Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T14:15:27.883Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

“Jurisdictional Politics” in the Occupied West Bank: Territory, Community, and Economic Dependency in the Formation of Legal Subjects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Abstract

This article examines the distribution of legal rights in the Israeli occupied West Bank. It argues that legal rights are distributed through a “jurisdictional politics” that tries to stabilize the contingent relationship between political community, territory, and legal subjects. In particular, this jurisdictional politics seeks to delimit the contradictory boundaries of the Israeli state by creating distinct categories of person out of the populations that live and work in the region. These issues are addressed by examining a dispute concerning the jurisdiction of Israeli law over Palestinian workers in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The article ends by arguing that in the context of multiple movements of people, capital, and military force, attention must be paid to the often contradictory ways in which jurisdictional regimes seek to produce particular types of citizens and subjects.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2006 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abel, Richard, and Lewis, Phillip, eds. 1988. Lawyers in Society: The Common Law World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar
Abrams, Phillip. 1988. The Difficulty in Studying the State. Journal of Historical Sociology 1 (1): 5889.Google Scholar
Barzilai, Gad. 2003. Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Google Scholar
Beilin, Yossi. 1999. Touching Peace: From the Oslo Accords to a Final Agreement. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Google Scholar
Benton, Laura. 1999. Colonial Law and Cultural Difference: Jurisdictional Politics and the Formation of the Colonial State. Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (3): 563–88.Google Scholar
Benvenisti, Eyal. 1989. Legal Dualism: The Absorption of the Occupied Territories into Israel. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Post. Google Scholar
Berman, Harold. 1983. Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar
Bernstein, Deborah. 2000. Constructing Boundaries: Jewish and Arab Workers in Mandatory Palestine. Albany: State University of New York Press. Google Scholar
Biggs, Michael. 1999. Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory, and European State Formation. Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (3): 373405.Google Scholar
Birzeit University Development Studies Programme. 2001. Survey No. 2: The Palestinian Intifada and the Peace Process. Birzeit: Birzeit University.Google Scholar
Bisharat, George. 1989. Palestinian Lawyers and Israeli Rule: Law and Disorder in the West Bank. Austin, TX: University of Austin Press. Google Scholar
Bisharat, George. 1992. Transformations in the Political Role and Social Identity of Palestinian Refugees in the West Bank. In Culture Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, Gupta, Akhil and Ferguson, James, eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Google Scholar
Bisharat, George. 1998. Attorneys for the People, Attorneys for the Land: The Emergence of Cause Lawyering in the Israeli Occupied Territories. In Sarat, Austin and Scheingold, Stuart 1998.Google Scholar
Bornstein, Avram. 2001. 2002. Crossing the Green Line Between the West Bank and Israel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Google Scholar
Budeiri, Musa. 1979. The Palestine Communist Party, 1919–1948: Arab and Jew in the Struggle for Internationalism. London: Ithaca Press. Google Scholar
Calavita, Kitty. 2005. Law, Citizenship, and the Construction of (Some) Immigrant “Others.” Law and Social Inquiry 30 (2): 401–20.Google Scholar
Chazan, Naomi. 2000. Towards a Settlement without Settlements. Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture 7 (4): 4651.Google Scholar
Collier, Jane, Maurer, Bill, and Navaz, Lilian Suarez. 1995. Sanctioned Identities: Legal Constructions of Modern Personhood. Identities 2 (1–2): 128.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan, Maurer, Bill, and Yngvesson, Barbara. 2002. In the Mirror: The Legitimation Work of Globalization. Law and Social Inquiry 27 (4): 801–43.Google Scholar
Darian-Smith, Eve. 1999. Bridging Divides: The Channel Tunnel and English Legal Identity in the New Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar
