Emptied Lands

This book is particularly valuable on a subject that is as complex as it is almost unresearched-namely, how the state formulates different elements that amalgamate politics with history and law in order to legitimize Bedouin land dispossession. Kedar, Amara, and Yiftachel...are able to identify and explain in their historical and legal context the key elements of the state's policy and the court decisions with regard to the Bedouin land issue. -- Morad Elsana People are dispossessed not only with guns and bulldozers, but also with legal practices and strategies. Emptied Lands reveals how the painfully named and legally invoked Dead Negev Doctrine facilitates the continued dispossession of Bedouins in the Negev, the most intense and protracted land dispute within Israel. Drawing from decades of activism and scholarship, Kedar, Amara, and Yiftachel provide a powerful challenge to the doctrine, creating space for better forms of legality. -- Nicholas Blomley [Emptied Lands] confronts us with a direct, scholarly account of one of the main routes to dispossession on which the State of Israel has relied in emptying the Negev of its Palestinian Bedouin residents. This fascinating and well-written book-the result of extensive archival research, verification of sources, and a thorough reading of historical and geographical documents-systematically dismantles the Israeli establishment's claims using a variety of scientific, legal, geographic, planning, and Zionist sources. The uniqueness of the work lies in the presentation of an alternative, geographically based legal property rights study. -- Safa Aburabia Three of the best critical scholars of contemporary Palestine have successfully combined legal, geographical, and political analysis into a forensic study of how Israel has weaponized the law against the most vulnerable of all inhabitants of Palestine, the Bedouins. A remarkable multidisciplinary feat, this book provides an essential understanding of settler colonialism. -- Eyal Weizman, Goldsmiths