Omar Jabary Salamanca | Université libre de Bruxelles (original) (raw)

Latest by Omar Jabary Salamanca

Call for Papers · Palestine · Journal of Architectural Education, 2024

https://jaeonline.org/issue/fall-2025/

The Stories We Tell · Palestine: Between Words and Silences, 2024

The stories we tell matter. It matters how we craft them and what they say and don’t say about ot... more The stories we tell matter. It matters how we craft them and what they say and don’t say about others and ourselves. In this hour of genocide, as we bear witness to unspeakable horror and the stifling censorship of educational, cultural and political institutions, we foreground Palestinian worlds to nourish learning and cultivate hope. Bringing together a set of exceptional scholars, artists and activists, this program invites us to confront what we cannot longer unsee and to listen to what has been muzzled. Through conversations, poetry, music, and films we aim to unsettle all-too-predictable story lines by repositioning words and silences as historical agents of complex and ongoing transformations.

Antipode, 2024

How does one write in the midst of an ongoing genocide? When the contours of Palestine are being ... more How does one write in the midst of an ongoing genocide? When the contours of Palestine are being redrawn in blood, and when unconscionable images of starving, injured, and dead children, women, and men have become our daily breakfast? How do we register the indignities, dehumanisation, and sadism being unleashed on the Palestinian people? Where does one begin to chronicle the cumulative calculus of 164 days of genocide compounded by the invisibilised cruelties of a long century of Zionist settler colonialism and imperial capture? What is our task as scholar-activists, as human beings, when we become witnesses and thus unwilling accomplices to the ravaging of an ancient people and geography that has stood tall for generations as a cradle of civilisation? And what in turn does the long struggle for Palestine offer to critical geographies of erasure, transnational solidarity, and liberation?

Algérie-Palestine : des sentiers qui s’entrecroisent, 2023

La Palestine occupe désormais une place centrale dans le champ des études comparatistes sur les c... more La Palestine occupe désormais une place centrale dans le champ des études
comparatistes sur les colonies de peuplement. De récents travaux explorent le cas palestinien en relation avec d’autres contextes tels que le Canada, les États-Unis, l’Australie ou l’Afrique du Sud. C’est ce dernier cas qui certainement suscite le plus d’attention de la part des chercheurs et des politiques, notamment à la lumière des débats sur le crime d’apartheid et les imaginaires de libération. D’autres contextes nationaux, en particulier ceux où la décolonisation s’est traduite par le départ des colons, restent pourtant à la marge de cette littérature. C’est le cas de l’Algérie qui, bien que partageant avec la Palestine une histoire commune de colonialisme, de solidarité et de révolution, n’a fait l’objet que de très peu d’études, aussi bien en français qu’en anglais. Cette absence criante constitue le point de départ de cette journée d’étude qui, en mettant au jour les continuités et discontinuités entre les contextes algérien et palestinien, ambitionne de contribuer aux débats en cours.

Il s’agit d’abord d’examiner comment les imaginaires et la production de savoirs coloniauxont façonné ces sociétés dans le cadre d’efforts impériaux à l’échelle globale. Dans un deuxième temps, nous nous pencherons sur la dimension matérielle des occupations française et israélienne, analysant les effets de la dépossession aussi bien sur le foncier que sur le travail ou l’espace urbain. Le retour aux années 1960 est également l’occasion
de réfléchir aux solidarités anticoloniales, à leurs formations et à leurs circulations transnationales jusqu’à nos jours. Puis, nous examinerons les défis méthodologiques, théoriques et politiques que soulèvent la comparaison entre ces deux contextes. En guise de conclusion, une table ronde nous invitera à observer ces croisements dans le domaine de la culture avec un intérêt particulier voué au travail d’archivage et à l’histoire
orale.

Réunissant des chercheurs d’horizons divers, des militants, des diplomates et des artistes, l’ambition de cette journée est de dépasser les boîtes noires idéologiques construites par les historiographies coloniales et les régimes politiques pour restituer les liens profonds qui unissent les sociétés algérienne et palestinienne. En fin de compte, il s’agit de créer un espace pour penser non seulement les espoirs mais aussi les tensions et les contradictions inhérentes aux luttes décoloniales à différents moments
de l’histoire.

Special Issues by Omar Jabary Salamanca

Imaginaries from a Blackout, 2023

Arab Urbanism is delighted to present this special issue on everyday experiences and encounters w... more Arab Urbanism is delighted to present this special issue on everyday experiences and encounters with infrastructures in the Arab region. Ranging between academic, creative and photo essays, the issue explores different ways in which infrastructure shapes and is shaped by social, economic, political and environmental realities in countries like Lebanon, Sudan, Egypt, Kuwait, Palestine, and Tunisia.

https://www.araburbanism.com/au2

Twenty-First Century Palestinian Development Studies, 2016

Just as Middle Eastern Studies has become an established academic discipline in recent decades, s... more Just as Middle Eastern Studies has become an established academic discipline in recent decades, so have some universities introduced degrees in Palestine studies. The library of scholarship produced—in all areas of the humanities by all sides to a confrontation spanning a century—is vast, and the contentious nature of much of it persistent. Hence the imperative and rationale for the emergence of a discipline of Palestine studies seems evident, notwithstanding the risks inherent in the issues concerned becoming objects of study, instead of real manifestations of an ongoing struggle for liberation and justice. Within that broad theme, over the past thirty years (if not more) an extensive literature has flourished under the rubric of Palestinian development studies, covering economic, social, governance, spatial and infrastructural, cultural, and other domains of development.

