Colonialist Construction in the Urban Space of JerusalemDina Jadallah

Abstract

This article examines the matrix of urban interventions and control through

territorial and demographic engineering by Israel to transform Jerusalem into a closer

approximation of Zionist colonialist ideology by various means. These include the

deployment of archaeological, cultural, socio-political, territorial, and urban design

instruments to de-construct or re-narrate the other histories and characteristics of the

city in order to preempt alternative sovereignties. Competing visions and discourses

are visually evident in urban spaces and practices. This process is a conflict that

chooses “identity” as its overt manifestation and its “protection” is consequently used as

justification for legal and political discrimination. The construction of this particular

form of identity was and is inherently inescapable due to the colonialist basis and

practices of the state.

Key Words: Sovereignty, Colonialism, Agency, Conflict.

Background and Overview of Issues

The urban space of Jerusalem is a register for the process of

colonization which lies at the historical and political heart of

the Arab-Israeli conflict. Spatial design, archaeological

inquiry and presentation, architectural aesthetic and

configuration, and visual markers are spaces for the contestation

of conflicting sovereignties, both in the Old City and in

“Greater Jerusalem.” Whereas in the former there is a

privileging of a specifically Jewish history, in the latter there

is a reflection of the European impetus that gave rise to

Zionism, as a decidedly Western colonialist enterprise in the

East. As such, it is focused on land acquisition, expropriation,

and development, and it reflects an urban aesthetic in its

“settlements” that contrasts with the historical vernacular

architecture and design.

The Old City of Jerusalem has an ancient history. It has

multiple layers where the city was built and demolished over

eighteen times. Most of the Old City’s structures date back to

Ayyubid (12th - 14th centuries), Mameluk (14th to 16th centuries),

2

and Ottoman (16th century to 1917) eras. One particular urban

and organizational feature from the Ottoman period immediately

preceding the Mandate is worth noting. It underpins the

colonialist construction of identities that continues to inform

the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. Starting in the 1870s, the

Ottomans started a modernization drive in their territories.

They introduced policies affecting urban space, without

distinguishing between the populations on an ethnic basis.

Later, Sultan ‘Abd el-Hamid introduced a notion of citizenship

based on common law and abolished the millet (religious identity)

system. In the governorate of Jerusalem, the configuration of

spaces was not based on identity and “Quarters” in the Old City

were not isolated homogeneous groups.

In contrast, it was not until the introduction of British

Mandate “modernity,” with its drive for increased state

intervention, classification, and organization of society as a

means of regulation and control, that the nationalist, ethnic,

and religious/confessional trappings of the “modern” made their

stamp on the urban space. Salim Tamari argues that with the

arrival of the British, there was increased communalization of

3

identity via the increased segregation of “Quarters” in the Old

City.1 In that sense, “modernity” was a retrogression, atomizing

the urban consciousness of the city. During the Mandate, people

became increasingly identified by community. The British created

a hierarchy of religions based on their friendliness to British

rule. This identity-based approach was replicated with the

census. This culminated in the privileging of Jews over “non-

Jewish communities” (who constituted the majority in Palestine)

in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Post-Mandate, the next major

change to the urban structure occurred after 1967 with the

creation of the Jewish Quarter – which expanded the Jewish area

six-fold (13.6 percent of the terrain).2

Presently, and partly due to the practices of the

occupation, there is no homogeneous “Jerusalemite” identity.

Rather, socio-urban construction reflects identity-based dis-

continuities, even within the Jewish community. Sometimes, the

colonially-segregated reality contradicts the sovereign claims of

political rhetoric. While Israel claims that Jerusalem is the

“united” center and capital of Israel, the Palestinians claim

that, East Jerusalem, at least, will be the capital for their

4

future state. In addition to these two claims of sovereign

territorial ownership, is a mélange of codices of laws,

international, historical, and modern, which function (or not)

depending on one’s perspective. In all cases, they are

reflective of relational power dynamics, in their application as

well as execution.

The urban space is an excellent place to read this multi-

faceted dynamic of political society. It is an interface for

social, political, institutional, and geographical competitions,

all of which are magnified exponentially under occupation. Thus,

studying Jerusalem as a microcosm of the colonialist Zionist

enterprise requires a multi-disciplinary approach that combines

geography, politics, historiography, legal jurisdictions, and

cultural narratives. Subjectivity and power are manifested in

the space, marginalities, erasures, and constructions within

Jerusalem, as a colonial city, in addition to its being a city with a

historical past and a demographic present that continue unabated,

albeit in re-narrated form.

Jerusalem is the best case to study these issues because its

metropolitan space is the occupation. Three-quarters of all

5

Israelis “settled” in the post-1967 period are there.

“Settlement” was aided by massive government investment and

subsidization and constitutes a sovereign means of power-exertion

in an attempt to “domesticate” the occupation.

Conceptual Framework for Constructing Identity-based ColonialistSpace

Subaltern geographic theory, like Ananya Roy’s and Partha

Chatterjee’s, is concerned with the hegemonic production of urban

subjects and subjecthood. 3 Jerusalem complicates this

theoretical approach which posits an urban subjecthood that is,

usually either undifferentiated by national identity, or

alternatively, assumes a lesser prioritization for identities

unrelated to class. Israel, as an occupation and as a state,

uses national identity as the most important determinant of rights

and practices -- including those associated with living in the

urban space. This caveat must be kept in mind in any urban study

of occupation, or in colonialist statehood, since it affects

spatial distribution, access, construction, planning,

6

historiography, and even aesthetic registers of beauty,

relevance, and hybridity.

The work of Nadia Abu El-Haj provides concrete examples of

these theoretical points. It focuses on how Israel uses

archaeological practice and territorial re-configuration as a

means for constructing the Israeli subject and society, while

simultaneously de-constructing the Palestinian subject and

society.4 Similarly, Oren Yiftachel examined the political

geography of the colonialist project of Judaization that Zionism

pursues and the resistance that this process generates. What he

calls the “ethnocracy” of Zionist settlements is a process by

which the state, representing a dominant ethnicity, implements a

strategy intended to appropriate spaces -- both territorial and

cultural -- with a view to constructing and privileging a Jewish

Zionist identity that carries certain rights.5 The “settlements”

/ colonies produce geographic separations as well as socio-

political, cultural, and historical erasures of the indigenous

reality. Together, they function as means of constructing an

ideological conception of a “nation.”

