Introduction In contrast to the gradual geographical changes characteristic of peacetime, wars may cause swift, drastic spatial transformations involving vast and violent dispossession (Blomley, 2000; Golan, 2001). Displacement of the defeated and appropriation of their land are often central to the construction of postwar property regimes, which translate violent land acquisition into institutional arrangements representing and legitimizing new power relationships (Bell-Fialkoff, 1996; Kedar, 2003; Schechtman, 1949; 1962; 1964). Enactment of new legislation is a crucial component of the transformation of such ethnonational geographies of power. In this paper we present a historical case study of one dramatic example of the wartime and postwar use of law to normalize displacement and dispossession: Israel's dispossession of the Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war. Between 1948 and 1960, Israeli authorities gradually but rapidly created legal structures to seize, retain, expropriate, reallocate, and reclassify the Arab lands appropriated by the state. This process was part and parcel of the legal institutionalization of Israel's new land regime, which was effectively completed in 1960. Although here we focus on legislation, it should be kept in mind that this central component of the process functioned in concert with other components such as the Israeli state administration and Israeli courts of law. (1) Clearly, the experience of displacement and dispossession is not unique to the Palestinians of 1948 (Bell-Fialkoff, 1996). Examples of these phenomena over the past centuries have taken place in different parts of the world and under varying circumstances and can be roughly grouped into a number of categories. European colonial rule, in the From Arab land to `Israel Lands': the legal dispossession of the Palestinians displaced by Israel in the wake of 1948 Geremy Forman} Department of Land of Israel Studies, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa, 31905, Israel; e-mail: geremy@maaganm.co.il Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar Faculty of Law, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa, 31905, Israel; e-mail: sandy@research.haifa.ac.il Received 7 February 2003; in revised form 29 July 2003 Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2004, volume 22, pages 809 ^ 830 Abstract. In this paper we examine the Israeli government's use of law to institutionalize the dispossession of Palestinian Arabs displaced by the 1948 war and trace the legal transformation of their land during the formative years of Israel's land regime (1948 ^ 60). This legal transformation facilitated the expropriation and reallocation of formerly Arab land to primarily Jewish hands and was therefore a central component of the legal reordering of space within Israel after 1948. Based on close examination of Israeli legislation, archival documents, Knesset proceedings, and other sources we delineate a 12-year legislative process consisting of four phases, each concluding with the enactment of major legislation. The process was led by senior and second-tier Israeli officials, and the result was the construction of a new Israeli legal geography. The culmination of the process was the integration of appropriated Arab land into the country's new system of Jewish-Israeli `national land' known as `Israel Lands'. DOI:10.1068/d402 } Names of authors in alphabetical order. (1) On administrative aspects see Golan (2001), Kark (1995), and Oren-Nordheim (2000). On the role of courts in the Israeli context see Kedar (2001; 2003).