This special issue of settler colonial studies emerges out of a March 2011 conference on settler ... more This special issue of settler colonial studies emerges out of a March 2011 conference on settler colonialism in Palestine organised by the Palestine Society and the London Middle East Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies. It is our hope that this issue will catalyse creative, collaborative work that puts the settler colonial framework firmly on the agenda of Palestine studies. The need for such engagement arises from our recognition that while Zionism and the Palestinians are gradually being included in the growing body of scholarly works on comparative settler colonialism, the analytical framework that comparative settler colonialism offers has yet to enter the field of Palestine studies

Papers by Omar Jabary Salamanca

Journal of Urban Technology, 2022

This intervention discusses the relevance of settler colonialism and racial capitalism in the stu... more This intervention discusses the relevance of settler colonialism and
racial capitalism in the study of splintering urbanism, as an uneven
socio-spatial process that simultaneously produces dispossession
and racial differentiation. Reflecting on our work in Palestine and
South Africa we grapple with what leaks in processes of
splintering urbanism and we propose “excess” as a provisional
analytical space to focus on the racialized political economies of
infrastructure. We argue that excess is a generative concept: to
render legible the often-silenced histories, geographies, and
experiences produced and managed through infrastructure; to
reflect on the way stratified social relations materialize in and
through urban networks; and to speculate on liberating horizons.
In doing so, we consider infrastructure as an archive, a lively
ethnographic repository where modern histories of excess live,
and where the contested material relations of racialized political
economies unravel.

This article brings attention to the political geography of settler colonialism and the ways in w... more This article brings attention to the political geography of settler colonialism and the ways in which the Palestinian built environment materializes in space, consolidating uneven and racialized landscapes. It argues that settler-colonial space is intimately related to the building of infrastructures structured by development and humanitarian practices. More specifically, the discussion
explores how roadscapes are materially and symbolically constructed; it also examines the ways in which development, rather than constituting a tool of empowerment, becomes a mechanism to manage the short-term “humanitarian” needs of Palestinians that arise from the imperatives of settler colonialism. Problematizing road infrastructure allows us to explore the relationship between Palestinian and donor agendas, and concomitant discourses on economic development and state building—in other words, how settler infrastructures are normalized through their association with tropes of modernity, progress, humanitarianism, and development.

In February 2012 a group of Palestinian activists set up a grassroots campaign against the Jerusa... more In February 2012 a group of Palestinian activists set up a grassroots campaign against the Jerusalem District Electricity Corporation (JDEC), a Palestinian regional utility company that distributes electricity to the central West Bank region. As part of the campaign the group organized a series of sit-ins and demonstrations in front of the company’s headquarters in Ramallah to protest the recurring increase in electricity prices in a context of growing crisis and unemployment, intermittent frozen salaries, closure and prolonged colonial dispossession.

These protests rendered visible a realm of techno-politics that usually remains invisibly embedded within wires and meters. In protesting against the rising electricity prices in the occupied territories, the highest in the Arab world, the activists effectively brought attention not only to the latest Palestinian Authority attempts to reform and corporatize the electricity sector but also to a broader colonial legacy of electric dependency. A dependency which lasts to this very day with Israel providing up to 86% of the electricity consumed in the Palestinian territories.

Taking these protests as an entry point, this paper investigates the ways in which the ‘roll out’ and governance of electricity infrastructures comes to matter socially, politically, economically and spatially both symbolically and as a set of materials. An interdisciplinary and historical analytical focus on how these ‘large technical systems’ are constructed and governed in the Palestinian West Bank offers a powerful way of thinking about electricity as a complex assemblage of actors, agents and processes that connect to, and drive, much debated processes of colonialism, modernity, statecraft and uneven development. More specifically, the essay investigates the spatial configurations and path-dependency logics underpinning the development and governance of these infrastructure networks. The interest here is not so much in electricity per se but rather the entangled nature of settler colonialism and neoliberal development– their shared genealogy – and how this relationship is being contested today.

To explore the intricacies and complexities of electrification in the West Bank the paper advances a settler colonial perspective that brings geography related scholarship on infrastructure together with critical development and political economy studies. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, interviews, archival research, and development reports, the paper looks at current Palestinian attempts at privatizing the electricity sector against the background of a long and neglected colonial history of Zionist electrification that progressively grounded contemporary conditions of dependency-cum-dispossession. In doing so the paper highlights not only how these processes induce the impoverishment of the Palestinian population and a weakening of the anti-colonial struggle but also points to the possibilities that struggles around electricity offer to open new spaces of political engagement.