7

Significantly, the self-proclaimed “Jewish” state of Israel

followed the British colonial mandate state in Palestine. The

latter had incorporated the Balfour Declaration of 1917. In

other words, it adopted the binary ethnic division of Jews and

“non-Jewish population.” As such, there is a continuity between

the colonial state and the post-colonial state. Following, the

1967 War, and operating under an ideology of Greater Israel, the

state used the Israeli legal system to annex east Jerusalem while

offering residency to its Palestinian inhabitants. Currently,

most of the Palestinian residents of the Old City are identified

as permanent residents (who may lose that privilege if they move)

and not as citizens. Thereafter, piecemeal confiscation of land

from the West Bank commenced using Ottoman and Mandatory laws,

Jordanian and Egyptian laws, and Israeli military orders. In

addition, the state used both bureaucratic and military methods,

such as designations of “absentee property” or “hostile agent”

land, Military Order 59 (1967); the construction of military

bases, Jewish settlements, outposts, and bypass roads; the

transference of Jewish citizens across the Green Line; and the

building of the “Separation Barrier,” aka Wall, starting in 2002.

8

All were manipulative attempts to appropriate land sans

Palestinian population.6

Consequently, as Neve Gordon points out, within the first

twenty years of the occupation, Israel had seized 40 percent of

Palestinian land and had moved 60,000 Jews to the Occupied

Territories. It built 110 settlements (and growing). All were

mechanisms of dispossession and surveillance. “Settlers” often

served as a civilian apparatus to monitor and police

Palestinians. Further aiding this process were a series of

restrictions on movement and development, the redrawing of

municipal boundaries, and the appropriation of state lands around

settlements in order to divide Palestinian space.7

A recent case in point (discussed in more detail below) is

the Israeli Supreme Court Ruling on “The Israeli Seam Zone Permit

Regime.” The ruling is symptomatic of the juridical, military,

and administrative arms of the colonialist state. The highest

court agreed with the Defense Ministry and the Civil

Administration “to restrict to the absolute minimum Palestinians’

entry, time spent, and ability to live and work on lands in the

West Bank that are west of the separation fence,” specifically,

9

Israel’s annexation of 184,868 dunams (about 45,682 acres ) –

liable to expansion, as per standard practice -- of Palestinian

land trapped between the fence and the Green Line.8

While the Israeli state is clearly dominant in its ability

to affect, change, and rearrange the geographical spaces in

Jerusalem, that is not the end of the story. Informality,

outside the boundaries, institutions, and frameworks set by the

state, is also a form of subjectivity which is frequently used to

circumvent dominating practices. Informal resistance can be read

in the urban space – for example, from graffiti on the Separation

Wall, or from the methods of overcoming the separations, above,

and under, and through the gaps in the Wall. It can also be read

in the discursive claims made by the politicized society of the

marginalized. Throughout, there is a search for human agency /

effective action. This may be organized or improvised, but it is

incessant and flexible.

Importantly, the dominant state itself employs a modified

(pretend) “informality” in order to disguise sovereignty. For

example, porous conceptualizations and practices of geographic

control are evident in the proliferation of linguistic border

10

synonyms: “separation walls,” “barriers,” “blockades,”

“closures,” “roadblocks,” “checkpoints,” “sterile areas,”

“special security zones,” and “closed military areas.” These

serve to obfuscate and naturalize the facts of domination.

And yet, what is “marginal” and what is “metropolitan” /

“dominant” is not as clear cut as many writers proclaim. An

example is Eyal Weizman’s9 argues that there was a displacement

and transposition of the urban aesthetic, so that vernacular

traditional Palestinian architectural features were adopted by

the colonizers in the settlements and in the Old City

architecture. This process placed an authentic gloss on colonial

construction. In contrast, informal Palestinian spaces resulting

from colonialist policies such as denial of building permits,

exhibit an unfinished, provisional, and utilitarian aesthetic in

ethnically segregated Bantustans. This, he suggests, is a

reversal of the architectural aesthetic of early Zionist

settlements.

Yet, any casual look at the cookie cutter construction of

settlements on the hilltops of Jerusalem will give lie to any

claims of “authenticity.” Notwithstanding the use of Jerusalem

11

stone, the hilltops of “Greater” Jerusalem display a visual

aesthetic that is more Southern California than Biblical and

post-Biblical Palestine. The “dominant” aesthetic is visually

alien. Its essential in-authenticity is, therefore, beyond the

colonialist power-produced “marginal” contrastive category of

Palestinian construction.

According to Roy, reading the “national” in the city makes

the formations of power and governance, as well as forms of

accumulation and dispossession, visible.10 One blatant and

counter-intuitive example of this is the so-called Separation

Barrier, 85 percent of which falls in the West Bank.11 The

President of the Israeli Supreme Court, Dorit Beinisch wrote that

the “fence” is “the effective border between Israel and the

Palestinian Authority.” Ignoring years of settlement building

and continuing expropriation of Palestinian lands, he

nevertheless implies that the fence performs a “security”

function: “we can but hope that this is a need that is of a

temporary nature, because alongside the need to fight terrorism,

the uninvolved civilian population is, to our great regret, also

harmed.”12

12

Spatially, the Wall flies in the face of political rhetoric

proclaiming a “united” Jerusalem. Yet, it performs an important

“national” function for Zionism. Namely, it is a symbolic, even

if ineffective, reminder of the “Other” against which the Zionist

identity is constituted. This Otherness is found, for instance,

in the discourse of former chief Jerusalem planner, and head of

the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, Israel Kimhi: "It

might help prevent suicide bombers from entering into the city,

but it's going to cause a lot of inconvenience to many thousands

of people."13 Similarly, Netzah Mashiah, chief barrier planner

for the Defense Ministry, said: "The main issue is to prevent

bombs from blowing up in the middle of Jerusalem."14

Besides being an embodiment of “Otherness,” the barrier

performs a demographic function necessary to the upholding of

Zionist ethnocratic sovereignty, or Judaization, over the city.

