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Countermapping against settler colonialism: Sakina Ali, Grey Areas: Mapping Settler Colonialism in the West Bank, MA dissertation, University of Auckland, 2026

27Aug26

Abstract: In the ongoing occupation of Palestine by the State of Israel, the built environment is weaponised as a tool of expansion, control, and systemic oppression. This is visible in the West Bank, where illegal Israeli settlements encroach on Palestinian lands, with architecture operating as an instrument of colonial occupation. These settlements, initially temporal in nature, evolve into fully fledged towns and neighbourhoods, with their growth enabled by the Israeli government, despite being classed as illegal under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. As of 2025, the Israeli government has escalated both the construction of illegal settlements and the demolition of Palestinian properties. In the same year, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) symbolically voted to annex the West Bank. This development marks a new stage of the occupation since 1948, with the constant threat on Palestinians’ ability to remain on their land. However, the expansion of these settlements remains largely undocumented in conventional architectural and urban discourse. Traditional methods of site investigation and their subsequent representations, such as GIS systems, aerial maps, or statepublished surveys, are either inaccessible or deliberately censored by the Israeli security apparatus. This thesis addresses this issue by utilising a research methodology inspired by the practices of London-based research organisation Forensic Architecture. In the absence of conventional data, alternative sources are collected — publicly available images, videos, social media content and historical records. This data then allows for the spatial violence of the occupation to be traced, recorded and visualised in a way that conventional mapping does not capture. Through this methodology, the thesis documents the occupation within three specific sites (Avnei Hefetz, Hebron and Khallet ad Dabaa) in the West Bank. Alongside this, embroidery emerges as a tool for design-thinking, by processing complex concepts engaged with in this research, This thesis makes the proposition that the countermapping of sites of illegal settlement in the West Bank can be achieved through an interwoven practice of contemporary embroidery and digital video-making to understand the role of architecture in the occupation of Palestine.


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