Maps with a Mission Post-1967

Post-1967, the “peace camp,” what are considered left-wing peace and human rights organizations, also actively used maps to put forth their geopolitical visions of an Israeli territory delimited by international law, while drawing on scientific cartographic conventions. Maps produced by the “peace camp” are informed by a range of very different discourses, which include concerns about Israel’s occupation strategies, its compliance or non-compliance with international law, its demography, the need for the recognition of Palestinians’ human rights and historical presence in the region, and the feasibility of particular territorial solutions. Organizations such as Peace Now, B’Tselem, the Geneva Initiative, and Zochrot (Remembering) used various visual and textual signifiers to communicate concerns in regard to territorial annexation, to propose territorial compromises for possible peace negotiations, and to challenge Hebrew topography by retracing alternative Arab topography in the search for historical justice. Such maps tended to invoke legal as well as scientific standards to give the maps authority and persuasive power in the attempt to increase the legitimacy of the geopolitical visions put forth.

Map-Making and State-Building

During the 20th century, surveying and mapping became vital tools for states; and colonizers used them to know and claim the land. The Mandate of Palestine’s Survey of Palestine surveyed parts of historic Palestine. Their modernist ethos to register the land converged with Zionist visionaries to make it their own. With the Hagannah looting the Survey of Palestine, the Israeli state-in-the making had access to cartographic material which helped them win the 1948 war and facilitated their statecraft. Post-1948, the Survey of Israel designed a new unified triangulation system, enabling the production of maps. The Israeli state also introduced a novel land tenure system. The seemingly imprecise land allocation practices common during the Ottoman Empire were pitted against a technocratic, modernist conception of land ownership, that, by virtue of its implementation, dispossessed many Arab landholders. However, enforcement of technocratic regulations depends on humans. Indeed, the process of land registration reveals how surveyors who would go to villages to ascertain land rights were the human and, at times, a weak link in doing so. Nevertheless, at the end of this process, 93% of land had become Israeli state land. The transformation in the land regime in Israel/Palestine thus attests to how new legal precepts in tandem with science and technology helped establish a modern, territorially defined state. While the Western scientific and legal paradigm enhanced the transfer of land, it also seemingly legitimized and depoliticized the new land regime, making it seem part of the natural order of things and an inevitable outcome of modernity.

Conclusion

The story of the establishment of the Israeli nation-state exemplifies some of the main ingredients of nation-state building in the 20th century. Israel came into being where historical narratives, national imaginations, scientific and technical know-how, human and material resources, and national and international support intersected. In the struggle to establish a nation-state, cartography had become crucial for both building the nation, and for building the state. With the 1993 Oslo Interim Agreement, Palestinians also started to survey and map the territory allocated to a future State of Palestine, with the expectation that they would, within five years, have full sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza. For Palestinians to survey, map, and plan for the territory is crucial for establishing the legitimacy and functionality of a future state. At the same time, their attempt to map their land, as well as the production of various alternative maps by various organizations, are challenging the top-down mappings of the Israeli state and its dominant geopolitics. As boundaries continue to be controversial and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains intractable and unresolved, Israel and Palestine provide different governmental and non-governmental organizations, interest groups, and political protagonists ongoing fodder for persistent map wars. The focus on nationally based cartographic discourses in Israel/Palestine thus provides insights into the complexity, fissures, and frictions within internal political debates, but it also reveals the persistent power of the nation-state as a framework for forging identities, citizens, and alliances.

Map-Making for Building the Palestinian Nation-State

Throughout the 20th century, the rise of the Zionist national movement paralleled the strengthening of the Palestinian national movement. The struggle of the Israelis and the Palestinians over Palestine also manifested itself in the history of surveying and mapping, and their respective rights to do so. After the Hagannah looted the Survey of Palestine, the Palestinians were left with few cartographic resources. The lack of maps of their own weakened their negotiating position during peace negotiations with Israel. Yet, it was not until the 1993 Oslo Accords that Palestinians had a mandate to develop the territory under their jurisdiction. Their attempt to establish the State of Palestine went hand in hand with their effort to survey and map their territory. Consequently, in an effort to produce maps of their own, various governmental and non-governmental organizations produced maps for both building the nation and establishing a state. Logo maps of historical Palestine served to enhance national belonging; and cartographic reconstruction of pre-1948 Palestine retraced an Arab toponomy of the land. Concurrently, maps for building the State of Palestine delineated the territory in line with international law, strengthening Palestinians’ case for territorial sovereignty. Such maps are also vital for governance, land allocation, and development. The lack of territorial sovereignty, restricted access to aerial photos at a suitable scale (due to Israeli restrictions), largely donor-funded mapping projects as well as the lack of a national mapping agency, however, encumber Palestinian mapping efforts to establish a state, that could ascertain the rights of otherwise stateless people.