In 2006, the Wall enclosed more than 180,000 Jews living in east

Jerusalem, all of whom resided in housing that was built after

1967. Additionally, the Wall meanders to enclose more than

45,000 Jewish West Bank “settlers” / colonists. It preempts an

“Other” nationalist political claim. It triples Jerusalem's

13

municipal area while nearly cutting the West Bank in half,

rendering a Palestinian future capital in Jerusalem a moot

proposition. Menachim Klein, a Jerusalem expert and former

Israeli peace negotiator, said that while the official reason is

for “security,” the underlying “subtext is to demolish east

Jerusalem as the metropolis of the West Bank."15

Nevertheless, despite the asymmetry in power, historically,

Israeli state and identity construction is co-extant with and co-

produced by its juxtaposition against, and embeddedness, in the

Palestinian “Other.” Troen argues that European-inspired and -

aided construction of Jewish settlement in Palestine was

conducted by corps of professional planners, officials,

architects, and so forth recruited by organizations with national

purposes. Zionism was part of, and in fact was the last of, the

expansion of European societies into the non-European world.16

The “national” in the practice of governance, and its

associated processes of accumulation and dispossession are also

evident in the trans-nationalism of the Israeli settlements in

the West Bank as well as in the legal extra-territoriality that

Israeli settlers carry with them wherever they go. Yiftachel

14

demonstrates how wherever a settlement is established, Israeli

infrastructure and law extends to the site. Weizman adds that

this process creates an ethnocratic urbanism in conjunction with

non-contiguous and porous sovereignty.17

In Jerusalem, “ethnocratic” sovereignty is negotiated

between politicized societies / identities (both dominant and

marginalized). The strategic options available to the city’s

residents are embedded in their urban space. Joseph Liebovitz

argues that this influences their organizational capacity,

political opportunities, territorial accessibility, among other

things.18 Lacking power, the marginalized make use of symbolic

politics, which uses memory, identity, culture, and history to

create mobilizing agendas. This type of politics is apparent,

for instance, in the Palestinian celebrations of Nakba Day, in

their insistence on praying at the Haram al-Sharif despite the

roadblocks and hardships, and so forth.

Differential realities within the same urban space can be

deciphered from the uneven and asymmetrical access to city

services, spaces, and amenities. Due to the vast non-overlap

between the Zionist project and their own, many Palestinians in

15

Jerusalem rely on informal modes for the production of space,

with a shifting conceptualization of what is legal or illegal.19

This manifests, for instance, as “illegal” construction because

permits are impossible to obtain. These space-making efforts are

outside the dominion of planning.

In contrast, the informality argument has a differential

function from the dominant perspective. For instance, sometimes

the state declares that some outpost “settlements” are “illegal.”

Yet, in most cases, they create “facts on the ground” that are

completely in line with concerted strategies of colonization, all

of which fall within the Allon Plan from 1967, that is part and

parcel of Zionism. Allon had conceived of the settlements as

“regional defense” – a military doctrine intended to integrate

civilian settlements with military units for the protection of

the borders of the state.20 In this sense, while technically

“informal,” they function as an extension of dominant rule.

Confirmation of this often comes in the many instances of the

state extending services and then eventually appropriating land

for “security reasons” and for accommodating “natural growth”

around them.

16

Yiftachel’s concept of “gray cities” captures this reality.

He argues that these are built around “stratification of

informalities” whereby some activities are approved or condoned,

while others are criminalized or destroyed. The result is a

function of the practices of sovereign power. Within Jerusalem,

this facilitates a “creeping urban apartheid.” Urban planning

is used to classify, contain, and manage ethnographically

hierarchized societies, producing a “centripetal colonialism.”

The periphery is simultaneously and unequally discursively

separated as well as territorially incorporated.21 The

“colonial” in the geography of Yiftachel’s “gray cities” is a

moniker for the process by which the regulating power facilitates

the process of seizure and appropriation that underlies the urban

political economy. Gray spaces further the national, economic,

security, and political interests of government by facilitating

the covert extension of aid to favored groups. Thus, selective

non-planning in these gray areas is an active form of planning.

It constitutes a “creeping apartheid” because it spatially

effectuates a stratified and essentialized, unequal, urban

17

residential experience and / or citizenship rights, as the case

may be.22

Nevertheless, the distinction between “legal” and “illegal”

is a function and expression of colonialist power differentials.

At base, Israel does not have a constitution, which raises (or

ought to raise) questions about any claimed legality. Israel

instead relies on an infrastructure of emergency regulations.

Thus, abuses of power, law and exceptions to international legal

norms are integrated into the ideology of the colonizing regime.

Ultimately, the oppression of colonialism is used by the state to

defend against sovereign norms – both democratic and otherwise.

The Methods of Identity-Based Space-Making

Sovereignty (with its intimate connection to power) in Jerusalem

is practiced and manifested in terms of identity and territorial

space-making.

Property rights are one example of how this process takes

place. For both Israeli Jews and Palestinians, linkage to the

homeland, and the ability to sustain and grow it, figures very

18

prominently in their respective discourses. Sustainable access

and rights to property and certain parts of urban space are

negotiated and contested on a daily basis. They are geographic

practices expressing historical and political contexts within

which competing sovereign identities and expressions are

constructed.

Surveillance and classification is a second method by which

identity-based spatial claims are constructed. Israel uses

surveillance practices, specifically, census / population count,

and spatial monitoring, to socially construct spaces according to

active categorization of Palestinians and Israelis.23 For

example, competing claims about Palestine are evident in the use

of statistics: survey results of population estimates related to

demography and living conditions within urban space vary by the

side conducting the survey.

This process of classification is a legal-administrative

practice of sovereignty with geographic implications. It

“Others” the Palestinians while “importing” immigrant “settlers”

who can further the Zionist project. Specifically, after the

establishment of Israel, 20 percent of the population was

19

classified as “present-absentee” in the first census.24 They

were / are prevented from returning to their homes. Some have

“relocated” to Jerusalem – for instance, the residents in the

Shaykh Jarrah neighborhood who are being systematically evicted

today.

