ABSTRACT
From the outset, control over territory has been a central component of the ArabIsraeli conflict. Processes of territorial control first emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century with the nascent Zionist project, which aimed to establish a Jewish homeland/nation-state in Palestine. These processes are still very much at work today (Kimmerling 1983). The Zionist project was facilitated by a vision and narrative of a return to the Jewish “Promised Land” in Palestine, known in Hebrew as Eretz Israel (Land of Israel). Reviving the Jewish people meant fusing Jewish religious and national identities, and focused on the historic territory of Palestine and the ingathering of “Diaspora” Jewry in the Holy Land. Actualizing this new-old Jewish dream required the creation of an activist elite, the generation of new terminology, the development of new institutions, and the acquisition of a national territory. Consolidating the new Zionist territory, in turn, required the appropriation, control, possession, and purchase of land (Sandberg 2007), as well as the development of legal and administrative mechanisms and tools. Together these functioned as a matrix of control and surveillance, a fundamental precondition for the success of the Zionist project.