Why Maps Matter

Maps—whether they are on paper or online—have become ubiquitous. While maps used to be the purview of a trained cadre of experts and came about with the rise of the nation-state, mapping practices have increasingly become democratized. Now everyone with mapping software and an internet connection can engage in map-based activism and put forth particular geopolitical visions. Maps produced in a conflict region like Israel/Palestine exemplify how various top-down and bottom-up mapping practices speak to how maps can become part of map wars over how to present a territory and its boundaries. Israel/Palestine’s map wars also exemplify how visual rhetoric can become a powerful tool in the war of maps. In order to trace the social history of mapping practices in Israel/Palestine we use various theoretical tools drawn from Science and Technology Studies, sociology, and geography and we draw on archival material, in-depth interviews, and ethnographies to trace the historical significance of maps in Israel/Palestine.

Constructing Israel’s Borders

Border Studies scholars have increasingly focused attention on borders as sites of investigation. Borders are particularly significant in the case of Israel/Palestine, as many of these boundaries are contested. The mapping of Israel’s borders are where top-down mappings by colonial powers or clueless politicians intersect with complex regional realities. The history of border-making between Israel and Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and the West Bank all speak to what makes for “good” borders and better neighbors. The infamous Green Line exemplifies how a thoughtless delineation of the boundary by a bad map-reader with a thick pencil can reverberate across time and space for decades. Generally, delineations without regard for local conditions only fuel disputes over territory and can, in conjunction with ineffective national and bi-nation policies, negatively impact cross-border regions, economic development, and social interconnectivity across the border region. With many of Israel’s boundaries in flux over the years, the Survey of Israel tends to emphasize not only the temporary status of boundaries but also favors the representation of Israeli territorial claims. The stories of Israel’s many boundaries reveal that there is no technocratic solution to boundary-making. Instead, stable boundaries were based on delineating them with the local in mind, bi-national negotiations between policymakers and politicians, and bi-national teams of surveyors and experts for whom science could become a tool for establishing trust and engage in better diplomacy.

Map-Making and Nation-Building

Jewish organizations and Israeli institutions, before and after the establishment of Israel in 1948, produced various maps that fostered an “imagined community” and helped build the state. The Jewish National Fund, in particular, become a powerful socializing agent into notions of territory. Its widely disseminated Blue Box helped brand the territory and territorialize Jewish identity. Moreover, after 1948, the newly appointed Governmental Names Committee established a Hebrew toponomy of the land. Yet top-down naming practices often encountered bottom-up resistance by local municipalities, as ideological directives would mix with local politics. At the same time, the Israeli atlas became a powerful representation of Israeli’s national story, reconstructing its history, its achievements, and its modern prowess. Last, at that time, various political parties also used maps to put forth different visions for a new society, a new human being, and a new state commanding a yet to be defined territory.

Imagining Nations and Making States

It is central for international relations to support state- and nation-building; “nation-building” entails forging common national identities, and “state-building” consists of establishing infrastructures to enhance governance. This chapter examines some of the ways that nation-states have been made—through narratives, ideas, and practices as well as through technologies and infrastructures—and how this has been reproduced in Israel/Palestine. Various disciplines were recruited to the service of nation-state building. Cartography helped stake out a territory, history and archaeology were used to make claims on it, and geographers were called on to formulate a new geography of the new homeland. At the same time, the Zionist vision and a Jewish metaculture as well as the quasi-state institutions of the Yishuv contributed to the establishment of the Israeli state. Throughout the 20th century, the high-modernist state used science and technology to take on its people as a state project. Israel exemplifies how the use of science and technology contributed to the belief that a society, its people, and its territories could be known, managed, and improved. Science and technology charted grand new futures for societies, furthering scientific and technical frontiers, expanding the power of states, and leaving behind all those people and lands that were not considered part of the state-building process.