Categories of identity divide and subdivide into

objectifying minutia. The Israeli census, which covers all of

Jerusalem, breaks down non-Jews into Muslim, Christian, or Druze.

Accessibility to and within the city is also a function of

categorizations (colored identity cards are based on place of

residence). Within Israel, the ethnic national marker of

qawmiyyau’ (Hebrew) gives access to privileges of immigration (Law

of Return and Nationality Law), land ownership, state welfare

benefits, and so forth.25

The colonialist framework and strategy further uses identity

in order achieve ideologically optimal demographic “balance” in

the territorial space of Jerusalem. For instance, in 1995, the

Israeli Census Bureau of Statistics added a classification of

“other” to help achieve the “optimal demographic ratio” of “three

Jews for every Arab.” Uziel Wexler, chairman of the Jerusalem

20

Development Authority, said: "We have to keep [Jerusalem's

Jewish-Arab ratio] at 70-30, more or less.”26 The category of

“Arab” for the most part means “Palestinian,” but for colonialist

reasons having to do with eliminating the land-indigenous people

connection, there is a taboo on this particular classification

within Israeli society. Significantly, another “Other” category

was created to consecrate Zionist identity-based divisions in the

city. This “Other” was intended to accommodate non-Jewish Russian

immigrants.27 It is estimated that 500,000 of the 1.3 million

Russian immigrants are not Jewish according to orthodox halacha

laws. Officially only 80,000 of them are so classified.

According to the Israeli Interior Ministry, in 2002, 58 percent

of incoming Russian immigrants are not Jewish (the figure is 70

percent according to Israel’s chief rabbis).28 Nevertheless,

their colonialist function, as non-Jewish Jews, trumped their

religious identity, thereby furthering the ideological aims of

the Zionist project. More recently after the Tunisian Revolution

and needing “immigrants” of only an ethnically stratified type,

the Israeli cabinet approved a Jewish Agency (a supra-national

21

institution) funded package that ups funding to encourage

Tunisian Jews to emigrate to Israel.29

Colonialist Urban Planning and its concomitant demographic

re-construction are the third and fourth methods of constructing

identity-based ethnocratic spaces that express a dominant

sovereignty. The government is actively engaged in building new

homes for incoming Jewish (to-be residents) while denying homes

to Arab current residents. Maintaining the “demographic balance”

informs all aspects of city planning.30 This is reflected in

housing policy. Even though the Palestinian population growth

rate exceeds the Jewish one, data on building starts in Jerusalem

reveals a consistent disproportional (double or triple)

privileging of building for Jewish residents.31 The population

of Jerusalem increased 60 percent after 1967. One effect of this

was the demolition of old buildings for the purpose of

constructing new structures, especially in the Jewish Quarter.32

When it comes to building permits, Weizman states that

“[W]hile issuing an annual average of 1,500 building permits to

Jewish Israelis and constructing 90,000 housing units for Jews in

all parts of East Jerusalem since 1967, the municipality has

22

issued an annual average of only one hundred building permits to

Palestinians in the city…”33 The artificial dearth of

residences, and consequent inflated prices, force Palestinians to

leave the city, which makes them “lose” their residency status.

Since 1967, 50,000 Palestinians have been effectively

displaced.34

Along similar lines, 40 percent of Palestinian owned private

land, has been spatially sequestered and legally placed off-

limits by designation as “public” land. Ayala Ronel, an

architect, explained this essentially “green” policy that was

specifically aimed at Palestinians: “`Dusty yellow areas strewn

with rubbish` were declared green zones in order to prevent Arabs

building on them, but were open to Jewish settlement.”35

The inability of Israel, despite draconian efforts, to get

below the 28 percent Palestinian demographic threshold, explains

its recent accelerated efforts at land expropriations, home

demolitions and evictions.36 For example, there is systematic

“repossession” of dubious “former” Jewish property -- frequently

deemed as such under the Absentee Land Law -- in the

neighborhoods of Silwan, Ras el-‘Amud, al-Bustan, and Jabal

23

Mukaber. The demography of the densely populated and walled Old

City, which is less than one squared kilometer, continues to

distress of the Zionists. Researchers at the Jerusalem Institute

for Israel Studies, headed by the previously cited Israel Kimhi,

found that only 9 percent of the city’s 32,488 people are Jewish

(2000 statistics).37

Along parallel lines, “settlement” colonies are another

method of appropriating territory for the construction of a

Jewish population belt that is concertedly expanding, while

concurrently fragmenting Palestinian space. Initially after

1967, there was a ring of seven large “settlements”: Gilo, Armon

Hanaziv (East Talpiot), French Hill, Ramat Eshkol, Ramot, Ramot

Shlomo and Neve Yaakov. In the intermediate period, Pisgat Zeev

and Maale Adumim were added. More recently, a third enclosure of

nine settlements has been built: Givon, Adam, Kochav Yaakov, Kfar

Adumim, Keidar, Efrat, Betar Ilit, Har Homa and the Etzion Bloc.

These colonies contain at least 500,000 “settlers,” outside the

“Green Line,” but within the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem.

The placement of “settlements” is intended to split

Palestinian geographic contiguity. For example, the spatial

24

function of the “settlement” colonies of Ramat Shlomo and French

Hill, serve to cut off Sheikh Jarrah from Shuafat.

Significantly, the Shuafat ridge had been declared a “green” zone

specifically to prevent Palestinian construction in, and use of,

this area. It was no longer “green” when needed for “settlement”

construction.

A sixth method of the construction of a Zionist colonialist

sovereignty in Jerusalem is expressed through the politics of

spatial contestation. The boundaries of Jerusalem are

gerrymandered so as to increase the Jewish population. In 1998

for example, the Jerusalem Development Authority extended the

borders of the city west in order to increase the number of Jews.