This article examines how colonial violence has been recast in light of Israel’s disengagement fr... more This article examines how colonial violence has been recast in light of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza during the summer 2005. By looking at infrastructural networks —the systems that distribute water, electricity, sewage, fuel etc—it explores how far from ending the occupation, disengagement provided a distinct spatial scale from which to experiment new methods of control and repression. In particular, it seeks to expose how these life support systems function as geopolitical sites of spatial control and as biopolitical tools to regulate and suppress life. Specially, it illustrates how the mobilization of discourses, strategies and doctrines, criminalize these critical systems turning them into ‘legitimate’ and ‘pre-emptive’ targets. Drawing on the destruction of Gaza’s only power plant and the subsequent sanctions on electricity and fuel, it argues that the destruction and manipulation of infrastructural networks has severe consequences, particularly in public health. In exploring these claims with respect to Gaza, the article draws attention to the ways in which infrastructures play a crucial role in regulating the elastic Gaza’s humanitarian collapse. The article closes introducing the concept of infrastructural violence as way to further explore this discussion.

De recente opstanden in de Arabische we- reld hebben dat deel van de wereld zo door elkaar geschu... more De recente opstanden in de Arabische we- reld hebben dat deel van de wereld zo door elkaar geschud dat het nog jaren kan duren vooraleer we begrijpen wat er aan de hand is. Voor sommigen is het een droom die onver- wacht werkelijkheid wordt, voor anderen een nachtmerrie. Tegelijkertijd worden er wan- hopige pogingen ondernomen om de aard van de snel opeenvolgende ontwikkelingen te bepalen. Waarnemers, commentatoren, wetenschappers en zogenaamde experts gera- ken het niet eens over wat er precies gebeurt. We komen termen tekort - revolutie, onrust, protest, revolte, opstand, lente, rebellie, ont- waken, intifada, renaissance - om de golf van verandering te typeren die in de vorm van een domino-effect de Arabische wereld heeft overspoeld, van Marokko tot Bahrein, en die in de hele wereld weerklank heeft gevonden.

Sinds kort heeft de ‘vredesindustrie’ in de Palestijnse gebieden het plan opgevat om economisch g... more Sinds kort heeft de ‘vredesindustrie’ in de Palestijnse
gebieden het plan opgevat om economisch georiënteerde
ruimtelijke enclaves op te richten. Deze geplande
ontwikkeling staat echter in groot contrast met de
realiteit ter plaatse.

This text report on a meeting that took place during the first week of July 2007, within the fram... more This text report on a meeting that took place
during the first week of July 2007, within the
framework of the annual summer courses
organized by the Universidad Complutense at
El Escorial, Spain. The course, presented
under the title “Israel–Palestine: One
Country, One State,” was organized by
Universidad Nómada and the Fundación
Europa de los Ciudadanos in cooperation
with Ali Abunimah, Omar Barghouti, and
Virginia Tilley.

Essays by Omar Jabary Salamanca

In this essay, I think with Khirbet a-Rakeez and other frontier communities in Palestine as place... more In this essay, I think with Khirbet a-Rakeez and other frontier communities in Palestine as places that convey an insurgent geography of social reproduction in the margins. Their struggles for infrastructure are distinct from accounts where the denial and failed provision of essential services are either the result of state disinvestment due to neoliberalism, urban warfare strategies confined to war time, or a lack of funding and political will to extend national development across peripheral regions. Instead, what can be learned from this context is a more insidious history of the way indigenous infrastructures are constitutive of the logics of settler colonialism and racial capitalism as well as a vital terrain for land-based practices of anti-colonial resistance.

Labouring Urban Infrastructures. A Digital Magazine, 2019

The invisibility condition of worker and factory in cinema is illustrative of the current moment ... more The invisibility condition of worker and factory in cinema is illustrative of the current moment in infrastructure studies where the fetishization of the object, the thing, and matter often leads to a neglect of those that actually build, develop and maintain infrastructure. What then can we learn about infrastructural modernity from an exploration of national audio-visual archives, about its contradictions and eventual demise? How can this scattered material constitute a valuable testimony about the builders of material worlds in the context of nation building in the region and beyond? In what ways can an understanding of infrastructure as factory, freed from the spatial and temporal constraints that delimit the historical form of the factory, provide an entry point not only into representations of labour but most importantly about the worker’s condition and struggles?

Revealing that which is in excess of infrastructural modernity entails a thorough understanding of what has largely remained invisible from political struggles throughout history in the region. This exercise will certainly produce an incomplete picture, an imperfect archive, that produces its own invisibility but perhaps one with a much wider significance and sensible position from where to think about forms of recovery and restitution while also considering alternative forms of infrastructural modernity premised on a relational understanding of technology that is critically grounded on notions of care.

See the full issue here: http://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/mui/InfrastructuresZine191007.pdf

Decentering is an act of displacing from a central position. This essay introduces the figure of ... more Decentering is an act of displacing from a central position. This essay introduces the figure of solidarity constellations to explore how Palestine became situated in and connected to a vast wave of global struggles against imperialism during the long 1960s and 1970s.

Around 2002, as Palestinians were again up in arms to defy Israel’s relentless and vicious coloni... more Around 2002, as Palestinians were again up in arms to defy Israel’s relentless and vicious colonial policies, a renowned Israeli graphic designer, David Tartakover, released a poster series titled “Stain.” The prints display a glowing red blot in the shape of the West Bank over portraits of Israeli politicians and of Tartakover himself. Later, the artist recycled this design into other works, including a piece to mark “35 years of occupation,” the book cover of A Civilian Occupation and a poster titled “Stain, Herzl,” which features Theodor Herzl, one of the founding fathers of Zionism.
The later image is for me evocative of a hostile and widespread settler imaginary, with critical material effects to be sure. This imaginary for the past five decades, and particularly since the signature of the Oslo colonial treaty, has come to define how insiders and outsiders to the Israel question are often socialized into, think about and act on Palestine. It is, in many ways, a fabulous visual illustration that reduces a people ́s century old struggle to its contemporary minimum expression.

