Research Discussion: Aerial Imagery, Mapping & Palestine’s Colonial Landscape with Dr. Nadi Abusaada

Quick Overview

Aerial imagery and mapping profoundly shaped Palestine's colonial landscape, serving as critical tools for military surveillance, scientific research, and counter-insurgency by Ottoman, German, and British forces between the World Wars, with Palestine acting as a key testing ground for global developments in these fields.

Key Points: Dr. Nadi Abusaada's research reveals that aerial photography and cartography were instrumental in Palestine's colonial landscape, extending beyond military uses to scientific and administrative control. During World War I, the Palestine front became a primary site for innovations in aerial mapping, with Captain Hampshire Thomas devising a new cartographic method using overlapping photographs to map over 3,000 square kilometers of the country. German orientalist Gustav Dalman used wartime aerial photographs to interpret Palestine's landscape, arguing that "only aerial photographs could replace the artificial image of the landscape with reality seen from above." The British developed "combined action" strategies in Palestine during the 1936 Arab Revolt, coordinating ground and air forces to suppress elusive guerrilla fighters in the hills, a tactic later informing World War II strategies. British counter-insurgency efforts in Palestine left dual traces: the construction of concrete Tegart forts and the destruction of urban areas, notably the dynamiting of large parts of Jaffa's Old City in 1936. The destruction of Jaffa's Old City, described by the British as "the strategic opening of good wide roads through the old labyrinth of ali's," violently obliterated the city's commercial and residential heart, displacing hundreds of families. Colonial administrators constantly adjusted aerial strategies to accommodate the land's topography, demonstrating that while aerial power shaped territory, it was also "shaped by it."

Context: Dr. Nadi Abusaada, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT specializing in Islamic architecture and urbanism, delivered a lecture at the University of Toronto's Palestine Forum. The event was part of an initiative to build Palestine studies at U of T, and Dr. Abusaada's participation followed his earlier refusal to speak in solidarity with a censure against the university regarding academic freedom. His talk focused on his research into the history of aerial photography and its development in Palestine between the two World Wars, examining its relationship to the physical landscape and colonial rule.