Meron Benvenisti, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem and Israeli

scholar, said “[T]hey want to gerrymander the boundaries and

increase the number of Jews without increasing the number of

Arabs. By that they think they can rectify Jewish

[dominance]."38

By way of contrast, the Palestinian authority set up the

Palestinian Census Bureau of Statistics, which conducts its own

surveys of the “Jerusalem Governorate,” by Ottoman designation,

25

within the context of its own claims to (psuedo) sovereignty. In

the battle of sovereignty and fake sovereignty, the PCBS operates

even though a special law was enacted by Israel in 1995, and

reaffirmed in 1997, forbidding Arab residents of Jerusalem from

participating in any census taken by the PCBS.39 Nevertheless,

in a (unofficial) sign of acquiescence to Israeli claims that

Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state, the latest census

statistics published by PCBS do not cover Jerusalem, as

“Jerusalem” or even as “Eastern Jerusalem”. Instead, “for purely

statistical reasons,” which are unexplained, Jerusalem is divided

and surveyed into two districts, J1 and J2, with the Old City,

bayt al-maqdiss, included in J1.40 Even though there is a total

tally for the number of people, there is interestingly, no total

tally for the number of housing units owned by Arabs in “J1;” It

is tallied for “J2.” Nor is there a tally for the whole of the

“Jerusalem Governorate.” The same is not true for any of the

other areas surveyed and supposedly under PA “rule” in the West

Bank and Gaza.

This is in keeping with the colonialist -- objectifying

through surveillance and ruling by proxy -- spirit that underlies

26

the Oslo Accords. For example, article 28 of the Interim

agreement (1995) consecrates the Israeli role in the construction

of population parameters for a putatively “other” political

entity, the PA. It stipulates that the PA must report all

changes in the status of residents in the West Bank and Gaza,

including identification numbers, places of residency, passports,

permits, and so forth, to Israel.41 The result is a transitive,

but nevertheless, effective and less costly sovereignty over the

marginalized indigenous population.

A seventh method of expressing sovereignty in the urban

space of Jerusalem is through colonialist archaeology, a form of

making Zionist history. As in most nationalisms, a mythic past

is intimately tied to the construction of Israeli national

identity. Yet, unlike most nationalisms, Zionism developed as a

colonialist enterprise in other peoples’ land under the colonial

control of the British. In order to develop a cohesive national

imagination to tie together its immigrants, it used secular

mobilization and religious symbology to achieve its goals.

Archaeology became the site for the articulation of political and

27

national ideology. Nadia Abu al-Haj’s Facts on the Ground42 is an

anthropological study of the science of archaeology in Israel.

According to her, Zionism effaces in its own logic the

colonial dimension because its settlers lay a national and sovereign

claim of ownership. “Facts on the ground” and narrative culture

serves to substantiate a specific history. In the urban

landscape, this includes linguistic re-narration / Judaization

through the re-naming of places and things as part of forming a

national identity.43 In the Old City of Jerusalem and elsewhere

in historical Palestine, excavations are conducted in search of

an “ethnic group” that supposedly entered Palestine in the late

Bronze Age to the early Iron Age. To Judaize this history, all

pottery shards found dating from that period were labeled

“Israelite,” not Bronze or Iron Age. This is a performance of

nationality and is presented as a series of “observations” that

enact a “nation” as a historical fact. Concomitant with this,

and as a result of a concern for narrating a national ascendance,

there is little interest in the daily lives of the ancient

residents. One result is that the destruction of Herodian

Jerusalem, for instance, is tied to the beginning of “Exile,”

28

while in the meantime ignoring the possibility of the

continuation of the majority of the resident population.44

Similarly, in order to be consistent with its Zionist

interpretive framework, bulldozers are used to excavate the

archaeological landscape of the city. The aim is to get down to

the more nationally significant earlier strata. This of course,

destroys other histories above. It is a very selective,

politically-driven means of cherry-picking “evidence” to record.

In the urban space of Jerusalem, such archaeological means

of “extending sovereignty” through historiographic national

narrative construction is evident in the integration of made and

found ruins into the new design. Most prominently, the building

of a new Jewish Quarter in a particular zone in the Old City, at

a symbolic center of a “unified” capital, is per se, a

performance of a particular vision of a political order. To

accommodate its intended audience, the Maghariba Quarter was

demolished in order to open up the space in front of the Wailing

Wall. This was justified by an aesthetic self-serving judgment,

that it was a “slum.”45 In addition, two other historic

religious sites, Jami’ al-Buraq and al-Madrassah al-Afdhaliyyah were also

29

destroyed. The reconfiguration of the identity of the place was

helped along by the expropriation, a year later, of the quarter

for “public use.”46 The definition of “public” was decidedly

Jewish. Such a segregationist and exclusivist vision resulted in

the erasure of quarters whose populations were historically fluid

and not monolithic. 700 buildings were appropriated immediately

after the 1967 war by orders from Teddy Kollek, mayor of

Jerusalem. Only 105 of them had been owned by Jews prior to

1948; the majority was public (111) and family (354) awqaf, and

in private hands (130).47

“Boundaries” that Facilitate Rule: Relating the Political

and Spatial Construction of Difference

An occupying regime, through spatial organization, laws,

structures, violence, and inducements, seeks to construct

obedient occupées. While in a state the “Other” category is

normally outside the official boundaries, in an occupation, the

“Other” necessarily co-habits the same space.

30

David Theo Goldberg describes this as a policy of “racial

Palestinianization,” which he defines as a “disposition that

arrogates to itself the source of universal and absolute

judgment, ultimately over life and death, the quality of living

and dying, over the state and civil society, the conditions of

existence and civility.”48 Boundaries are impermanent and

flexible in this type of identity construction.

Because the Israeli occupation is less interested in

controlling the individual Palestinian than in controlling the

Palestinian population as a whole, communal identity expression

is magnified. It is the nexus between state and subject under

occupation.49

Specifically, sovereignty in Jerusalem exhibits a uni-

directional permeability that is built into structural, legal,

and political texts (e.g. the Oslo Accords). For instance, there

is a network of “security” cameras installed to monitor the

movements of Old City residents. There are six police stations,

four of which are in the Muslim areas, one in the Armenian area,

and the last in the Jewish area. There are permanent and

temporary checkpoints throughout.50 All of these methods and

31

more, allow the dominant state to exert sovereignty while

concealing it.