Book Chapters by Omar Jabary Salamanca

Those who have read Douglas Adams’s book “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” might remember th... more Those who have read Douglas Adams’s book “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” might remember the surreal opening section where Arthur Dent wakes up in his housecoat to confront an army of bulldozers ready to make way for a bypass road over his house. Arthur ́s initial surprise and anger are quickly interrupted by the prospect of a significantly more dramatic scenario with the appearance of thousands of construction ships hanging motionless in the sky. All of a sudden a god-like voice breaks off: “This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition.

Call for Papers · Palestine · Journal of Architectural Education, 2024

https://jaeonline.org/issue/fall-2025/

The Stories We Tell · Palestine: Between Words and Silences, 2024

Antipode, 2024

Algérie-Palestine : des sentiers qui s’entrecroisent, 2023

Imaginaries from a Blackout, 2023

https://www.araburbanism.com/au2

Twenty-First Century Palestinian Development Studies, 2016

Journal of Urban Technology, 2022

Labouring Urban Infrastructures. A Digital Magazine, 2019

See the full issue here: http://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/mui/InfrastructuresZine191007.pdf

مقدمة أصاب إدوارد سعيد يف مقالة كتبها عقب التوقيع عىل اتفاقيات أوسلو يف العام 1993، وهو أحد أشد ... more مقدمة
أصاب إدوارد سعيد يف مقالة كتبها عقب التوقيع عىل اتفاقيات أوسلو يف العام 1993، وهو أحد أشد املنتقدين لهذه
ُبرمت بني
ّفها هذه املعاهدة الكولونيالية التي أ
االتفاقيات، عني الحقيقة حينام وضع يده عىل املأساة التي ستخل
إرسائيل ومنظمة التحرير الفلسطينية عىل أبناء الشعب الفلسطيني. فقد وصف سعيد املعاهدة املذكورة بأنها »أداة
لالستسالم، ومعاهدة فرساي فلسطينية«: مبعنى أنها معاهدة انطوت عىل إعادة تشكيل االحتالل الكولونيايل وتوطيد
أركانه ووالدة »سلطة تشبه حكومة فييش«، وهي السلطة الفلسطينية )Said, 1993(. وقد تأكدت الهواجس التي عبرّ
املتحدة األمريكية وعملت فيها عىل إقصاء الغالبية الساحقة من أبناء الشعب الفلسطيني منها، وعطلت حقوقهم ّ عنها سعيد بعد ميض عقدين عىل التوقيع عىل هذه االتفاقية، وتجلىّ إفالس ”عملية السالم“ التي فرضتها الواليات
ّبتها إىل أمد غري معلوم. وعىل هذا املنوال، فقد تبدد األمل الذي يلفه الوهم بـ“إقامة الدولة“
غري القابلة للترصف وغي
ّ تحت وطأة املرشوع االستيطاين الكولونيايل. وتشكل اتفاقيات أوسلو، حسبام ورد فيها من نصوص وأحكام، األرضية
التي ترتكز عليها إعادة إنتاج حاالت انعدام املساواة والتبعية االجتامعية-االقتصادية، وحرمان الفلسطينيني من بسط
سيادتهم عىل ترابهم الوطني ومن التواصل بني ربوع أراضيهم ورفض حقهم يف تقرير مصريهم جملة وتفصيلاً )انظر
Usher, 1999; Massad, 2006; Ahmad, 2006; Said, 2007(. ويف الواقع، وعىل خالف ما يفرتضه البعض يف أحوال
ًا كانت
ً كثرية، فلم تكن اتفاقيات أوسلو مبثابة ”فشل“، ألنها ووفقا ملا جاء عىل لسان آدم هنية يف دراسة نرشها مؤخر
ُ عبارة عن أداة صممت لغايات تعزيز هياكل االحتالل التي فرضها النظام الكولونيايل اإلرسائييل عىل مدى العقدين
املنرصمني وترسيخها عىل نحو ال فكاك منه )Hanieh, 2013: 71(. وبينام مهدت هذه االتفاقية لضياع عقدين
كاملني عىل معظم الفلسطينيني، فقد يرست االتفاقية نفسها للصهيونية توسيع قاعدتها من األرايض التي تحتاجها
وساعدتها عىل إرساء دعائم مرشوعها االستيطاين الكولونيايل الذي طاملا راودها عىل مدى قرن من الزمان. ونتيجة
لذلك، فقد أراح ”سالم الضعفاء“، حسبام يصفه إقبال أحمد، إرسائيل من التزاماتها تجاه السكان الواقعني تحت نري
ّ احتاللها ومكنها من تعزيز مرشوعها االستيطاين الكولونيايل ومأسسة نظام الفصل العنرصي الذي تسبب يف تحويل
الضفة الغربية وقطاع غزة إىل بانتوستانات )Ahmad, 1998 ِ (. وليس هناك من أمر يربز العنف املتواصل الذي
أفرزته اتفاقيات أوسلو واملرشوع االستيطاين الكولونيايل، يف أيامنا هذه، أكرث من االنقسام املادي والرمزي املستفحل
الذي يعيشه أبناء الشعب الفلسطيني بصفتهم وحدة سياسية منظمة: مبعنى الفلسطينيني يف الشتات. ومن وجهة
نظر سعيد، فقد كانت معاهدة االستسالم التي أبرمتها منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية، والتبعات التي انطوت عليها
وما ترافق معها من االعرتاف بالتسمية التي أسبغتها إرسائيل عىل الفلسطينيني باعتبارهم أولئك الذين تحتجزهم يف
محميات معزولة تلفّها الجدران وتحيط بها من كل جانب، مبثابة ”الرضر املأساوي“ الذي أفرزته اتفاقية أوسلو يف
نهاية املطاف )Imseis, 2010:266(.

