In the first of a series of lectures promoting the new Israel Studies program, Professor S. Ilan Troen (NEJS) spoke for 45 mintues about the ongoing land controvery in the Middle East. Troen is a Stoll Family Professor of Israel Studies here at Brandeis. His lecture, entitled "Issues of Legitimacy: Claiming the Land of Israel," took place on Sept. 24 in front of a group of professors and students, and was followed by a brief question and answer session. While Troen did not offer his own stance on the crisis, he cited historical claims from both the Palestinean and Israeli sides. Troen opened his lecture with a quotation in both Hebrew and English, "A land without a people for a people without a land," referring to the Zionists who settled Palestine in the first half of 20th century. According to Troen, this quote has been used as an argument by both feuding Middle Eastern powers. To the Palestinians, the words imply that the Zionists overlooked the Arab people who already laid claim to the land. To the Israelis, this quote embodies their motivation to form a Jewish state.

The first section of the lecture focused on the legitimacy of Israeli settlement of the disputed land. An underlying concept in the lecture was "terra nullius," a Latin phrase that means empty land. Terra nullius, as used by John Marshall, former chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, is "the most quoted precedent in struggles between native peoples and secular societies."

Dating back to early Middle Eastern history, farmers were considered at the peak of society. The farmers worked the land, thus making it their own, while nut gatherers and shepards merely wandered. For Troen, this notion served as a "mandate for Zionism" since the Zionists were avid farmers. The Palestinians felt "the Jews refused to acknowledge the Arab claim" to the land by deeming it vacant.

The second half of the lecture centered on "the means people employ to acquire lands through culture. Troen made numerous allusions to Enlightenment philosopher John Locke, citing what Locke called the "Natural Right of Man." Included in this principle is the premise that land can be acquired in three ways: conquest, discovery, and purchase. Once obtained, the land is marked in various ways, one of which is the planting of trees. Troen explained, "If a tree stood for more than five years, the land lay claim to he who planted it."

Another way to mark the land is with names. "The Jews gave their places names before they would travel there," Troen remarked. He explained that political wars deal with borders and cultural wars with names. Cultural tension has always played a part in Middle East conflict, and thus names were an early indication of ownership of land. The same place often has two names, one Hebrew and one Arabic. Such is the case with Shechem, the Hebrew name for the city that Arabs call Nablus. Before the establishment of the State of Israel, the Jerusalem radio station could not be called "The Voice of Israel" because the land was not uniformly called Israel. Instead, the station named itself "The Voice of Jerusalem," because, as Troen stated, "that was something they could all agree upon.