Likewise, the Wall is a practice of concealed sovereign

control that integrates uni-directional permeability into a

physical construct. This happens at checkpoints (permanent and

moving), observation towers, passes, and so forth. The

contingent and evolving enforcement of “boundaries” that

correspond to markers of difference are in effect a shifting

geography. As the one who decides where, when, and how, moving

“borders” essentially disguises Israeli while, in the process,

extending sovereign control. Importantly, it effectively

integrates the intended “Palestinian state,” including East

Jerusalem, within Israel’s security conceptions. Since the wall

is permeable from only one side, then Israel ought to be

considered sovereign in PA-“controlled” territories.

This is a veneer of fake sovereignty. Neve Gordon argues

(2008) that occupied places like Iraq and the Occupied

Territories are part of the “cartographic performances” of the

“colonial present.”51 The spectacle (fakeness) of politics

pretends that the sovereignty of ruptured territories is a

32

coherent state, thereby serving two functions. First, conjured

sovereignty renders political action meaningful. And second, it

serves dominant and disciplinary ends by conjuring a fixity in a

territory for “enemies” in which they can be “legitimately”

bombed, arrested, etc… This is frequently seen in the West Bank,

and most recently, in Gaza.52 Fake sovereignty therefore

functions to “normalize” occupation, endowing it with an

authority that it would not normally possess.

In the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem, this

classification of the Palestinian population is accompanied by

geographical fragmentation,53 evident in the classes of passes

and permits based on places of residence. For instance, the

ruling on “The Israeli Seam Zone Permit Regime” affects

Palestinians via the “enclosure” of 9.5 percent of the West Bank

via the designation of permanent “military zone.” This means

that only Israelis and Jews can enter, settle, or visit these

areas freely. This is in sharp contrast to the three Palestinian

groups who must obtain permits, permanent or temporary, for

access.54

33

The urbano-structural manifestations of the above identity-

rule duality embody and attempt to shape behavior. The

structural elements also reflect dual theoretical

conceptualizations of sovereignty. One is decisionist /

exceptional (Carl Schmitt) and the other constituted /

legislative (Rousseau, Locke). The decision to apply which one

depends on the definition / ethnicity of the target.

For instance, the “Separation” Wall has political effects in

addition to embodying religiously and/or ethnically-derived

identity elements of the state. Walls, according to Wendy Brown

function as a spectacle of sovereignty -- that is not entirely

effective -- and attempt to substantiate a “theological

remainder” suggesting sovereign jurisdiction, power, and awe.55

From this perspective, the attempt to enclose a “Jewish”

state within a wall that separates the outside from the inside,

the sacred from the profane, and the private from the public is

semi-theological.56 The state, founded through enclosure, uses

boundaries, like walls, to define and simultaneously relate

sacred space with sovereign rule. Yet, the occupying and

colonial state adds a significant modification to this duality.

34

Its internal “mosaic” boundaries enclosed as they exclude. Both

“inside” and “outside” spaces are sites of dominion and

jurisdiction -- even when disguised -- and when necessary,

exception.57 Specifically, the twisted and meandering path of

the Wall is symbolic of the transformation in the multi-

dimensional traditional boundaries that define sovereignty.

“Identity” is the basis of the differential application of the

state of sovereign exception – when the rule of law is suspended

by the sovereign for the sake of “protecting” the state. In

Israel, within and outside the enclosed space, the exception is

reserved for the “identity” of non-Jewish / Palestinian.

This has several effects on the practice of sovereignty.

Since the concept of sovereignty resides in both people and the

state, it is tied to both nation and power. Michael Sorkin

argues that the Wall has a “tortured geometry,” and is

constituted in more ways than horizontally -- enclosing land.58

It is an extension of the vertical “sovereignty” of the state,

extending extra-juridically over airspace, aquifers and so forth.

This has the effect of producing two contrasting types of

subjects in this state of occupation. The settler subject

35

transports and owns sovereignty through any space that he or she

traverses. In contrast, the Palestinian has sovereignty over his

or her own body, disconnected from space and, frequently, from

other members of the Palestinian community. Israeli use of the

rationalization of “security,” extends beyond the territorial

boundary of the state. It is simultaneously applied to bio-

Israeli-Jewish- citizens. This identity endows, constructs, and

permits the exercise of certain exceptional “rights” to “defend”

and extend sovereignty supra-territorially.59

These changes in the practice of sovereignty represent

alterations to the norm of “adjusting” traditional “borders”

through war or international agreements. Brown posits that walls

normalize security conflicts, extending them to the “edges” of

sovereign territory, and also broadening and relocating the “edge

zones.” Counter-intuitively, but also in a circular self-

perpetuating mechanism, she argues that walls also represent

failures of sovereign political power: walls highlight that the

“permanent state of exception” represents a state of emergency

for state sovereignty itself, and not only for the nation.”

36

The validity of this claim is questionable, however.

Namely, local “decisionism” as a demonstration of diminished

state sovereignty – for example, settlers taking the “law” into

their own hands – does not in reality undermine consolidated

state sovereignty. There are shared agendas, and cooperation,

with the state. Settlers require a supply of services, external

funding, state incentives, and so forth. The state massively

supports all of these. This indicates that the “settlement”

project is a continuation of the 1967 Allon Plan that succeeded

Plan Dalet.

The second claim that exceptionality can become the “norm”

also needs qualification. It may be true at the level of

practice only insofar as it is able to sustain its power

projection. However, it exists in contradiction to and in

tension with the alternative, inherent legal rational

conceptualization of sovereignty. Ultimately, the initial

“crisis” of sovereignty, signified in the exception, and

structurally manifested in walls and “mosaics,” and of the

“nation” itself must confront the effects of the discontinuities

and dislocations that it has sown. It must further confront the

37

illegality, and ethical irrationality, of its practices. An

alternative view of the Wall is that it does not instantiate a

descent into lawlessness and does not substantiate diminished

sovereignty. Instead, it is a symptom of an initial lawlessness

that is inherent in Zionism which continues to expand the project

of the Israeli state by any means possible.

