Maps are central to the spatiality of Palestine, where practices of mapping and erasure are entangled in relations of power, of demarcating, naming, renaming, and representing space, as well as the creative remaking and reimagination of place and space. Due to its centrality in global narratives, Palestine has become one of the most surveyed places on earth, and yet data accessibility is very uneven, as gatekeeping becomes a security practice. Spatial data in the region is particularly contested, as Israel uses it to further state projects of spatial expansion, colonial dispossession, and apartheid, and Palestinians engage in counter-mapping as a form of asserting claims to the territory of Palestine, mediated through memory, nationalisms, and contested visions for the future. To consider practices of mapping and counter-mapping is to interrogate the cartographical archive we inherit and use, its conditions of making, access and obliteration, it is also to interrogate the techno-scientific, practical and imaginative practices involved in these contested processes. 

Key Questions

  • What are the mapping traditions from within the“Middle East”? How are mapping practices implicated in colonialism? How are different counter-mapping practices used in Palestine? 
  • How have Palestinians used maps to assert claims on historic Palestine?
  • How are maps used in the formation of national Palestinian narratives?
  • What do the different circulating maps of Palestine tell us about the colonial history of the region, and about possible futures?
  • Who owns spatial data about Palestine, and what duties towards the public interest does data ownership entail?

Key Cases

Key Resources

  1. Agha, Zena. 2020. “Maps, Technology, & Decolonial Spatial Practices in Palestine.” Al-Shabaka, January 14, 2020. ( open-access link )

بالعربية: الآغا، زينة. 2020. ”الخرائط والتكنولوجيا والممارسات المكانية لإنهاء الاستعمار في فلسطين.“ الشبكة، يناير 14، 2020. ( مصدر مفتوح الوصول )

  1. Bier, Jess. 2017. “Palestinian State Maps and Imperial Technologies of Staying Put.” Public Culture; 29 (1): 53–78. ( open-access link )
  2. Al-Shihabi, Majd, and Madiha Tahir. 2019. “Which Digital Instruments for the Revolution?” The Funambulist Magazine 27, December 16, 2019. ( open-access link )
  3. Anani, Yazid. 2020. “The Potter, the Poet, and Storytelling: Palestine from Above 2” Jerusalem Quarterly, 82: 3-8. ( open-access link )

Further Resources

Please contact us if you would like access to any resources.

  1. Abusaada, Nadi. 2020. “Combined Action: Aerial Imagery and the Urban Landscape in Interwar Palestine, 1918-40.” Jerusalem Quarterly 81: 20-36. ( open-access link ) 

بالعربية: أبو سعادة، ندي. 2020. ”عمل مشترك: التصوير الجوّيّ والمشهد الحضريّ في فلسطين بين الحربين العالميتين.“ فصلية القدس، 81-82 (ربيع): 17-30. ( مصدر مفتوح الوصول )

  1. Abu Sitta, Salman. 2016. Mapping my Return: A Palestinian Memoir. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. ( WorldCat link )
  2. Abu Sitta, Salman. 2020. The Atlas of Palestine 1871-1877. London: Palestine Land Society. ( WorldCat link )
  3. Abu Sitta, Salman. 2010. Atlas of Palestine 1917-1966. London: Palestine Land Society. ( WorldCat link )
  4. Abushama, Hashem. 2024. “a map without guarantees: Stuart Hall and Palestinian geographies”. The Stuart Hall Foundation. 26 March 2024 ( open-access link )
  5. عناني، يزيد (محرر ضيف). 2021. ”معـرض فلسطيــن مـن أعلــى : تصوير المشهد من خالل المراقبة وصنع الخرائط.“ فصلية القدس، 81-82 (ربيع وصيف). ( مصدر مفتوح الوصول ) 

English version: Anani, Yazid (ed.). 2020. “Palestine from Above: Surveillance, Cartography and Control.” Special issue of Jerusalem Quarterly, 81-82 (Spring and summer). ( open-access link )

  1. Antrim, Zayde. 2018. “Chapter 5: Mapping Alternative Geographies.” In Mapping the Middle East. London: Reaktion Books. ( WorldCat link )
  2. Bier, Jess. 2017. Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine: How Occupied Landscapes Shape Scientific Knowledge. Cambridge: MIT Press. ( WorldCat link )
  3. Culcasi, Karen. 2012. “Mapping the Middle East From Within: (Counter-)Cartographies of an Imperialist Construction.” Antipode 44 (4): 1099–18. ( link ) 
  4. Davies, Rochelle. 2010. “Mapping the Past: The Village Landscape.” In Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced, 150-78. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ( WorldCat link )
  5. تسدال، عمر امسيح وآخرون. 2022. ”مكانيات: طريقة مفتوحة ومتأصلة لدراسة المشهد الطبيعي.“ جدلية، يناير 19، 2022. ( مصدر مفتوح الوصول ) 

English version: Tesdell, Omar I. et al. 2022. “Makaneyyat: An Open and Ingrained Method for Landscape Study.” Jadaliyya, June 16, 2022. ( open-access link )

  1. مشارقة، محمد. 2018. ”فلسطين على الخريطة (1).“ باب الواد، نوفمبر 15، 2018. ( مصدر مفتوح الوصول ) 
  2. مشارقة، محمد. 2019. ”فلسطين على الخريطة (2).“ باب الواد، مارس 01، 2019. ( مصدر مفتوح الوصول ) 
  3. Oslender, Ulrich. 2021. “Decolonizing Cartography and Ontological Conflict: Counter-mapping in Colombia and ‘Cartographies Otherwise.’” Political Geography 89, 1-12. ( link )
  4. Said, Edward W. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books. ( open-access link )
  5. Sleiman, Hana, and Nadi Abusaada. 2023. “Atlas of Palestine 1871-1877: By Salman Abu Sitta, London: Palestine Land Society, 2020, 602 pp., ISBN: 978-0-95490-345-9 (Hardback).” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 155 (2): 177–82. ( link )

Audiovisual Material

  1. Palestine Open Maps ( website ) 
  2. Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies. “Digital Forays: Space & Place I: Critical Mapping & Counter-Cartography.” YouTube video, April 5, 2021. ( seminar )
  3. American University College of Arts and Sciences. “Nour Joudah: Mapping Decolonized Futures.” YouTube video, September 29, 2022. ( lecture )
  4. Abu Sitta, Salman. 2020. “The Survey of Western Palestine Revisited: The Visible and The Hidden.” ( lecture and webpage )
  5. Michel Khleifi & Eyal Sivan (dirs.) .2003. 181 Route, 272 mins. ( link )
  6. Zochrot. 2016. “Refugees Drew Their Destroyed Villages.” ( webpage )
  7. de Vet, Annelys. 2007. Subjective Atlas of Palestine. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. ( open-access link )
  8. The Palestine Land Studies Center (PLSC) ( website ) 
  9. The Palestine Exploration Fund Collections ( website ) 
  10. Yasser Arafat Foundation. Private Ownership by Palestine Refugees Data: Access to the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine Archive. ( website )

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Image: Map of Gaza in the 1940s, via Palestine Open Maps. PalOpenMaps.org .

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