Whose Land? Land Tenure in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Palestine
The present article aims to uncover the different meanings attached to land ownership in Palestine during the late Ottoman and British Mandate eras and to show how a ‘modern’ understanding of ownership was imposed on the local population, particularly the fellahin (peasants), without a consideration of their needs and traditions. Many widespread claims are challenged, first and foremost the one according to which, at the time of the partition of Palestine (1947), ‘over 70 percent’ of it did not ‘legally’ belong to the local Arab majority, but to the British Mandate power, an assumption that has had political, cultural and social ramifications that have lasted until the present day.
The Power of the Palestinian Landscape : An exploratory study of the functions of power using aerial image interpretation
The Palestinian region is changing rapidly, with both economic and cultural consequences. One way of approaching this very political process is thru the concept of landscape. By viewing the region ...
Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation: Arab Nationalists and Popular Politics in Mandate Palestine (review)
thinkers identify is that empires of the past took territory and incorporated it, while the United States does not take power projection to such an extent. O’Reilly understands this distinction, but could do more to analyze it. Second, like many thinkers, the author presents a picture of US foreign policy that suggests that America pursues a grand strategy or at least some type of clear strategy in the region. On that score, Reilly sees a type of contingent imperialism as creating an informal empire, based on some imperial techniques of expansion (p. 26). This is interesting, but the author does not do enough to grapple with the possibility that American expansion in the region was not driven by strategy but rather by a reaction to events that it did not foresee and did not handle so well; that it was dragged into the region at certain junctures. The Iranian Revolution, the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iran-Iraq war are just four examples that America was responding to threat, that its policy was shaped more by outside events than by its own designs. For full disclosure, this author has found that the United States did not pursue grand strategy in the region and, therefore, his work leads him to see the region differently than does O’Reilly. Third, as with any book, one can take exception with some empirical analysis. For instance, in explaining why Saddam did not back down during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis, the author notes, without references, that he “refused to believe that the genial Texan could best him on the battlefield” (p. 172). Among other things, we must also consider, based on the evidence, that Saddam believed he would be attacked or harassed even if he withdrew from Kuwait and that the Bush Administration, for a variety of reasons, decided at some point (probably in October 1990) that it preferred war to allowing Saddam to return another day. Of course, in fairness, one needs to sacrifice some detail when producing a broad study of this kind. Fourth, the author could do more to compare the United States to past empires by discussing those empires more. This would help because the author sees the United States as not much different from them. Overall, O’Reilly should be commended for his panoramic and bold analysis of the region. we benefit from detailed, area studies work in the field of world politics, but also from such broad analyses which combine the concerns and goals of internationalists with those of area studies. It is not easy to bridge these fields because the area specialists can raise issues about detail, while the internationalists can raise questions about method, theory, and scope. O’Reilly makes a serious attempt to bridge these areas, and his study should inspire more works of this kind.