‘Terra nullius’ and planning: Land, law and identity in Israel/Palestine

This chapter discusses the relations between planning, land, law and identity. It focuses in particular on the concept of ‘terra nullius’ (TN), land deemed as ‘empty’ of rights, as key to understanding these relations. The empirical focus is on the charged context of Israel/Palestine where the settler Jewish state has extensively used legal and planning tools to seize, control and manage contested indigenous Bedouin lands. Importantly, the TN concept is often used implicitly by policy makers, through the discourses, narratives, norms and practices of hegemonic groups that attempt to seize and control ethnic and racial minorities. Moreover, TN is not limited to reconstruction of the legal past and present, as it also reconstructs the future, mainly through land allocation and urban and regional planning. The legal basis of the denial is Israel’s total refusal to recognise the validity of a pre-state indigenous land system. History, however, tells a different story, in which a well-established indigenous system operated for generations.