The Struggle for Land Under Israeli Law An Architecture of Exclusion
with Dr. Hadeel Abu Hussein
The Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions
Wednesday, June 14, 2023
at 14:15-15:45
Abstract
This book explores and analyses the land law through the lenses of international law, colonisation and legal geography in general, and in particular, it aims to provide a comprehensive and scholarly examination of the land law for Palestinian under Israeli law. It focuses on land law and provides an overview of the right to land under international law, followed by a background of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Subsequently, exploring the underpinning of the land regime in Israel, while focusing on land expropriation and forced housing eviction.
The land is one of the core resources of human existence, development and activity. Therefore, it is also a key basis of political power and of social and economic status. Land regimes and planning regulations play a dynamic role in deciding how competing claims over resources will be resolved. According to the legal geography theory, law and space are significant aspects of one another, and they examine, among other things, how spatial ordering impacts legal regimes and how legal rules form social and human space. How has the law shaped the development of social and political space? Examining the state of Israel provides an example for ‘filling the gaps and silences in dominant historical narratives, and understanding of the historical background to the creation of the legal system towards empowering the ideologically strong nationalism domination of one ethnic group’. This had led to the superimposing of a Jewish space onto the state’s space accompanied by attempts to minimise those associated with the Palestinian presence.
Against this backdrop, this book endeavours to understand the spatial strategies adopted by Israel to organise the entire territorial expanse of the country as Jewish, while excluding Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of East Jerusalem from the landscape. This systematic nature and process of marginalisation is mapped out in various ways across the civil, political, and socio-economic landscape.
More details about the book: https://www.routledge.com/The-Struggle-for-Land-Under-Israeli-Law-An-Architecture-of-Exclusion/Hussein/p/book/9781032044019
Dr. Hadeel Abu Hussein, is a post-doctoral fellow at the Minerva Centre for the Rule of Law under Extreme Condition at the University of Haifa since October 2021. She holds a PhD in Law from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Previously, she was a Senior research fellow and consultancy advisor at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and Rule of Law, Heidelberg, Germany, for the Middle East & North Africa projects. In particular: “Strengthening the new Constitutional Court in Morocco”. The projects focus on supporting justice institutions, governments and parliaments as well as non-state actors in various areas of law, such as public international law, the protection of human rights, international fair trial standards, international humanitarian law, comparative constitutional law and administrative law. Also, she was a Research Visitor and Bonavero Early Career Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Faculty of Law, Mansfield College, University of Oxford. In addition, she was a Postdoctoral research fellow at the Middle East Centre, St. Antony’s College, Oxford University Hadeel studied for her LL.B and LL.M degrees at Tel Aviv University; she is a member of the Israel Lawyers Bar. Prior to starting her doctorate studies in Ireland, she completed an Executive Education, ‘Leadership Program for Legal and Business Women, Legal and Business Fellowship’ at the Wharton Business School and Penn law at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. While at the National University of Ireland she was a Doctorate Fellow, where she taught international human rights law and minority rights. Following that, she spent time as a postgraduate visitor at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany. Currently, her research is dealing with public international law, human rights law and comparative constitutionalism. Exploring the transformative nature of law itself, as it was applied as a critical instrument in the colonial context, it is an attempt to analyse the extended discourse on law, power and colonialism. Hadeel’s research focuses on international legal discourse in the Middle East, Israel/Palestine conflict, human rights, social justice and decoloniality. Her work is enlightened by and engages with Third World Approaches to International Law. Alongside her research, Hadeel practices human rights law and constitutional law in Israel/Palestine, and MENA region where she still collaborating with human rights organisations international civil-society organisations as legal advisor and volunteer. Her book, The Struggle for Land Under Israeli Law, ”An Architecture of Exclusion”, came out with Routledge in November 2021.