In een recent opiniestuk voor Al Jazeera (27/07/2011) merkte politiek commentator Larbi Sadiki te... more In een recent opiniestuk voor Al Jazeera (27/07/2011) merkte politiek commentator Larbi Sadiki terecht op dat in de eerste analyses van de Arabische revoluties twee belangrijke thema’s grotendeels ontbraken, namelijk de positie van de Islamisten en de Palestijnse kwestie. Deze twee bêtes noires van de internationale politiek werden afgeschreven als irrelevante en onbeduidende factoren in de voorgeschiedenis en de dynamiek van de Arabische omwentelingen. Dat er weinig mannen met baarden het voortouw namen in het uitbreken van de Tunesische of Egyptische opstanden was vooral van belang voor de Westerse secularisten. Dat de betogers weinig woorden leken vuil te maken aan de Palestijnse kwestie was een opluchting voor diegenen die zich zorgen maakten over de gevolgen van de Arabische revoluties voor Israël.

Foreword by Center of Development Studies This book comprises a number of papers that are part o... more Foreword by Center of Development Studies

This book comprises a number of papers that are part of a four-year research program on “Alternatives to Neo-liberal Development in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” that was carried out by Birzeit University’s Center for Development
Studies (CDS) with the support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Regional Office Palestine (RLS).

The idea of this research project originated in 2010, when the CDS hosted an international conference on aid interventions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One crucial theme that the conference could not tackle, was how to envisage ways forward, define new strategies for dealing with aid interventions in Palestine and map alternatives to donor driven aid paradigms and
neoliberal approaches to development. The difficulty of articulating alternatives without first defining particular visions and new concrete ways of understandings “development, became apparent. As a result, this research project was articulated
to think about what is required to begin the process of imagining a ‘beyond’ and envisaging new types of interventions, collaborations, relationships between local and international actors, and new visions of developments, that move away from
the debilitating effects of the aid regime in Palestine, and the disenfranchisement caused by neoliberal economic policies.

Given this perspective, the objective of the research project and these studies is to initiate a critical public dialogue about the rationale behind policy formulation. The research project and papers attempt to achieve this aim by creating debate
and generating consensus around pressing areas with an eye towards advancing possibilities for change. In addition, the papers in this volume explore the ways that developmental alternatives may be achieved in practice, through the participation
of different actors from the international to the national and local levels.

This book, hence, adds to our knowledge in development through examining the devastating impact of neo-liberal development policies under colonialism by exploring how these policies operate to emphasize individualism and separate the economic from the political under colonial conditions. It provides an alternative
way to think about development and tackle policy interventions. It also examines how Palestinians have previously contested colonialism and what lessons can be learned from these past experiences on the path to rebuild an economic and developmental framework that reconnects the struggle for autonomous development to national liberation.

On behalf of CDS, I would like to thank the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Regional Office Palestine for its support, which made this publication possible.

Dr. Samia Al-Botmeh
Center of Development Studies
August 2015

Preceding the introduction, a diary entry by Mahmoud Darwish partly captures, with the poet’s cha... more Preceding the introduction, a diary entry by Mahmoud Darwish partly captures, with the poet’s characteristic mixture of satire and solemnity, what lies ahead in the chapters of Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear. The entry, titled “The Law of Fear,” constructs an imaginary conversation where a killer, confronted by the ghost of the murdered, tells a mob: “Do not blame me: I am afraid, I killed because I was scared, and I will kill because I am scared.” As the mob comes to accept the act of killing as a legitimate right to self-defense and the resulting trauma as that which is caused by the deceased to the killer, a foreigner intervenes and wonders: “But what is the reason for killing a baby?” The mob replies: “Because one day this baby will grow up and then we will fear him.” The foreigner continues, “But why kill the mother?” The mob settles the matter responding in unison, “Because she will raise a memory... Fear and not justice is the foundation for authority.”

I n november en december was in Brussel de tentoonstelling Decolonizing Architecture te zien, het... more I n november en december was in Brussel de tentoonstelling Decolonizing Architecture te zien, het resultaat van een samenwerkingsverband van de in Bethlehem en Londen gebaseerde architecten Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti en Eyal Weizman. De tentoonstelling experimenteert met het ontwerpen van mogelijke architecturale interventies om de Israëlische bezettingsarchitectuur in de Palestijnse gebieden te beëindigen. Dit leidt tot verfrissende inzichten, maar roept ook vragen op.

