2013 - Public spaces in the occupied Palestinian territories (original) (raw)
Related papers
Public spaces in the occupied Palestinian territories
GeoJournal, 2013
Most research on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has focused on macro and meso-levels of abstraction by exploring national territorial and urban scales. This article, however, takes a more micro-level approach by investigating one specific public space in detail. It analyses the transformation and use of Dawar, the main public space of the city of Nablus, during the First (1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993) and Second (2000Second ( -2005 Intifadas. Public spaces in Palestinian cities have been transformed during the two Intifadas on both the physical and the socio-economic levels. Changing power relations affect the way public spaces are produced and regulated. Citizens, too, (re)produce public spaces through everyday practices, uses, andin our case-explicit forms of resistance. The study proposes an analytical framework to look at public spaces as the result of power relations by combining the work of two French theorists, Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre. This framework is then applied to Dawar during the two Intifadas.
Journal of Palestine Studies, 2014
Protective Edge" by the IDF. These two operations (for Israel) or wars (for Hamas and the inhabitants of Gaza) are fundamentally similar, even if the kill ratios are significantly different: 100 to 1 in 2008-09; approximately 28 (majority civilians) to 1 (majority soldiers) in 2014. Each is an expression of the now standardized Israeli policy of finding occasions for "mowing the lawn"-i.e., degrading the armed capacities of Palestinian or Lebanese enemies while both stoking and satisfying Israeli public opinion with reminders of how good it feels to be united against enemies and how much pain Israel can inflict upon them.
"From Urban Panopticism to Spatial Protest". Surveillance and Society, 2 (1), 55-77.
This paper analyses the historical process during which the Israeli territory, including previously Palestinian cities, has been profoundly Judaized. More specifically, Based on Henri Lefebvre's conceptualization of the production of space, the paper focuses on the case of the 'mixed city' of Lod, accentuating the informal mechanisms of housing and infrastructure supply, the "strategic reversibility" of power relations and the struggle for identity evident in the Palestinian community's protest in this city. Theoretically, the paper highlights the ways in which social conflict is expressed through analyzing the conceived space, the perceived space and the lived space. By doing so, it reconceptualizes the act of urban resistance, and to stress the role of spatial protest as an alternative pattern of opposition vis a vis the surveillance mechanisms implemented in the city.
The Proceedings of Spaces of History Histories of Space Emerging Approaches to the Study of the Built Environment, 2010
Considering the unpredictability of the continuous Israeli military invasions for most of the Palestinian cities, this study takes the Old City of Nablus as a case study to shed light on the importance of everyday life. This paper is part of an ethnographic research on the interrelationship between people and their built environment under an extremely conflicted political situation, and the households' everyday living experiences that present their resistance and "sense of place". It attempts to discuss the responsiveness of the everyday of the Old City of Nablus and its urban fabric competence not only to the socioeconomic needs, but also to the accelerated political struggle and resistance facing the continuous invasion and occupation by the Israeli military. To reveal the silenced stories, the paper's structure follows an ethnographic, exploratory, and analytical approach based on the researcher's observations, interviews, photos, and available literature. This paper serves the research on people's everyday life and urban public space in the city of Nablus, and continues researching the interrelationship between urban and social fabric and how it impacts the function and harmonization of public space, and "forbidden space" at certain times. Similarly, it documents and introduces Palestine as a case study that represents the everyday urbanism practices under the occupying Israeli military operations, to available theories for scholars who have discussed the everyday urbanism practices and tactics in different contexts. In this sense, history is incorporated in the phenomenon of this research case study as ongoing implication on both present living experience and space. This paper attempts to discuss the responsiveness of the urban fabric of the Old City of Nablus to the social and socioeconomic needs, as well as the city's political struggle under the Israeli occupation. The paper structure follows a descriptive analytical approach based on the researcher's observations, photos, movie/media, and relevant literature. Starting with a historical background on some of the politics, this paper serves the research on the Bleibleh: Everyday Urbanism Between Public Space and "Forbidden Space"
In-Between Surveillance and Spatial Protest: the Production of Space of the 'Mixed City' of Lod?