Davis, Uri. 1997. Citizenship and the Search for State: A Comparative Study of Citizenship Legalisation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. Berkshire, UK: Ithaca Press. Google Scholar
Ford, Richard. 1999. Law's Territory (A History of Jurisdiction). Michigan Law Review 97 (4): 843930.Google Scholar
Ford, Richard. 2001. The Boundaries of Race: Political Geography in Legal Analysis. In The Legal Geographies Reader: Law, Space and Power, Blomley, Nicholas, Delaney, David, and Ford, Richard, eds. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Google Scholar
Ghanem, Asad. 1998. State and Minority in Israel: The Case of an Ethnic State and the Predicament of its Minority. Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (3): 428–47.Google Scholar
Graham-Brown, Sarah. 1989. Impact on the Social Structure of Palestinian Society in Aruri, Nasser, ed. Occupation: Israel Over Palestine. Belmont: Association of Arab-American University Graduates Monograph.Google Scholar
Gupta, Akhil, and Ferguson, James, eds. 1997. Culture Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Google Scholar
Hajjar, Lisa. 1995. Authority, Resistance and the Law: A Study of the Israeli Military Courts in the Occupied Territories. Ph.D. diss., Department of Sociology, American University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Hajjar, Lisa. 1997. Cause Lawyering in Transnational Perspective: National Conflict and Human Rights in Israel/Palestine. Law and Society Review 31 (3): 473504.Google Scholar
Hajjar, Lisa. 2005. Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar
Hilterman, Joost. 1991. Behind the Intifada. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar
Hofnung, Menachem. 1996. Democracy, Law and National Security in Israel. Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth. Google Scholar
HPCR. 2004. Review of the Applicability of International Humanitarian Law to the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Harvard Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, International Humanitarian Law Research Initiative. Viewed on June 8, 2005, at http://www.ihlresearch.org.Google Scholar
Israeli Foreign Ministry. 2001. Israeli Settlements and International Law. Statement issued May 14, 2001. Viewed on May 18, 2001, at http://www.israel.orf/mfa.Google Scholar
Israeli Foreign Ministry. 2003. Disputed Territories: Forgotten Facts about the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Jerusalem: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Google Scholar
Kelly, Tobias. 2004. Returning Home? Law, Violence, and Displacement among West Bank Palestinians. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 27 (2): 95112.Google Scholar
Kelly, Tobias. 2005. Law, Culture and Access to Justice Under the Palestinian National Authority. Development and Change 36 (5): 865–86.Google Scholar
Kelly, Tobias. 2006. Documented Lives: Fear and the Uncertainties of Law During the Second Palestinian Intifada. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12 (1).Google Scholar
Kimmerling, Baruch, ed. 1989. The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers. Albany: State University of New York Press. Google Scholar
Kimmerling, Baruch. 2002. Jurisdiction in an Immigrant-Settler Society: The “Jewish and Democratic State.” Comparative Political Studies 35 (10): 1119–44.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar
Lockman, Zackary. 1996. Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948. Austin, TX: University of Austin Press.Google Scholar
Lustick, Ian. 1988. For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. New York: Council on Foreign Relations. Google Scholar
Mamdani, Mahmoud. 1996. Citizenship and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar
Maurer, Bill. 1997. Recharting the Caribbean: Land, Law and Citizenship in the British Virgin Islands. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Google Scholar
Migdal, Joel, with Kohli, Atul and Shue, Vivienne, eds. 1994. State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy. 2002. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar
Mundlak, Guy. 2000. Power-Breaking or Power-Entrenching Law? The Regulation of Palestinian Workers in Israel. Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal 20 (4): 569620.Google Scholar
Navaro-Yashin, Yael. 2003. Life Is Dead Here: Sensing the Political in “No Man's Land.” Anthropological Theory 3 (1): 107–25.Google Scholar
Ong, Aiwha. 2003. Zones of New Sovereignty in Southeast Asia. In Perry and Maurer 2003.Google Scholar
Palestinian Liberation Organization. No Date. Settlements, Permanent Status Issues. Ramallah Negotiations Affairs Department. On file with the author.Google Scholar
Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment. 1998. Plans for a Greater Jerusalem. Ramallah: LAW. Google Scholar
Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment. 2000. The Case of Settlement Workers. Ramallah: LAW. Google Scholar
Peled, Yoav. 1992. Ethnic Democracy and the Legal Construction of Citizenship. American Political Science Review 86 (2): 432–43.Google Scholar
Perry, Richard, and Maurer, Bill, eds. 2003. Globalization Under Construction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Google Scholar
Rabinowitz, Dan. 1992. An Acre Is an Acre Is an Acre? Differentiated Attitudes to Social Space and Territory on the Jewish-Arab Urban Frontier in Israel. Urban Anthropology 21 (1): 6789.Google Scholar
Rabinowitz, Dan. 1997. Overlooking Nazareth: The Ethnography of Exclusion in Galilee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar
Raz-Krakotzkin, Amon. 1998. A Peace Without Arabs: The Discourse of Peace and the Limits of Israeli Consciousness. In After Oslo: New Realities, Old Problems, Giacaman, George and Lonning, Dag Jorund, eds. London: Pluto. Google Scholar
Rosenhek, Zev, and Shalev, Michael. 2000. The Contradictions of Palestinian Citizenship in Israel: Inclusion and Exclusion in the Israeli Welfare State. In Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications, Butenschon, Nils and Davis, Uri, eds. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Google Scholar
Rosen-Zvi, Issachar. 2004. Taking Space Seriously: Law, Space and Society in Contemporary Israel. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Google Scholar
Roy, Sara. 1999. De-Development Revisited: Palestinian Economy and Society Since Oslo. Journal of Palestine Studies 28 (3): 6482.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, and Scheingold, Stuart, eds. 1998. Cause Lawyering: Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar
Shadid, Mahmoud. 1988. Israeli Policy Towards Economic Development in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In The Palestinian Economy: Studies in Development Under Prolonged Occupation, Abed, George, ed. London: Routledge. Google Scholar
Shafir, Gershon, and Peled, Yoav. 1998. Citizenship and Stratification in an Ethnic Democracy. Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (3): 408–27.Google Scholar
Shalev, Michael. 1989. Jewish Organised Labour and the Palestinians: A Study of State/Society Relations in Israel. In Kimmerling 1989.Google Scholar
Shalev, Michael. 1992. Labour and the Political Economy in Israel. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar
Shamgar, Meir, ed. 1982. Military Government in the Territories Administered by Israel, 1967–1980: The Legal Aspects. Jerusalem: The Harry Sacher Institute for Legislative Research and Comparative Law. Google Scholar
Shamir, Ronen. 2001. Power and Identity in the Legal Field: Palestinian-Arab Citizens of Israel. Viewed on December 10, 2003, at http://www.spirit.tau.ac.il/socAnt/shamir/RandRAnne.pdf.Google Scholar
Shamir, Ronen, and Chinski, Sara. 1998. Destruction of Houses and Construction of a Cause: Lawyers and Bedouins in the Israeli Courts. In Sarat and Scheingold 1998.Google Scholar
Shehadeh, Raja. 1988. Occupier's Law: A Study of Israeli Practices in the West Bank and Gaza. Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies. Google Scholar
Shlaim, Avi. 2000. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. London: Penguin. Google Scholar
Smooha, Sami. 1990. Minority Status in an Ethnic Democracy: The Status of the Arab Minority in Israel. Ethnic and Racial Studies 13 (3): 389413.Google Scholar
Steyn, Johan. 2004. Guantanomo Bay: The Legal Black Hole. International and Comparative Law Quarterly 53 (1): 115.Google Scholar
Tamari, Salim. 1981. Building Other People's Homes: The Palestinian Peasant Household and Work in Israel. Journal of Palestine Studies 11 (1): 3166.Google Scholar
Tsemel, Lea. 1989. “Personal Status and Rights.” In Occupation: Israel over Palestine, Aruri, Nasser, ed. Belmont, MA: Association of Arab-American University Graduates.Google Scholar
UNSCO, 2001. The Impact on the Palestinian Economy of Confrontations, Mobility Restrictions and Border Closures, 1 October 2000–31 January 2001. Gaza: United Nations Special Coordinator for the Occupied Territories. Google Scholar
Yesha, Council. 2003. Legality of Jewish Settlements in Yesha. Viewed on November 26, 2003, at http://www.moezetyesha.co.il.Google Scholar
Yiftachel, Oren. 2002. Territory as the Kernel of the Nation: Space, Time and Nationalism in Israel/Palestine. Geopolitics 7 (2): 215–48.Google Scholar