In this first installment of City Talks, Omar Jabary Salamanca and Nasser Abourahme discuss with ... more In this first installment of City Talks, Omar Jabary Salamanca and Nasser Abourahme discuss with Timothy Mitchell his latest work and his ongoing thinking around questions of urban political economy and political theory. More specifically, we learn about his use of the term "capitalization" and what it might mean for thinking about the built environment. Mitchell also reflects on the role of public space during the Arab uprisings, issues of urban and rural informality, as well as the ways the "material turn" and close attention to the technical help us see colonialism in different ways.

City Talks provides a platform for conversations around the social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental transformations that define the historical and contemporary geographies of the Middle East and beyond. Bringing together voices from critical scholars, activists, and artists, it seeks to explore the ways racialized, gendered, and class-based social orders come into being, materialize, and are resisted through the fabric of bodies, space, and time.

This dissertation aims to resurface and make visible infrastructure networks as concrete expressi... more This dissertation aims to resurface and make visible infrastructure networks as concrete expressions of settler colonialism and uneven development. Focusing on contemporary Palestine, particularly in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, this thesis investigates the ways in which infrastructures come to matter socially, politically, economically and spatially both symbolically and as a set of materials. Drawing on the histories and geographies of road and electricity grids, Fabric of Life explores the ways these infrastructures are constructed, imagined and governed but also how they are experienced and contested. The research takes roads and electricity as object and subject of analysis and traces their role in shaping and producing space while also using them as window into understanding the various actors and ‘larger’ forces and structures that constitute these grids. An interdisciplinary analytical focus on the ‘hardware’ (e.g. wires) and ‘software’ (e.g. policies) aspects of infrastructures and their co-evolution with urban spaces and populations opens up critical perspectives on existing accounts of the political and economic geographies of Palestine. It offers a powerful way of thinking about these large socio-technical systems as a complex assemblage of actors, agents, policies and processes that connect to, and drive, much debated processes of settler colonialism, modernity, statecraft and uneven development. Concurrently, by providing an analytical study of infrastructures, the project generates new knowledge about and insight into the Palestinian case. In pursuing these themes, this thesis represents an attempt to resist and complicate dominant accounts of occupation and development in Palestine but also to make a vital contribution to a broader scholarship in critical urban studies and settler colonialism.

The stories we tell matter. It matters not only what they say about others and ourselves but also... more The stories we tell matter. It matters not only what they say about others and ourselves but also how we craft them. This seminar series engages scholars, activists and artists of the Middle East and North Africa working across disciplines and national boundaries for a set of crossed conversations on critical and creative theoretical and methodological practices. The current political moment and the ravages of empire across the region demand that we unlearn and rethink forms of knowing to foreground histories and struggles on the margins. We envisage this series as a way to collectively learn about and explore methods and approaches that can nourish and transform knowledge production and dissemination on a wide range of social, political, economic and environmental issues.

An online seminar series by the Observatory of the Arab and Muslim Worlds with the support of Recherche et Études en Politique Internationale (REPI) and Maison des Sciences Humaines (MSH), and Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

Convened by Omar Jabary Salamanca

A first of a series of assemblies on transnational histories of liberation with Lucas Catherine, ... more A first of a series of assemblies on transnational histories of liberation with Lucas Catherine, Greg Thomas and publishers from Editions Terrasses 'Solidarity Constellations' is a series of assemblies that gather militants, researchers and artists to engage with the imagination and presentness of transnational histories of liberation. It explores in particular how the Palestinian resistance movement became situated in and connected to a vast wave of global struggles against imperialism during the long 1960s. The project proposes an open, experimental practice to facilitate forms of collective remembering that allow for traces of solidarity to re-emerge. 'Solidarity Constellations' are cooked in the Kitchen, with shared ingredients of Subversive Film and Eye On Palestine, and the kind support of Sint

the stories we tell · engaging archives otherwise

the stories we tell matter. it matters not only what they say about others and ourselves but also... more the stories we tell matter. it matters not only what they say about others and ourselves but also how we craft them. this seminar series engages scholars and artists of the middle east working across disciplines and national boundaries for a set of crossed conversations on critical and creative archival practices. the current political moment and the ravages of empire across the region demand that we unlearn and rethink forms of knowing to foreground histories and struggles on the margins. we envisage this series as a way to collectively explore methods and approaches at the intersection of social science and art-based research that can nourish and transform historical and ethnographic storytelling. in doing so we consider what constitutes an archive and what are the challenges of producing, collecting and interpreting primary sources – from state collections, canonical texts and journals to family histories, folk songs, audiovisual material, urban sites and seeds.