Surveillance & Society
This paper analyses the historical process during which the Israeli territory, including previously Palestinian cities, has been profoundly Judaized. More specifically, Based on Henri Lefebvre's conceptualization of the production of space, the paper focuses on the case of the 'mixed city' of Lod, accentuating the informal mechanisms of housing and infrastructure supply, the "strategic reversibility" of power relations and the struggle for identity evident in the Palestinian community's protest in this city. Theoretically, the paper highlights the ways in which social conflict is expressed through analyzing the conceived space, the perceived space and the lived space. By doing so, it reconceptualizes the act of urban resistance, and to stress the role of spatial protest as an alternative pattern of opposition vis a vis the surveillance mechanisms implemented in the city.
Spatial Alternatives and Counter-Sovereignties in Israel-Palestine
""The securitization of the spaces of Israeli-Palestinian interaction, from checkpoints to the West Bank Separation Wall, continues to intensify and receive attention from journalists, scholars, and activists. Understandably, the focus is on the negative consequences of existing spatial configurations. Receiving far less attention is the development of alternative spatial formations which might advance forms of “desecuritization,” especially in those spaces that are crucial hinges of Israeli-Palestinian interaction (Jerusalem and other mixed cities, the Wall, the Green Line, roads). This article explores whether alternative ways of using, organizing, experiencing, and coexisting in space—especially at the micro level—hold out promise for helping to reframe significant dimensions of Israeli-Palestinian interaction. It seeks to better understand whether disjointed forms of sovereignty that appear—or disappear —across the occupation can be met by counter-sovereignties; whether new spatial counter-realities can be articulated through everyday life; and whether forms of agency, especially contestation, can reset understandings of, and perspectives on, spaces. A range of examples are considered within Jerusalem, mixed cities, the occupied Palestinian territories and at the border, bearing on religious sites, healthcare, gentrification, security infrastructure, popular protest, and festivals.""
Public Spaces under Threat: Scenes from Amman
The research study aims to shed the light on practices and policies threatening the Public Spaces of Amman based on three theories on Space by Lefebvre (1991), Friedmann (1988) and Habermas (1991), and throughout appointed time, through examining; the factors contributing in producing the Public Space, and the factors influencing the practices among the Public Space within a hypothesis structure that implies a transformation on Amman Public Space due to neoliberal policies of privatization in correlation with the political, planning, cultural and social aspects.
Exit From the Scene: Reflections on the Public Space of the Palestinians in Israel
Mixed Towns, Trapped Communities: Historical Narratives, Spatial Dynamics, Gender Relations and Cultural Encounters in Palestinian-Israeli Towns, 2007
In Israel/Palestine, as elsewhere, the personal and the political are deeply implicated. Addressing the interface of personal experience and the political context of structural inferiority, Ra’ef Zreik’s contribution on what he calls “the politics of seeing” offers a reflexive account of spatial experience in Haifa. One level of his essay is a reflexive description of the public sphere of Haifa in the late 1990s – a moment comprised of vivid scenes, tracing the nuances of identity dynamics in a mixed town. The collection of vignettes he builds upon include the spatial and phenomenological status of a neighborhood football pitch, the Jewish-Arab community center, a church, a mall, the seashore and a suspended bridge which cuts across a Palestinian neighborhood, shrinking space and time and memory. A second theme in Zreik’s essay articulates the interplay of geography and history, seeing and remembering, public sphere and public time, home and homeland, individualism and nationalism, illustrating their embodiment in architecture and the politics of seeing in Haifa. Using a description of life in Haifa before 1948 and its depiction in historical accounts written by Palestinians and by Israelis, the essay demonstrates how tensions between what is seen and what is hidden, geography and history, the ‘me’ and the ‘us’ and, finally, time and space, convey a variety of transformations in the experience of Palestinians in Israel.
The Journal of Architecture, 2011
Hebron embodies many of the issues related to architecture and conflict: occupation and division of land and city, checkpoints, blockades, walls, settlements, destruction of historical and patrimonial buildings, eviction from homes, creation of void and emptied areas, 'colonisation from above', rewriting of history, symbolic violence, humiliation by the use of space, control, harassment, terror through infrastructure.. . Walking through the empty streets of the A-Sahala area and the historic Palestinian fruit market-now a 'ghost town' 1-1