Palestinian counter‐forensics and the cruel paradox of property

Abstract

In disputes between Palestinian landowners and the Israeli state, several Palestinian surveyors in the West Bank use Ottoman‐era deeds to establish preinvasion land claims. Through a distinct practice of counter‐forensics, these surveyors transform landscapes, documents, and local knowledge into evidence of property ownership. They seek to establish the fact of Palestinian ownership before Israeli invasion and to build a legal and political narrative in which the settler state marks a deviation from scientific objectivity, liberal norms, and international political community. Counter‐forensics is part of a living archive of land defense in which property claims are both provisional and universal. As surveyors move through the cruel paradox of property, they engage in an anti‐colonial legal practice that seeks to hold the collective territory of the nation through a technical negotiation over individual plots of land. Their efforts reveal how property rights fail to protect Palestinian land, as well as why these rights remain important for those who defend the land. [property, law, land, surveying, counter‐forensics, settler colonialism, West Bank, Israel/Palestine]

Selling Rural Palestine: Land Devaluation, Ethical Investment, and the Limits of Human Rights

“…Land titling projects extend state power into rural places, creating the legal clarity and security that outside buyers depend on. Second, property ownership is part of the Palestinian struggle against settler colonialism (Alkhalili 2017; Fakher Eldin 2019; Kohlbry 2022). The deployment of private ownership and land purchases to prevent Zionist acquisitions (Fakher Eldin 2008; Mitter 2020) emerged from colonial capitalism and Palestinian liberalism (Seikaly 2015), a tradition that today is being remade through private development, human rights discourse, and neoliberal Palestinian governance.…”