Furthermore, the Wall relates the political with the urban

space in its “security” function. Once again, the term needs

qualification, as it differs from the traditional norm. In

Israel, “security” is intimately tied with the preservation of

identity as the ethno-religious basis of the colonialist state.

This renders “security” as the ability of the state to remain

Jewish. As such, “danger” is more immanently threatening when it

comes from the demographic growth of its own Palestinian

citizens.60 This is in contrast to other states where danger is

assumed to lie outside the state. Especially in the area of

Jerusalem, the Wall plays a political role because it encloses as

much land as possible, with as few, and as socio-economically and

geographically fragmented, Palestinians as possible.

38

Conclusion

The urban space of Jerusalem is an ideal location for observing

the construction of Israeli sovereignty and the concomitant de-

construction of alternative historical, social, political, and

religious sovereignties. This process is a conflict that chooses

“identity” as its overt manifestation. Identity “protection” is

also used as justification for legal and political

discrimination. The construction of this particular form of

identity was and is inherently inescapable due to the colonialist

basis and practices of the state.

Within the urban space of Jerusalem, this identity-based,

exclusivist “difference” is sustained by multiple practices,

constructions, re-configurations, and demolitions. These include

the Wall, passes, archaeological and historical re-narrations,

“settlements,” shifting and porous boundaries, and so forth.

Other symbolic means are the erection of statues, museums, and

buildings that are Judaic and/or Israeli in character. Moreover,

they also include, symbolic and linguistic appropriation of

spaces.

39

Further, since power and resistance are co-extant, such

practices prompt counter-hegemonic moves that are political

(organizational), discursive (Palestinian nationalist), artistic

(including graffiti), practical (tunnels), physical (refusal of

evictions), and activist (non-violent and armed).

All this is to show that the urban space of Jerusalem is

where the attributes, practices, and extent of sovereignty are

played out. Therein, the “authoritative” and the “legitimate”

are determined. These differ depending on the “identity” of the

formulator, which in turn, determines which normative framework

will be used for interpretation. In the final analysis, because

it is a colonialist space, conflict inevitably results from the

incongruence in aims and interests between dominant and

dominated.

40

Endnotes

41

1 Salim Tamari, “The Great War and the Erasure of Palestine’s Ottoman Past,” in Transformed Landscapes, eds. Camille Mansour and Leila Fawaz, (Cairo & New York: The American University of Cairo Press, 2009), 105-36.2 For maps comparing Jewish presence in the Old City before 1948 after 1967, see Abdalla Owais (maps), in Jerusalem, the Old City: The Urban Fabric and Geopolitical Implications, eds, Rassem Khameisi, Robert Brooks, Meir Margalit, Rami Nasrallah, Michael Yunan, and Abdalla Owais, (Ramallah: International Peace and Cooperation Center, 2009), 13, 18, http://www.ipcc-jerusalem.org/Old%20City.pdf. 3 Ananya Roy, "Strangely Familiar: Planning and the Worlds of Insurgence and Informality," Planning Theory, Vol. 8 (2009): 7-11. See also, Roy, "The 21st-Century Metropolis: New Geographies of Theory," Regional Studies, 43 (2011): 819-830. Also, Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World, (New York: Colombia University Press, 2006).4 Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2001).5 Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 6 The Separation Barrier, Wall, or Fence as a nomenclature is misleading because its primary effect is less to separate and secure than to enclose, expropriate, anddivide and control. The same principle applies to settlements, checkpoints, and Israelis-only roads. Moreover, “Wall” does not describe the fortifications of ditches, observation posts, embankments, patrol roads, and so forth. Peter Lagerquist, “Fencing the Last Sky: Excavating Palestine after Israel’s “Separation Wall,” Journal of Palestine Studies, 33 (2004): 5-35, 6.7 Neve Gordon, Israel’s Occupation, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008), 131-3.8 Amira Hass, “Supreme court is on the wrong side of the West Bank Separation Fence,” Haaretz, 11 April 2011,www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/supreme-court-is-on-wrong-side-of-west-bank-separation-fence-1.355251.9 Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, (London & NY: Verso, 2007), and “Demographic Architecture,” Jerusalem Quarterly, 38 (2009): 17-20, http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=299.10 Roy, “The 21st-Century Metropolis: New Geographies of Theory," 828.11 This is according to the OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination ofHumanitarian Affairs, http://www.ochaopt.org/.12 Hass, “Supreme court is on the wrong side of the West Bank Separation Fence,” 11April 2011.13 Karin Laub, “Jerusalem Barrier Causes Major Upheaval,” Associated Press, 2 December2006. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/02/AR2006120200463_pf.html.14 Ibid.15 Ibid.16 Troen, S. Ilan, Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), xiii-iv, 142. 17 Weizman, Hollow Land, 218.18 Joseph Liebovitz, "Faultline Citizenship: Ethnonational Politics, Minority Mobilisation, and Governance in the Israeli "Mixed Cities" of Haifa and Tel Aviv-