During the long 1960s, filmmakers across the globe developed militant cinema traditions that aspi... more During the long 1960s, filmmakers across the globe developed militant cinema traditions that aspired to break the prison of the image and to transform the world. Revolutions were fought with bullets, demonstrations and strikes but also with posters, songs and films. From Chile to Vietnam by way of Palestine, this cinema was central in the creation and circulation of revolutionary and liberation imaginaries. If these films remain a lively and contemporary archive that can guide us through our troubled times, so do the stories of how filmmakers themselves experienced this wave of cultural resistance. In this conversation, with Khadija Habassneh and Miguel Littin, we foreground the lived politics and poetics of those that collectively conspired to build a better future through cinema.

https://www.palestinefilminstitute.org/filming-revolution-building-solidarities

‘Processions of the sun’ explores carceral politics by drawing on the long legacy of Black-Palest... more ‘Processions of the sun’ explores carceral politics by drawing on the long legacy of Black-Palestinian solidarity. At a moment of growing resistance against state violence, political imprisonment and injustice, this seventh edition of Eye On Palestine focuses on the historical and contemporary role of artistic production and political activism in forging global alliances between decolonization and liberation struggles. ‘Procession of the sun’ aims not only to make visible carceral power as a historical technology of control and repression, it also explores how the Black and Palestinian movements overcome repression, isolation and censorship to situate themselves within a broader context of global solidarity. Bringing together scholars, artists and activists to discuss and reflect on intimate prison writings, posters, films, poetry and lived experiences, the program engages with the disruptive potential of art and struggle to enlarge our political imaginaries.

This program has been conceived by the Middle East and North Africa Research Group (Ghent University), Vrede and Masereelfonds

EOP Lecture Series · Blame It on the Sun: George Jackson and Poetry of Palestinian Resistance (Greg Thomas), 2018

This Keynote explores the political significance of a literary ‘mistake’ made in 1971 in the hist... more This Keynote explores the political significance of a literary ‘mistake’ made in 1971 in the historical context of Black/Palestinian solidarity. After the assassination of George Jackson, the revolutionary prisoner who had been recently designated Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party, prison guards seized Palestinian resistance poetry from his prison cell in San Quentin, California. Some of this poetry by Samih Al-Qasim, Palestinian resistance poet par excellence, was thought to be written by Jackson and published under his name in the Black Panther newspaper. An uncanny resemblance between the voices of Jackson and Al-Qasim, as well as the conditions of Blacks in North America and Palestinians, made this ‘mis-attribution’ possible. It is thus argued that what might be viewed as a literary ‘mistake’ instead can be viewed as a powerful illustration of kinship in the practice of revolutionary political solidarity. Ultimately, this solidarity would be recalled and renewed in a 2015–16 exhibition featuring George Jackson at the Abu Jihad Center for Prisoner Movement Affairs in Palestine.

Syrian Nouvelle Vague, 2017

Le Nova accueille l’ouverture et la clôture d’un cycle consacré à la Nou- velle Vague syrienne... more Le Nova accueille l’ouverture et la clôture d’un cycle consacré à la Nou- velle Vague syrienne et à son réalisateur phare : Omar Amiralay. En présence d’Ossama Mohammed, réalisateur du documentaire "Eau Argentée, Syrie au- toportrait", accompagnée d’un concert de Noma Omran, qui a composé la musique de ce film, cette ouverture prend la forme d’un hommage à la résis- tance politique et à l’amitié. D’un côté un cinéaste trop tôt disparu, de l’autre ses amis cinéastes, au milieu un pays, aujourd’hui ravagé. Auteur d’une dou- zaine de documentaires (programmés au Pianofabriek et dans d’autres cen- tres culturels), Amiralay a réalisé deux types de portraits: la vie quotidienne des Syriens d’une part, celle de personnages clés du monde d’arabe d’autre part. Proche de ses sujets et des spectateurs, il a pu contourner la censure et mettre à mal la propagande du régime. Le cinéma aura été pour lui à la fois espace de résistance politique et construction d’une mémoire collective. À ses côtés, toute une avant-garde artistique a travaillé, s’est unie, a collaboré. "Shadows and Light" en clôture ainsi qu’une rencontre avec des acteurs es- sentiels de cette Nouvelle Vague permettra de saisir l’intensité des liens qui a animé ce cinéma militant. Leur travail est essentiel pour comprendre la Syrie d’aujourd’hui, quand les batailles sont désormais aussi d’images.

À l’initiative de Ciclope, Eye on Palestine et mr arkadin, en collaboration avec le Pianofabriek, l’AIF et Cinemaximiliaan

Over the past two decades scholars committed to combating social exploitation and oppression have... more Over the past two decades scholars committed to combating social exploitation and oppression have converged in Canada, South Korea, Hungary, Mexico City, Mumbai and Frankfurt to participate in the International Critical Geography Conferences. This edition is the first gathering in the Middle East, one that
opens a new vista for critical geography that is both timely and long overdue.

Holding the conference in Palestine offers progressive academics an unprecedented opportunity to observe, engage with, and learn about the complex human, political and economic geographies of this region. Shaped by a long century of European settler colonialism and US imperialism, Palestine is much more than a site of endless political violence and revolutionary struggle.
We have conceived this conference as a way to directly engage with a place and a people that are widely discussed yet seldom heard and understood. As such we hope that our discussions and experiences will move beyond commonplace binaries and reductive portrayals of Palestinian life. Further, we hope to do so in ways that allow us to learn together about commonalities and differences with other settings and struggles around the world.

