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
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.