This paper addresses shifting trends in the cartography and ethnography of Palestine in Ottoman military manuals. Ottoman cartography of Palestine has a rich history and resonance with both Islamic and European origins. The earliest sources showing detailed mapping of the Syrian coast were based on actual navigational drawings by well- known geographer-travelers. The most important being Piri Reis (1465-1554) whose Mediterranean map in Kitab al Bahriyyah (1528), continues to be regarded as an artistic masterpiece; and Katip Celebi (1609-1657), whose Tuhfat al Kibar fi Asfar al Bihar (1729) constitutes the first detailed mapping of the Anatolian and Syrian provinces. Commercial and military needs brought about new standards in nineteenth-century Ottoman mapping. Although based on European sources, Cedid Atlas contains important Ottoman adaptations of geographic readings in the provinces. With the close of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth, Ottoman maps become more functional with the objective of making them useful for troop movements and commercial activities. By 1912 they had issued a series of such maps of the Syrian provinces at a scale of 1:200,000. In all of these maps, the administrative boundaries of the Jerusalem sanjaq, are not the same as the boundaries of the region of Filistin. The former were precisely delineated, the latter were fluid and undefined. The new expanded use of the designation Filistin by the Ottoman military authorities in Risalesi therefore, is novel, but not arbitrary. In order to establish a unified command against the armies of Ibrahim Pasha in 1830 the Ottoman Porte had taken the unprecedented step of unifying the three Sanjaqs of Jeruslaem, Nablus and Akka (i.e. modern Palestine) under the Governor of Akka, Abdallah Pasha (1818- 1832). This pivotal union was the historical basis for the proposal made by the Sultan a decade later, in 1840, with European blessing, of naming Muhammad Ali governor for life of Akka and ruler of the southern Sanjaqs of Syria. This is seen as a preemptive measure most likely taken to ensure his reintegration into the imperial domain. Since the southern Syrian Sanjaqs stretched from Ras al-Naqura in the north to Rafah in the south, this would have effectively made Muhammad Ali khedive of Egypt and Palestine. The Ottomans believed that dividing Palestine into two zones (Vilayat Beirut and the Sanjaq of Jerusalem) would diffuse European influence. Whatever the reasons this division of Palestine remained in place until the beginning of WWI.

This study is a part of a larger examination of how the British cadastral survey of Palestine destroyed the communal (musha’) land system and institutionalized land conflict in Palestine. In this presentation, I point to how dispossession has been legitimated through cartography as, under the British Mandate, Historic Palestine was parceled into private property lots precisely to facilitate Zionist land purchases. I argue that this new “production of space” took place not only conceptually through maps but was re-enforced in everyday life through “space-discipline.” This follows E.P. Thompson’s seminal study of the production of modern time whereby the clock, a graphic symbol of centralized political authority, brought “time-discipline” into the rhythms of industrial workers. In line with Thompson, the late critical cartographer J.B. Harley, suggested that, so too have the lines on maps become “dictators” of a new modernist geography, introducing a dimension of “space-discipline” into modern life. Through archival research of studies, reports, and memoirs of the British cadastral survey in the 1920s-30s, I examine details on how this space-discipline was enforced, with special focus on the forms of resistance these new schemes met along the way. In so doing, I expose not only what the map produced but what it sought to destroy: practices of negotiation between neighbors and communities accountable to each other. Under the modern map regime, individual ownership of land is enforced, requiring individuals to defer to a centralized, removed authority for intervention. Such a production of space, I suggest, renders sharing the land between Israelis and Palestinians impractical and a resolution to the refugee question unthinkable.

This paper considers the theoretical implications of counter-maps as Palestinian contestations of Israeli policies. In geographic scholarship, counter-maps are conventionally regarded as finished representations of a given oppositional stance. Through a case study of Palestinian maps, I explore how hybrid spatial relationships bind people and places, and consider their implications for counter-mapping projects. I suggest that relational cartography offers conceptual leverage to reconsider the both colonial and nationalist logics in mapping. This framing shifts attention from the presupposed representational authority of a map, to how it comes to produce and portray spaces through contingent forces. This essay rests on the premise that maps profitably considered as questions rather than answers. In this way, the inherent inclusions and exclusions of a map constitute part of the analysis from the outset. To carry out the argument, I first draw theoretical work in geography on relational space into the conversation; namely, that places are constituted in their connections to each other in highly uneven and contingent ways, and that cartography is productively considered as relational, contingent and emergent, rather than representational. Second, I explore the history of cartography in Israel-Palestine and locate the emergence of a concerted Palestinian counter-mapping initiative during the Oslo Peace Process. Third, I examine examples from counter-mapping efforts that aim to document the Israeli occupation. Fourth, I consider how two examples of innovative counter-maps could offer compelling avenues of re-imagining the complex economic, political and environmental processes in the area.

“The history of cartography has been a history of coding the enemy, making a "them" and "us" that can be defended with a clear border. It has been, above all, a history of pushing "them" out of territory that is considered ours--denying their existence, deleting their maps, drawing lines in the sand.” (Piper, 2002) In digital cartography, there are growing tensions between those who map, and those who resist or attempt to redefine mapping projects. The dominant history written by the official spatial representations of the world cannot absolutely suppress alternative forms of territoriality, especially with the current technological developments in information technologies allowing the creation, storage, and mass distribution of alternative archiving practices. The current fragmentation of Palestinian space and population urgently calls for a reunification of the cartographic archive and the visualization of a Palestinian spatial narrative. Atlas of Palestine 2.0 is a collaborative project towards constructing an online participatory data-base of spatial data on Palestinian space; a necessary platform for the creation of a collectively archived spatial narrative of the history, current struggles, and future aspirations of the Palestinian people. Through this project, we argue that a democratic access to spatial data on Palestine can expand and push forward the popular imagination of alternative spatial organization- not only by providing the data necessary, but also the platform enabling to communicate it globally. Through digitizing historical maps, cooperating with organizations and people undertaking mapping projects, and opening the platform for planners and visual artists to share their utopian visions, this aggregation will culminate in a public spatial data-base on Palestinian space (including pre-1948 Palestine, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinian refugee camps across the Middle East).