The Native and The Refugee, 2015

Filmmakers and producers Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny present an original and powerful multi-m... more Filmmakers and producers Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny present an original and powerful multi-media project that brings together the spaces of the Indian reservation and Palestinian refugee camps, from Pine Ridge and Akwesane to Ain al-Hilweh and Aida. Using archival material,
short-films and interviews, the project explores the centrality of these spaces for Native and Palestinians struggles in ways that illuminate how people organise politically around questions of land and territory in relation to communal conceptions of autonomy.

Moderated by Frances Negrón-Muntaner, filmmaker and Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Director, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia University.

With special guests, Audra Simpson, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University and Nidal Bitari, founder of the Palestinian Association of Human Rights in Syria.

Off Frame: A Journey Through Militant Cinema with Mohanad Yaqubi, 2015

Off Frame follows the history of the Palestine Film Unit (PFU), the filmic arm of the Palestinian... more Off Frame follows the history of the Palestine Film Unit (PFU), the filmic arm of the Palestinian revolution, between 1968 and 1982. The film tells the story of the unit established by Sulafa Jadallah, Hani Johariweh and Mustafa Abu Ali, following their life and activities in the turbulent period of the Revolution in Amman between 1967and1971. The Unit’s films drew inspiration from different global cinematic movements, such as social realism, neo-realism, the French new wave and the New York
underground, and was influenced by the political and social atmosphere, not only in the Middle East, but in the rest of the world.

Diana Allan on The Nakba Archive, 2014

The 2014 Eye on Palestine keynote lecture is dedicated to “The Nakba Archive”, an oral history co... more The 2014 Eye on Palestine keynote lecture is dedicated to “The Nakba Archive”, an oral history collective established in Lebanon in 2002. Since it’s inception, the Archive has recorded over 650 video interviews with first generation Palestinian refugees in Lebanon about their recollections of life in Palestine and the events that led to their displacement. These eyewitness narratives, with refugees from more than 150 Palestinian villages and towns, recall social and cultural life in Palestine before 1948, relations with neighboring Jewish communities and the British Mandate, the 1948 expulsion, and the early years of exile. The aim has been to document this critical period through the voices and experiences of those who lived through it, and to bear witness in a way shaped not by political symbolism but rather by the rhythms of personal memory.

Framing The Colonial Present. Gender, Race and Nation in Israeli and Palestinian Cinema, 2012

Leading scholar Ella Habiba Shohat explores Israeli cinema as a site where national culture is pr... more Leading scholar Ella Habiba Shohat explores Israeli cinema as a site where national culture is produced and consolidated. The lecture, mainly based on the new edition of her book "Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation", offers a deconstructionist reading of Zionism viewing the cinema as itself participating in the ‘invention’ of the nation. Ella Shohat will address some of the paradoxes of this national/colonial project by unthinking the imaginary of ‘East versus West’.

Recent scholarship has not only highlighted the minimal effectiveness of the aid industry in the ... more Recent scholarship has not only highlighted the minimal effectiveness of the aid
industry in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories, but also its complicity in
sustaining the Israeli occupation. This research has shown that blind faith in
economic development keeping alive the “peace process”, and the dominant “post‐
conflict” framework shaping most development intervention since the Oslo accords,
have altogether contributed to the burial of the root causes and socio‐political
realities of contemporary Palestine. Less research, however, has been done on the
micro‐geographies of aid intervention and the ways in which these practices are
negotiated, implemented, and contested. The aim of this conference is to critically
explore the ways in which aid intervention reshapes socio‐political, spatial, economic
relations and the environment, and consider alternative forms of aid that respond to
Palestinians needs and rights not only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but across
multiple borders.

The consolidation of colonial capitalism has been historically and geographically premised upon t... more The consolidation of colonial capitalism has been historically and geographically premised upon the development of a vast infrastructure of policing, extraction and circulation. From roads, railways, telegraphs and pipes to water dams, electricity grids and telecommunication networks, these capital fixes have come to define and mediate the stratified ways we come to experience space, relate to the state, and interact with each other. Extraordinarily, this material force –which is invariably presented as modernity, development and progress— has routinely managed to supersede and disavow the violence that enables its very assemblage. We could highlight the forced, disposable labor required to build colonial railway networks; the mass displacements engendered by the construction of water dam projects; the land expropriations and community dislocations needed to rule and govern urban space and people through roads; or the ecological destruction necessary to enable a continuous, often segregated circulation of people and resources across urban, regional and global economy. Whether in the Global South or in the Global North, the infrastructure of accumulation is built, informed, operated and experienced along racialized, classed and gendered lines, it is an ordinarily violent infrastructure.

This discussion panel seeks to bring together cases that illustrate the ways infrastructure —broa... more This discussion panel seeks to bring together cases that illustrate the ways infrastructure —broadly understood as analytical category and metaphor—provide a terrain to think critically about politics and the political. We hope to include contributions from scholars and activists that explore and question the connections between people and infrastructure from the vantage point of grassroots struggles against and for infrastructure. Against the violence embedded in these material worlds. And for creating alternative infrastructures designed for autonomy, emancipation, and justice. In doing so we would like to engage in a collective exercise to explore infrastructure in ways that not simply focus upon the characteristics of these objects, in its actual materiality, but that also address the situated experiences of our material lives, the constitution of infrastructure worlds and concomitantly its shaping of political practices and experiences as well as its extension into growing spheres of life.