THE POLITICAL MAPPING OF PALESTINE Linda Elizabeth Quiquivix A dissertation submitted to ...

194 Pages·2012·1.73 MB·English

THE POLITICAL MAPPING OF PALESTINE
Linda Elizabeth Quiquivix
A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Geography

Chapel Hill
2012

Approved by:

Altha J. Cravey

Banu Gökariksel

John Pickles

Alvaro Reyes

Sara Smith

Jonathan Weiler
ABSTRACT
LINDA QUIQUIVIX: The Political Mapping of Palestine
(Under the direction of Altha J. Cravey)

Debates on the Israel-Palestinian conflict abound. Insofar as these discussions focus on
what peace between Israelis and Palestinians might look like, they often resort to what
the map should look like. Motivated by concerns over how cartographic practices have
become uncritically adopted by the Palestinian movement since the advent of the
“peace process,” this dissertation critically examines the map’s role in producing the
conflict, in hindering a liberatory politics, and in maintaining the current impasse. This
study is largely structured as a genealogy of Palestine’s maps from the nineteenth-
century to the present—an array of mappings produced by a multitude of actors:
colonial, religious, nationalist, statist, diasporic and revolutionary, both from above and
from below. These historical-political excavations are theoretically grounded within the
literature on critical cartography, the production of space, and feminist political
geography. They are examined empirically through archival research, ethnographic
methods, and discourse analysis. This study’s theoretical intervention highlights the
map’s production of Palestine as a space of ownership and control. Its political
intervention points to the map’s role in producing such a conception. For if the ways
that we conceive of space are bound to the politics that we adopt, the map’s ubiquity in
this century-long conflict requires critical examination.

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DEDICATION

for Ayoub Asaliya

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No dissertation or intellectual endeavor is conducted by the efforts of one person. The
office staff in the geography department at UNC—Barbara Taylor Davis, Nell Phillips,
and Dan Warfield—provided this study much of its logistical foundation, but also much
of its emotional fuel through the kindness, generosity, and smiles they shared with me
both in Saunders Hall and while on fieldwork.

:-)

The National Science Foundation, the UNC Graduate School Off-Campus Dissertation
Fellowship, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language Areas Studies
Fellowship in Arabic helped fund this study.

My committee, Altha Cravey, Banu Gökariksel, John Pickles, Alvaro Reyes, Sara
Smith, Jonathan Weiler provided insightful feedback. I am especially thankful for Altha
Cravey’s support throughout my time at UNC, and for her insistence that I follow my
passion in all the work that I do. It made waking up every morning to write this
dissertation an exciting task. Denis Wood was a mentor and an honorary committee
member of sorts. Thanks Denis, for the delightful discussions. Richard Horsley and
Marvin Cheney very generously provided me with insights on the Hebrew Bible. Of
course, any errors are mine and mine alone.

While at UNC, I shared reading groups, laughs, and even frustrations with fellow
graduate students: Houda Abadi, Adam Bledsoe, Chris Courtheyn, Craig Dalton,
Helene Ducros, Mabel Gergan, Liz Hennessy, Atiya Hussein, Liz Mason-Deese, Ali
Neff, Steve Larsen, Tina Mangieri, Carlos Mena, Joseph Palis, Matt Reilly, Alexis
Silver, Tim Stallman, Nathan Swanson, Haruna Suzuki, and Autumn Thoyre.

As a student of the Middle East, I was very lucky to have the resources of the Duke-UNC
Consortium for Middle East Studies. I am especially grateful for the opportunity to study
under Nadia Yaqub, Sarah Shields, Charlie Kurzman, Carl Ernst, miriam cooke and
Rebecca Stein.

I am grateful for having met and befriended Diana Buttu, William Youmans, Nadeem
Muaddi, Fadi Kiblawi, Maytha Alhassen, Emily Antoon, Yaman Salahi, and Fayyad
Sbaihat (and the greater the Sbaihat family!).

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My Arabic teachers cannot go unsung: Nasser Isleem, Ahmad Asfour, and Moulouk
Berry at UNC; Khalil at the Bethlehem Language Center, Salwa at Bethlehem Bible
College, and Ameera and the Center for Jerusalem Studies.

In the field, Rachelle Friesen, Lucy Talgieh and her family, and guys at The Square
(where I used the Internet, wrote, read, ate a lot of arabee shwarma, and savored the scent
of other peoples’ argileh) were some of my daily fixtures in Bethlehem. I look forward to
seeing you all soon, and often.

I will cherish the time spent with Kathy Horsley, Richard Horsley, and Julie Taberman in
Bethlehem while at the Sabeel Conference, and with Mussa, Samar, and Yousuf Al-
Bulushi in Berkeley as I wrote Chapter I.

