Map wars within the Center East: How cartographers charted and helped form a regional battle

Maps are ubiquitous – on telephones, in-flight and automobile shows, and in textbooks the world over. Whereas some maps delineate and identify territories and bounds, others present completely different voting blocs in elections, and GPS units assist drivers navigate to their vacation spot.

However irrespective of the aim, all maps have one thing in widespread: They’re political. Making maps is about making selections about what to omit and what to incorporate. They’re topic to choice, classification, abstractions and simplifications. And learning the alternatives that go into maps, as I do, can reveal completely different tales about land and the individuals who declare it as theirs.

Nowhere is that this extra true than within the contested areas that at the moment embrace modern-day Israel and the Palestinian territories. For the reason that institution of the state of Israel in 1948, completely different governmental and nongovernmental organizations and political curiosity teams have engaged in what can finest be described as “map wars.”

Maps of the area use the naming of locations, the place of borders and the inclusion or omission of sure territories to current contrasting geopolitical visions. To this present day, Israel or the Palestinian territories could fall off some maps, relying on the politics of their makers.

This isn’t unique to the Center East – “map wars” are underway throughout the globe. A number of the extra well-known examples embrace disputes between Ukraine and Russia, Taiwan and China, and India and China. All are engaged in controversies over the territorial integrity of nation-states.

A brief historical past of maps

Historically, maps have been used to symbolize cosmologies, cultures and perception methods. By the seventeenth century, maps that represented spatial relations inside a given territory beaome necessary to the making of nation-states. Such official maps helped annex territories and decide property rights. Certainly, to map a territory meant to know and management it.

Extra not too long ago, the instruments for making maps have turn into extra broadly accessible. Anybody with a pc and web entry can now make and share “various maps” that current completely different visions of a territory and make diversified geopolitical claims.

And maps produced in a battle area, corresponding to Israel and the Palestinian territories, inform a wealthy story in regards to the relationship between mapmaking and politics.

Mapping the Center East

In the course of the British Mandate of Palestine from 1917 to 1947, British surveyors mapped the territories to train their management over the land and its individuals. It was an try and supersede the extra casual Ottoman land claims of the time.

By the founding of Israel in 1948, solely about 20% of the entire space of what’s often known as historic Palestine had been mapped – a undeniable fact that has fueled land disputes to this present day. The British mapping efforts and their omissions enabled the newly established state of Israel to declare many of the territories as state land, thereby delegitimizing Palestinian land claims.

Maps additionally helped construct the Israeli state. Surveyors and planners mapped the land to allocate land rights, they usually helped construct the state’s infrastructure, together with roads and railroads.

However maps additionally helped create a way of nationhood. Maps representing a nation’s form by delineating its nationwide borders are often known as “emblem” maps. They’ll improve emotions of nationwide unity and a way of nationwide belonging.

As soon as established, the Israeli state remade the maps of the area. An Israeli Governmental Names Fee got here up with Hebrew names to exchange previously Arab and Christian names for various cities and villages on the official map of Israel. On the similar time, previously Palestinian topographies and locations have been omitted from the map.

Some Palestinian mapmakers, nonetheless, proceed to make maps that embrace Palestinian named websites and depict pre-1948 historic Palestine – an space that stretches from River Jordan within the east to the Mediterranean Sea within the west. Such maps are used to advocate for Palestinians’ proper to land and foster a way of nationwide belonging.

On the similar time, Palestinian cartographers who work with the Palestinian Authority – the federal government physique that administers partial civil management over Palestinian enclaves within the West Financial institution – make official maps of the West Financial institution and Gaza within the hope of creating a future state of Palestine. They align their maps with United Nations efforts to map the territories in response to worldwide regulation by demarking the West Financial institution and Gaza as separate from and as occupied by Israel.

After the 1967 struggle between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Israel occupied the West Financial institution and Gaza. In consequence, map wars intensified, particularly between completely different fractions inside Israel. The left-wing “peace camp,” which was devoted to territorial compromises with the Palestinians, was pitted in opposition to an Israeli proper wing dedicated to reclaiming the “Promised Land” for guaranteeing Israeli safety.

