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The Geopolitics of Neighbourhood: Jerusalem’s Colonial Space Revisited

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14650045.2013.857657

1557-3028

Haim Yacobi, Wendy Pullan,

Middle East Politics and Society

AbstractThis article will focus on an ongoing process of Jerusalem's contested urban space during the last decade namely the immigration of Palestinians, mostly Israeli citizens, to "satellite neighbourhoods", i.e. Jerusalem's colonial neighbourhoods that were constructed after 1967. Theoretically, this paper attempts to discuss neighbourhood planning in contested cities within the framework of geopolitics. In more details, we will focus on the relevance of geopolitics to the study of neighbourhood planning, by which we mean not merely a discussion of international relations and conflict or of the roles of military acts and wars in producing space. Rather, geopolitics refers to the emergence of discourses and forces connected with the technologies of control, patterns of internal migrations by individuals and communities, and the flow of cultures and capital. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTThis article forms a part of the research of 'Conflict in Cities and the Contested State', funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (RES-060-25-0015), and the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship 'Neighbouring and the Geopolitics of Ethnically "Mixed Cities"' (No: 252369). The authors are grateful to Lefkos Kyriacou for preparing the illustrations.Notes1. S. Kashua, from 'Arab Labour' chapter two screenplay 2010 (broadcast on channel 2, translated by the authors). The authors are grateful to Sayed Keshua for the permission of using the screenplay.2. Central Bureau of Statistics, Population Census (Jerusalem 2008).3. T. Abowd, 'National Boundaries, Colonized Spaces: The Gendered Politics of Residential Life in Contemporary Jerusalem', Anthropological Quarterly 80/4 (2007) p. 1025.4. Interview, International Peace and Cooperation Centre, Jerusalem, Palestine, 20 July 2008.5. The figures given in the introduction are confirmed by other sources. Out of approximately 7,000 inhabitants in French Hill there are around fifty Palestinian Arab families, mainly from Israel's northern region. Also, according to media reports there are 400 Palestinian families that moved to Jewish neighbourhoods – mainly in French Hill, Pisgat Zeev and Neev Yaakov. For details see N. Hasson, 'The Palestinians in the French Hill Enjoy a High Life-Quality and Get Use to the Racism', Haaretz, 24 July 2009.6. M. LeVine, Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel-Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine 1880-1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press 2005); D. Monterescu and D. Rabinowitz (eds.), Mixed Towns, Trapped Communities: Historical Narratives, Spatial Dynamics, Gender Relations and Cultural Encounters in Palestinian-Israeli Towns (London: Ashgate 2007).7. D. Rabinowitz, Overlooking Nazareth: The Ethnography of Exclusion in Galilee, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997); H. Hamdan, 'Upper Nazareth as a Mixed Town: Palestinian In-Migration and Issues of Spatial Behavior', in H. Yacobi and T. Fenster (eds.), Israeli City or City in Israel (Jerusalem: Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Meuhad 2006) (in Hebrew).8. For a detailed and critical discussion of the term "mixed" cities in Israel see H. Yacobi, The Jewish-Arab City: Spatio-Politics in a Mixed Community (Routledge, London 2009)9. C. R. Nagel, 'Geopolitics by Another Name: Immigration and the Politics of Assimilation, Political Geography 21/8 (2002) pp. 971–987.10. D. Newman, 'The Lines That Continue to Separate US: Borders in Our Borderless World', Progress in Human Geography 30/2 (2006) pp. 1–19.11. S. Graham, 'Cities and the 'War on Terror'', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30/2 (2006) pp. 255–276; E. Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation (London and New York: Verso 2007).12. J. Agnew and S. Corbridge, Mastering Space – Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy (London and New York: Routledge 1995).13. See, for example: G. O'Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press 1996); Agnew and Corbridge (note 12).14. G. Dijkink and V. Mamadouh, 'Territorial Arrangements and Geopolitics', Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 97/3 (2006) pp. 207–208.15. S. Graham, Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (London and New York: Verso 2010).16. Ibid., p. 379.17. Z. Bauman, Liquid Fear (Cambridge: Polity Press 2006).18. See, for example: Y. Jabareen, 'The Politics of State Planning in Achieving Geopolitical Ends: The Case of the Recent Master Plan for Jerusalem', IDPR 32/1 (2010) pp. 27–43; O. Yiftachel and H, Yacobi, 'Planning a Bi-National Capital: Should Jerusalem Remain United?', Geoforum 33 (2002) pp. 137–145.19. As developed in H. Gillette, Civitas