Jaffa," Ethnopolitics, 6 (2011): 235-263.19 Roy, "Strangely Familiar: Planning and the Worlds of Insurgence and Informality," 8-9.20 Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land, 101.21 Yitachel, “Theoretical Notes on “Gray Cities”: the Coming of Urban Apartheid,” Planning Theory, 8 (2009): 88-100, 90.22 Ibid, 93.23 Surveillance as a method of instilling obedience lies at the heart of Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the Panopticon. His methods were extensively applied in colonial India. Thus, the connection between colonization and surveillance for obedience in the service of power, is intimate. The Panopticon technique was theoretically further developed by Michel Foucault’s study of prisons. Michel Foucault, Part 3, Chapter 3 “Panopticism,” Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, (NewYork: Vintage, 1995; original publisher: Paris: Gaillimard, 1975).24 Elia Zureik, "Constructing Palestine through Surveillance Practices," British Journalof Middle Eastern Studies. 28 (2001): 205-227, 214.25 Ibid.26 Lee Hockstader, “Jewish Drop in Jerusalem Worries Israel,” Washington Post, 16 August 1998. http://web.archive.org/web/20060909060853/http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/jerus.htm.27 Ronen Shnidman, “New Year Statistics: Israel’s Population Hits 7.6 Million,” Jerusalem Post, 6 September 2010, http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=187266.28 Jessica Steinberg, “Israelis Re-examine Russian Aliyah,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11September 2002, http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/091102JTA.shtml.29 This is against the wishes of most Tunisian Jews. For example, Perez Trabelsi, president of the Jewish community on Djerba, said "Israeli officials have received false information about our situation. We are Tunisians above all, and we do not have any problems. We live like everyone else, and no Jew is going to leave the country.” Only 16 have left since December 2010. “Israel, Tunisia Spar over Jewish Immigration,” AFP, 29 March 2011. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i9kxMIaYjb-f3Q3Rdo0gkj65P8sQ?docId=CNG.de1bc45a4642d8ad00be85bc0b2fc49d.7d1.30 Weizman, “Demographic Architecture,” Jerusalem Quarterly, 38 (2009): 17-20, http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=299.31 See B’Tselem: http://www.btselem.org/english/Jerusalem/Building_Starts_Statistics.asp.32 IPPC, Jerusalem, the Old City, http://www.ipcc-jerusalem.org/Old%20City.pdf, 24.33 Weizman, “Demographic Architecture,” 18.34 Ibid, 18-9.35 Philippe Rekacewicz and Dominique Vidal, “The Politics of Urban Planning: Jerusalem: whose very own and golden city?” Le Monde Diplomatique, 19 February 2007, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12156. 36 For statistics on the demolition of houses without permits in East Jerusalem, see B’Tselem, http://www.btselem.org/english/Planning_and_Building/East_Jerusalem_Statistics.asp.For photographs, see http://www.btselem.org/English/Photo_Archive/List.asp?x_Concatenate=06&z_Concatenate=LIKE,%27%25,%25%27. For statistics on land expropriations (only until 1991), see

http://www.btselem.org/english/Jerusalem/Land_Expropriation_Statistics.asp.37 CNN, “Arab Population Growth Outpaces Jews in Jerusalem,” 26 September 2000. http://edition.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/09/26/mideast.jerusalem.reut/index.html. For more on the Old City, IPCC, Jerusalem, the Old City, http://www.ipcc-jerusalem.org/Old%20City.pdf.38 Lee Hockstader, “Jewish Drop in Jerusalem Worries Israel,” Washington Post, 16 August 1998. http://web.archive.org/web/20060909060853/http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/jerus.htm.39 Zureik, "Constructing Palestine through Surveillance Practices," 216.40 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Population, Housing, and Establishment Census 2007 (Arabic), published (January 2009), 19, 51-2, http://www.pcbs.gov.ps/Portals/_pcbs/census2007/ind_loca_09.pdf.41 Zureik, "Constructing Palestine through Surveillance Practices," 218.42 Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground.43 Attempts to “cleanse” the Negev of Arabic names by re-inscription using Biblicalones ran into problems because the Bible mentions only forty identifications. To overcome this, Israel translated Arabic names into Hebrew, or gave them Hebrew sounds, or generated new symbolic names. Ibid, 92-5.44 Ibid, 99, 119, 141-5.45 Ibid, 164-6. In a letter to the United Nations, dated March 6, 1968, Israel saidthe reason for the demolition was that the Jordanian government had converted the area into a “slum.” http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/85255a0a0010ae82852555340060479d/a8138ad15b0fcac385256b920059debf?OpenDocument. Harat al-Magharibah was originally established in 1193 by Malik al-Afdhal, the son of Salah al-Din. It was endowed asa waqf for use by scholars and pilgrims from North Africa. Historically, it was never been part of the Old City’s various Jewish Quarters. It was destroyed by the IDF days after the 1967 war began and before the ceasefire. As a result, 650 people were made refugees and several people died.46 Thomas Aowde, “The Moroccan Quarter: A History of the Present,” Jerusalem Quarterly, Winter 7 (2007), 1-16.47 Abu El-Haj, 167.48 David Theo Goldberg, “Racial Palestinianization,” ed., in Ronit Lentin, Thinking Palestine, (London & New York: Zed Books, 2008), 25-45, 36. 49 I am using “identity” to indicate a combination of consciousness and purposive, effective action; in other words, as a meshing of subjecthood and agency.50 IPCC, Jerusalem, 35, http://www.ipcc-jerusalem.org/Old%20City.pdf.51 Gordon, Israel’s Occupation, xviii.52 Ibid, xviii-xix.53 Hanafi, Sami, “Spacio-cide and Bio-Politics: The Israeli Colonial Project from 1947 to the Wall,” in ed, Michael Sorkin), Against the Wall, (New York: The New Press: 2005), 158-173, 164-5. 54 Hass, “Supreme court is on the wrong side of the West Bank Separation Fence,” 11April 2011.55 Ibid, 26.56 Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, (New York: Zone Books, 2010), 90-104. The theatricality of the wall is still effective in producing (mostly) compliant behavior that is in accord with the will of the sovereign – even if the conviction

and authority is missing. Wendy Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, (New York: ZoneBooks, 2010).57 In The Concept of the Political, Carl Schmitt emphasized the friend-enemy distinction asforming the basis for the conceptualization of sovereignty and the political – which is the essence of politics and closely related to identity. According to him, state unity is achieved by defining the content of politics as opposition to the other. As such, sovereignty, i.e. supreme influence over and autonomy of a body politic, is the capacity to decide the state of exception (suspension of the law) intended to protect the essence of the political (identity). There are theoretical disagreements over whether this state of exception is normalized and continuous in modern nations or if it is only a temporary suspension of the law. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, 1927).58 Sorkin, Michael, “Introduction: Up Against the Wall,” Against the Wall: Israel’s Barrier to Peace, (New York: The New Press, 2005), vi-xxi, x.59 Brown, Walled States, 86.60 Weizman makes this argument, “Demographic Architecture,” 107.