peat soil lost its fertility very quickly. However, from a nation-building perspective it was
a resounding victory for Zionism that demonstrated control over nature and created a uniquely Zionist space that
would be unrecognisable to the Palestinian refugees in Syria and Lebanon who used to live in the Huleh basin. See
Blind Modernism and Zionist Waterscapes, by Anton, for more on the history of this project.

ii The issue of who belongs the the Palestinian minority in Israel is not straightforward, but here it refers to
Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. Palestinians in East Jerusalem, that was annexed to Israel unilaterally in 1967
are not citizens, but have permanent residence status. Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli sovereignty,
but their legal rights and freedom of movement are severely curtailed, and those in Gaza live in limbo between
Israeli sovereignty and whatever will come after it. This is a very complicated issue that will probably need several
essays to discuss fully, but it is necessary to detail the different categories.

iii The creation of the Hebrew map is a very interesting topic worthy of further research. Renaming elements of the
landscape is a common feature in areas being contested by two national movements and there are many examples of
it in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Greece (Hedva Ben-Israel, 2003). The creation of a Hebrew
map, the way new Hebrew names were chosen, and the gradual erasure of signifiers of Palestinian presence from the
official cartography were all interesting aspects of this process, and while they do relate to the topic of this paper,
there is little scope to discuss them in detail, but see (Re)naming the landscape: The formation of the Hebrew map of
Israel 1949–1960, By Maoz and Azaryahu for a fascinating introduction on the subject.