by Design: Building Better Communities, from the Garden City to the New Urbanism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2010).20. Ibid., p. 2.21. From a methodological perspective, the interpretation and analysis of the interviews, texts and documents in this article are based on a vast literature that deals with discourse analysis in general and urban environment and planning in particular. For more details see: R. Finnegan, Tales of the City – A Study of Narrative and Urban Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998); A. Hastings, 'Discourse and Urban Change: Introduction to the Special Issue', Urban Studies 36/1 (1999) pp. 7–12; R. Scollon, Mediated Discourse (New York: Addison Wesley Longman 1998).22. Palestinian uprisings; the First began in 1987 and the Second (or, al-Aqsa Intifada) in 2000.23. D. Rabinowitz, 'To Sell or Not to Sell? Theory versus Practice, Public Versus Private, and the Failure of Liberalism: The Case of Israel and its Palestinian Citizens', American Ethnologist 21/4 (1994) pp. 823–844.24. Ibid.; Yacobi, The Jewish-Arab City (note 8).25. Weizman (note 11).26. Most major decisions about Jerusalem are taken at state level.27. David Ben Gurion as cited in: U. Benziman, A City Without Walls (Tel Aviv: Schocken 1973) p. 235 (in Hebrew).28. Yiftachel and Yacobi (note 18).29. M. Dumper, The Politics of Jerusalem Since 1967 (New York: University of Columbia Press 1996); W. Pullan, P. Misselwitz, R. Nasrallah, and H. Yacobi, 'Jerusalem's Road 1: An Inner City Frontier?', City 11/2 (2007) pp. 176–198.30. 1,000 square metres; an Ottoman measurement still used in Israel.31. D. Kroyanker, Jerusalem: The Struggle Over the City and Its Vision (Jerusalem: Keter 1998) (in Hebrew).32. Ibid.33. E. Barzaki. 'The Location of the Outer Ring Neighborhoods', in O. Achimeir (ed.), The City Centre and the Outer Ring Neighbourhoods (Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Center for Israel Study 1989) p. 30 (in Hebrew).34. H. Yacobi, 'Academic Fortress: The Planning of the Hebrew University Campus on Mount Scopus', in D. Perry and W. Wiewel (eds.), Urban Universities and Development: The International Experience (Cambridge: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 2008) pp. 257–272.35. J. Holston, The Modernist City – An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1989) p. 31.36. A. Nitzan-Shiftan, 'Seizing Locality in Jerusalem', in N. AlSayyad (ed.), The End of Tradition? (London: Routledge 2004) p. 231.37. French Hill Housing Brochure undated. The Jerusalem Municipality Archive.38. Interview with Ariella, an Israeli resident, 29 Jan. 2006.39. Within the scope of this paper we are not able to consider in detail the role of architecture and planning in the purification of space in the Israeli context. For further discussion see: H. Yacobi, 'Architecture, Orientalism and Identity: a Critical Analysis of the Israeli Built Environment', Israel Studies 13/1 (2008) pp. 94–118.40. Report from the Committee of Names and Streets, No. 47, 14 May 1973, Jerusalem Municipality Archive.41. Within the scope of this paper, we are not able to discuss the political dimension of this structure. However, it is important to note that the construction of the wall in Jerusalem/al-Quds represents a special case; it creates a tangible delineation of greater Israeli Jerusalem, including many of its settlements (that is, the area 'annexed' by Israel in 1967 – illegally, according to international law). It also includes some Palestinian areas that have been 'cherry-picked' by Israel. The immediate effect of the wall is to annex 'de facto' the settlements/neighbourhoods within the municipal boundaries (in total more than 4,000 dunams). The Palestinian neighbourhoods, constituting 3,200 dunams within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, are excluded; that is, they are on the other side of the wall. Thus their inhabitants unilaterally are deprived of their status as Jerusalemites. Around 40,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites are separated from the city and its services, and an additional 60,000–90,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites living in the areas surrounding Jerusalem are isolated from the city. This spatial distortion is aimed at officially reducing the percentage of the city's Palestinian population.42. W. Pullan, 'Frontier Urbanism: The Periphery at the Centre of Contested Cities', The Journal of Architecture 16/1 (2011) pp. 15–35.43. J. Ron, Frontiers and Ghettos. State Violence in Serbia and Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).44. Pullan, 'Frontier Urbanism' (note 42).45. Conflict in Cities interviews archive, Northern Site, file 14, 2005.46. Interview with Saja Kilani, 8 Aug. 2006.47. Interview with Bracha, an Israeli resident, 29 Jan. 2006.48. J. Robinson, 'The Geopolitics of South African Cities: States, Citizens, Territory', Political Geography 16/5 (1997) pp. 365–386.49. Giva'aton, the French Hill local newspaper, March 1975, The Jerusalem Municipality Archive.50. A number of these were concentrated at French Hill bus stops for Israeli buses going to the settlements north and east of the city; see W. Pullan, 'Contested Mobilities and the Spatial Topography of Jerusalem', in Louise Purbrick, Jim Aulich, and Graham Dawson (eds.), Contested Spaces: Cultural Representations and Histories of Conflict (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2007) pp. 63–64.51. Interview with Uri Michaeli, the head of the local council of French Hill neighbourhood at that time, 29 Sep. 2000 (trans. by H. Yacobi).52. L. Sandercock. 