In Palestine, I was honored to have discussions with Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal
about my work. Mahmoud Muna at the Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem I consider to
be one of Palestine’s great librarians.

To my friends, comrades, and teachers in Aida Camp: Kholoud Ajarma, Salah Ajarma,
Mohammed Alazraq, Nidal Al-Azraq, Amahl Bishara, and Rich Wiles. Mousa Alazzeh,
who was arrested in a raid meters from his house in the Camp as I was finalizing this
dissertation, is now in Ofer Prison, detained indefinitely without charge. You, your
mother, and family are in my thoughts Mousa.

I am indebted in countless ways to Mayssun Sukarieh, whose humanity humbles me.
Yousuf Al-Bulushi and El Kilombo were my great friends, comrades, and teachers in
that other Palestine.

Palestinians, both those in this study and those I haven’t met, keep forcing me to ask
difficult questions about the kind of world I’d like to live in. I don’t know if without my
mother I could have begun to ask, for she was perhaps my first Palestinian teacher. I
know that saying “thank you” cannot repay this debt, but perhaps acting on that
gratitude from here on out can help get me closer.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF FIGURES .................................................................................................... ix
ABBREVIATIONS.......................................................................................................... xi
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1
Research Questions ............................................................................................ 3
Theoretical Framework ...................................................................................... 5
Critical Cartography ....................................................................................... 5
Spatial Theory ................................................................................................ 8
Feminist Political Geography ...................................................................... 11
Methodological Engagements .......................................................................... 14
Data Collection ............................................................................................. 15
Data Analysis ................................................................................................ 16
Dissertation Structure ....................................................................................... 17
CHAPTER I – A Palestine without Palestinians ........................................................ 21
Empire, Science, Myth: The Holy Land in Renaissance Cartography ........... 28
Edward Robinson and the Rise of Biblical Geography ................................... 34
Palestine as the World’s Political Theater ....................................................... 41
The Eastern Question ................................................................................... 43

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Protestant Political Pursuits ......................................................................... 45
The Palestine Exploration Fund’s “Survey of Western Palestine” ................. 48
A Palestine without Palestinians ...................................................................... 56
CHAPTER II – Oslo and the Rise of the Palestinian Cartographic Spirit ............ 59
Israeli Maps, Palestinian Maps ........................................................................ 64
Palestinian Popular Map-Making ................................................................ 73
Mapping the Negotiations ................................................................................ 80
Mapping Territory ........................................................................................ 85
The Territorialist Strategy ............................................................................ 89
The Post-Oslo Cartographic Spirit ................................................................... 91
From Above .................................................................................................. 91
From Below .................................................................................................. 95
Considerations .................................................................................................. 98
CHAPTER III – Art of War, Art of Resistance ....................................................... 103
Art of War ....................................................................................................... 109
Google Earth’s Prehistory .......................................................................... 111
Google Earth and the Nation-State ............................................................ 113
Grounding Google: The Kyl-Bingaman Amendment ............................... 116
Art of Resistance ............................................................................................ 122
Considerations ................................................................................................ 137
CHAPTER IV – A Third Intifada Mental Map ....................................................... 139
The Palestine Question and the Arab Regimes ............................................. 143

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The Break ................................................................................................... 146
Isolations ..................................................................................................... 150
Reconsidering the cartography of struggle .................................................... 151
Spatializing Subjectivity ................................................................................ 160
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 164
Works Cited .................................................................................................................. 167

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TABLE OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Bonaparte’s Palestine ........................................................................... 24
Figure 2: Palaestina vel Terra Sancta .................................................................. 31
Figure 3: Survey of Western Palestine ................................................................ 52
Figure 4: Sykes-Picot ........................................................................................... 55
Figure 5: Mandate Palestine (1923) ..................................................................... 58
Figure 6: Arab Studies Society Map of Palestine (1988) .................................... 60
Figure 7: Reference, Arab Studies Society Map of Palestine (1988) ................. 61
Figure 8: Peel Commission partition plan (1937) ............................................... 66
Figure 9: UN Partition plan (1947) ...................................................................... 68
Figure 10: Armistice lines (1949) ........................................................................ 70
Figure 11: “For the Sake of our Land” (1964) .................................................... 77
Figure 12: Logo - Fatah ........................................................................................ 78
Figure 13: Logo - PFLP ....................................................................................... 79
Figure 15: Arab Ghawarina in Darby’s Nakba Layer ....................................... 126
Figure 16: Palestine Remembered’s layer and sub-layers ................................ 129
Figure 17: Refugees counter-mapping on their own terms on Google Earth ... 131
Figure 18: Palestine Remembered’s flyer for distribution ................................ 136

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Figure 39: 4-Stage Map of Palestinian loss of land .......................................... 152

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