Gary Fields’ Enclosure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror is a unique exploration of the development of the Israeli culture of land grabs and the historical legal framework and precedents that have allowed Zionist policies to continue unimpeded.
Inspired by the author’s own trip to the occupied West Bank 15 years ago, the book compares the Palestinian story of Israeli land seizure to the early modern enclosures of land in England and how such a system was replicated in the Anglo-American colonial frontier. Two chapters are dedicated to the partitioning of land in each of the three regions respectively, retelling not just a story of Israeli aggression but of an imported strategy of settler colonialism.
Complete with vivid maps and diagrams of changing landscapes, Enclosure argues that land division is a “historically recurrent pattern of power”, and in particular how the reallocation of property rights is a deliberate strategy to dispossess the Palestinian people.
This book has been shortlisted for the Palestine Book awards 2018, please click here to read the full review on the Palestine book awards site