'When Strangers Become Neighbours: Managing Cities of Difference', Planning Theory & Practice 1/1 (2000) pp. 13–30.53. Z. Bauman, Society Under Siege (Cambridge: Polity Press 2003).54. Gideon Yeger, the head of the local council of French Hill neighbourhood at that time, cited in Hasson (note 5).55. R. Pain and S. J. Smith, 'Fear: Critical Geopolitics and Everyday Life', in R. Pain and S. J. Smith (eds.), Fear: Critical Geopolitics and Everyday Life (London: Ashgate 2003) pp. 1–19.56. For example, many mortgages have been available only to people who have served in the Israel Defence Forces. All Jewish Israelis are routinely conscripted but Arab Israelis are exempted.57. The letter uses the term 'Arab' rather than the preferred name 'Palestinian'.58. A. S. Cheshin, B. Hutman, and A. Melamed, Separate and Unequal. The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1999).59. ID cards are issued by the Israeli authorities on their own terms. Residency in Jerusalem is based upon an Israeli census carried out in 1967; Palestinians who spend time outside of Jerusalem may lose their status, and those who marry West Bank residents may not obtain Jerusalem status for them. Besides the right to live in the city, they enjoy Israeli social welfare programmes. They are not citizens of Israel.60. This refers to the approximately 20 percent of Israel's population that is Palestinian, who became citizens in 1948; they are subject to Israeli laws and like Israeli Jews, are not supposed to pass into the Palestinian areas of the West Bank.61. International Peace Cooperation Report, The Wall (Jerusalem: IPCC 2005).62. Interview with Mustafa, 13 April 2010.63. Ibid.64. Interview with Antuan, a Palestinian who owns a house in French Hill, 9 April 2010.65. D. Massey and N. A. Denton, American Apartheid (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1993).66. H. Dahan-Kalev, "Fear of Arabness", in Stephen Hessel and Michele Huppert (eds.), Fear Itself Reasoning the Unreasonable (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press 2010) pp. 151–162.67. E. Balibar, Race, Nation, Class, Ambiguous Identities (London: Verso 1991).68. Interview with Abraham, 29 Jan. 2006.69. Interview with Mustafa (note 62).70. Rabinowitz, Overlooking Nazareth (note 7).71. Interview with Ariella (note 38).72. Interview with Antuan (note 64).73. H. Lefebvre, Writings on Cities (London: Blackwell 1996).74. Yacobi, The Jewish-Arab City (note 8).75. S. Benhabib, The Claims of Culture. Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press 2002).76. S. Tamari, 'Confessionalism and Public Space in Ottoman and Colonial Jerusalem', in D. E. Davis and N. Libertun de Duren (eds.), Cities and Sovereignty. Identity Politics in Urban Spaces (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 2011) pp. 59–82.77. Ibid., p. 6678. H. Kendall, Jerusalem: The City Plan, Preservation and Development During the British Mandate, 1918-1948 (London: H.M.S.O. 1948) p. 153.79. Conflict in Cities fieldwork archive, Northern Site, files 4, 13, 23, 24.80. A. Appadurai, Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press 1996).81. H. Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1989 [orig. 1958]) pp. 234–235.82. Interview with Antuan (note 64).83. Arendt (note 81) p. 183.84. Ira Katznelson, 'Social Justice, Liberalism and the City,' in A. Merrifield and E. Swyngedouw (eds), The Urbanization of Injustice (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1996), pp. 45–64.85. For a detailed discussion of both Israeli and Palestinian internal social divisions in general and in relation to the politics of Jerusalem in particular see: R. Friedland and R. Hecht, To Rule Jerusalem (Berkley: University of California Press 2000).86. Bauman, Society Under Siege (note 53) p. 6.87. D. Monterescu, 'To Buy or Not to Be: Trespassing the Gated Community', Public Culture 21/2 (2009) pp. 403–430.88. A. Arian and T. Hermann, Democratic Values in Practice (Jerusalem: The Israel Democracy Institute Auditing Israeli Democracy 2010). This survey shows that the Arab public also seems to be non-tolerant when it comes to living as neighbours with people who are "other"; in this case, the most undesirable types of neighbours are homosexual couples (70 percent).89. Holston (note 35).90. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, U.K & Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991).