Assembling urban worlds: always-becoming urban in and through Bir al-Saba’

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2020

This article explores Palestinians' place-making in Jerusalem under the constant threat of displacement and dispossession. I center my focus on Kufr Aqab, a neighborhood that was cut off from Jerusalem by the construction of Wall in 2003 while remaining inside the borders of the city's municipality. After 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the borders of Jerusalem's municipality expanded and Kufr Aqab village was annexed as a neighborhood inside Jerusalem's newly formed borders. Since its occupation, a matrix of displacement and disposses-sion consisting of policies and practices was put in place to oversee the domination of the Palestinians in the city. In my research, I explore the possibilities of reconceptualizing Palestinian urban spaces and place-making in Kufr Aqab between the gap in settler-colonial gov-ernance and the Palestinian future of no-state. I show how the urban space emulates a camp-like space that I describe as an "affective infrastructure" of a camp. Being on the Israeli settler-colonial frontier, I argue that Kufr Aqab dwellers are kept suspended in time in a liminal zone between the ghost of displaceability from the Israeli state and in a deep suspension of no-state. I conclude by suggesting that the case of Kufr Aqab speaks to the space-making, displacement, and statelessness of the present as well as futurity of the West Bank (and East Jerusalem), where the future of the Palestinian state is far from being seen in the horizon and debilitated sovereignty is exercised on a limited scale in fragmented territories of governance.

Sophia Journal

The meaning of identity of a place is manifested in its genius loci, or rather in the hidden spirit of the place itself. The immanent value of the built environment represents its physical and materic sedimentation, as well as the collective memory testifies to the emotional stratification of the space itself. The spatial component involves not only the sphere of urban form and public spaces, but also the private dimension of domesticity. It is a process of accumulation of the historical memory of a place, through fragments of shared community life as well as of family and domestic identities. In this sense, the theme of loss of urban historical memory in newly developed contexts, in cities such as Dubai for example, appears relevant. Furthermore, how in such areas the built environment is suddenly altered by the dynamics of real estate. This contribution documents, also by means of photography, the case of the disappearance of Sha’biya Al Safa Neighborhood (also known as Sha’biya A...

Journal of Urban History, 2024

Using the concept of "trapped neighborhoods," this paper focuses on two impoverished neighborhoods between the years 1949 and 1967 that were a symbol of Mizraḥi protest in Israel: Wadi Salib in Haifa and Musrara in Jerusalem. We consider their residents as not only people living in the margins of the city but also as communities that were trapped within the cultural, social and geographical margins on the border of the Arab existence and recent past, and the Jewish-Israeli present. While Musrara was "trapped" between a physical border in the Eastern-Arab part of the Jerusalem, and an imagined border on its western side, Wadi Salib was "trapped" between "upper" and "lower" Haifa, and between the Palestinian repressed past and the Arab-Jewish identity of its residents. The article examines both the nature of the borders and the mechanisms of crossing them.

journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient , 2017

The neighborhood of Kababir in Haifa is known as the center of the Ahmadiyya community in the Middle East. It was established in the nineteen century as a hamlet, and was later annexed to the municipality of Haifa. The article traces the history of Kababir since its establishment until 1964 and observes the accelerated transition from rural to urban life at the periphery of an expanding city. The story of Kababir thus illustrates one path to urbanism within Palestinian society. Based on local written and oral sources the article also shows the role of collective memory in interpreting past events and constructing cultural identity.

Journal of Urban Design, 2010

Current Israeli Palestinians' claims to the city, as translated into urban forms and politics, are examined in the context of the urban-rural dichotomy that has played a major role in the construction of Palestinian identity. The paper considers this divide, analyzing meaning and content in a situation in which a Palestinian urban neighborhood represents an ''Arab village", while a former European agricultural settlement becomes the center of a flourishing Palestinian urban culture. This inversion infuses the history of urban form with a new ethno-cultural meaning, representing a hybrid notion of urbanity. The paper considers this hybrid city-village reality within the contested environment of Israel/Palestine, and examines the potential of the built form for upholding the cultural meaning and authenticity that sustain ethnonational aspirations. The findings suggest interpretations and uses that negate unilateral understanding of the urban-rural divide.