Such incompatible geopolitical visions proceed to be mirrored within the maps produced. “Peace camp” maps adhere to the delineation of the territories in response to worldwide regulation. For instance, they embrace the Inexperienced Line – the internationally acknowledged armistice line between the West Financial institution and Israel. Official maps produced by the Israeli authorities, in contrast, stopped delineating the Inexperienced Line after 1967.

Broader and border disputes

Not solely have completely different curiosity teams and political actors used maps of the area to place forth competing geopolitical claims, however maps have additionally performed a central function in sporadic efforts to ascertain peace within the area.

The 1993 Oslo Accords, for instance, relied on maps to offer the framework for Palestinian self-rule in return for safety for Israel. The goal was that after a five-year interim interval, a everlasting peace settlement could be negotiated primarily based on the borders specified by these maps.

Consequently, Palestinian planners and surveyors mapped the territory allotted to a future state of Palestine. With the Oslo Accords promising solely a future state – however with its borders and stage of sovereignty nonetheless unsure – Palestinian specialists nonetheless proceed to organize for governing the territories by mapping them.

The Oslo maps are used to this present day to delineate geopolitical visions of Israel and a future state of Palestine which are primarily based on worldwide regulation. However for a lot of Israelis, the Oslo imaginative and prescient of a two-state resolution has died – the assault by Hamas, the Palestinian nationalist political group that governs Gaza, on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was its final blow.

The following struggle between Israel and Hamas, at the moment topic to a cease-fire, has from the outset concerned maps.

In December 2023, the Israeli navy posted a web based “evacuation map” that divided the Gaza Strip into 623 zones. Palestinians may go surfing – offered they’ve entry to electrical energy and web in a territory affected by blackouts – to seek out out whether or not their neighborhood was referred to as upon to evacuate. Israeli navy commanders used this map to determine the place to launch airstrikes and conduct floor maneuvers.

However the map served a political goal, too: to persuade a skeptical world that Israel was taking care to guard civilians. Regardless, its introduction precipitated confusion and concern amongst Palestinians.

Charting a manner ahead

Maps aren’t only for making sense of the previous and current – they assist individuals think about the long run, too. And completely different maps can reveal conflicting geopolitical visions.

In January 2024, for instance, varied Israeli right-wing and settler organizations organized the Convention for the Victory of Israel. The goal was to plan for resettling Gaza and improve Jewish settlements within the West Financial institution. Audio system advocated for transferring Palestinians from the Strip to the Sinai via “voluntary emigration.” With Jewish settlers planning for the return to Gaza, and audio system citing each the Bible and Israeli safety for justifications, an outsized map confirmed the placement of proposed Jewish settlements.

Equally, the Israeli Motion for Settlement in Southern Lebanon has printed maps of deliberate Jewish settlements in Southern Lebanon.

Such maps reveal the will by some in Israel for a “Larger Israel” – an space described in 1904 by Theodor Herzl, thought of the daddy of modern-day Zionism, as spanning from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.

Unsurprisingly, Palestinians make completely different maps for envisioning the long run. Palestine Rising – a Palestinian and worldwide initiative that brings collectively varied specialists, organizations, and funders – makes use of maps that join Gaza to the West Financial institution and the broader area.

Their goal is to rework Gaza right into a industrial hub for commerce, tourism and innovation and to combine it into the worldwide economic system. Accordingly, maps of city initiatives, airports and seaports overlay the cartographic contours of Gaza; and a Gaza-West Financial institution hall, which might be sealed for Israeli safety, may join the 2 geographically separate Palestinian territories.

Such maps replicate the efforts by Palestinian stakeholders to proceed surveying the territories that, for the reason that Oslo Accords, have been to make up the long run state of Palestine.

A brand new period of expansionist geopolitics

With the present U.S. administration extra aligned with right-wing Israeli insurance policies, maps of Larger Israel could information what Hagit Ofran from Peace Now calls the start of a brand new “Larger Israel” coverage interval.

In a novel twist, U.S. President Donald Trump on Feb. 4, 2025, floated a plan for the U.S. to “take over” Gaza, transferring its present inhabitants out and turning the enclave into “”the Riviera of the Center East.”

Such a transfer would quantity to a different try and remake borders throughout the Center East. It might not, nonetheless, finish the “map wars” in Israel/Palestine.