Socio-Legal Formations of Person and Property In Jerusalem

Keywords: settler-colonialism, legal geography, dispossession, Palestine, Jerusalem, property, political geography, land
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Palestinians in Jerusalem are faced with a specific set of socio-legal forms that govern both their status and property with the aim of dispossession. This is due to settler-colonial demographic aims by the Jerusalem municipality for a ratio of 70:30 Jews to Arabs in the city. Many policies and laws serve this aim. I examine the ‘center of life policy’ and the Absentee Property Law of 1950 and how they govern status and property of Palestinians in the city. In 2022, the Jerusalem municipality required land registration in order to obtain a building permit. In effect this has started a silent bureaucratic war on the Palestinians of Jerusalem with a high risk of dispossession.

I show how the risk of ‘absentee’ haunts ability to inherit, sell and develop land. Bureaucracies that govern maintenance of Palestinian status in the city require proof of property, creating a need for property deeds to maintain status. I argue that status and property are both kept deliberately precarious and intertwined for Palestinians in Jerusalem, enabling a widespread theft of property ownership from Palestinians and rendering countless Palestinians without status.

This paper is based on months of fieldwork in Jerusalem and semi-structured interviews with Palestinian lawyers, architects, residents, and civil society groups in the city. Through the ethnographic focus, I highlight the process of land registration, how Palestinians attempt to navigate it, and the chaos in causes in social relations in the ongoing Palestinian struggle to remain.