The Proceedings of Spaces of History Histories of Space Emerging Approaches to the Study of the Built Environment, 2010

Considering the unpredictability of the continuous Israeli military invasions for most of the Palestinian cities, this study takes the Old City of Nablus as a case study to shed light on the importance of everyday life. This paper is part of an ethnographic research on the interrelationship between people and their built environment under an extremely conflicted political situation, and the households' everyday living experiences that present their resistance and "sense of place". It attempts to discuss the responsiveness of the everyday of the Old City of Nablus and its urban fabric competence not only to the socioeconomic needs, but also to the accelerated political struggle and resistance facing the continuous invasion and occupation by the Israeli military. To reveal the silenced stories, the paper's structure follows an ethnographic, exploratory, and analytical approach based on the researcher's observations, interviews, photos, and available literature. This paper serves the research on people's everyday life and urban public space in the city of Nablus, and continues researching the interrelationship between urban and social fabric and how it impacts the function and harmonization of public space, and "forbidden space" at certain times. Similarly, it documents and introduces Palestine as a case study that represents the everyday urbanism practices under the occupying Israeli military operations, to available theories for scholars who have discussed the everyday urbanism practices and tactics in different contexts. In this sense, history is incorporated in the phenomenon of this research case study as ongoing implication on both present living experience and space. This paper attempts to discuss the responsiveness of the urban fabric of the Old City of Nablus to the social and socioeconomic needs, as well as the city's political struggle under the Israeli occupation. The paper structure follows a descriptive analytical approach based on the researcher's observations, photos, movie/media, and relevant literature. Starting with a historical background on some of the politics, this paper serves the research on the Bleibleh: Everyday Urbanism Between Public Space and "Forbidden Space"

Current Israeli Palestinians' claims to the city, as translated into urban forms and politics, are examined in the context of the urban-rural dichotomy that has played a major role in the construction of Palestinian identity. The paper considers this divide, analyzing meaning and content in a situation in which a Palestinian urban neighborhood represents an ''Arab village", while a former European agricultural settlement becomes the center of a flourishing Palestinian urban culture. This inversion infuses the history of urban form with a new ethno-cultural meaning, representing a hybrid notion of urbanity. The paper considers this hybrid city-village reality within the contested environment of Israel/Palestine, and examines the potential of the built form for upholding the cultural meaning and authenticity that sustain ethnonational aspirations. The findings suggest interpretations and uses that negate unilateral understanding of the urban-rural divide.

Foreword: Rethinking the 'Lived' within the 'Urban' of the Middle Eastern city, 2021

Salama, A. (2021). Foreword: rethinking the 'lived' within the 'urban' of the Middle Eastern city. In S. Azzali, S. Mazzetto, & A. Petruccioli (Eds.), Urban Challenges in the Globalizing Middle-East: Social Value of Public Spaces (1st ed., pp. v-vii). (The Urban Book Series). Springer International Publishing AG. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69795-2 With their varied socio-physical, socio-economic, socio-cultural, and socio-political presence, cities have always been highly differentiated spaces expressive of heterogeneity, diversity of activities, entertainment, excitement, and pleasure. They have been (and still are) melting pots for the formulation of and experimentation with new philosophies and religious and social practices. Cities produce, reproduce, represent, and convey much of what counts today as culture, knowledge, and politics. While the Middle Eastern city is not and exception, characterised by some of these key elements, but it continues to witness various forms of struggles. It endures to experience a multitude of influences where its architecture and urbanism have experienced dramatic transformations that instigated critical questions about urban growth, sustainable design and planning, regenerating and retrofitting heritage and historic building stock, the quality of urban life, healthy neighbourhoods, urban liveability and identity, and multiculturalism, among others. Architecture and urban spectacles are developed in tandem with environmental degradation, civic and regional conflicts and mass displacements of refugees, political and economic instability, among other bare realities. In essence, this conveys a severe dichotomy that is emerging as a new field of research, discourse, and critique. The body of knowledge on what constitutes 'urban' has fluctuated between two clearly defined intellects. The first is concomitant with the spatial intensity of a population and buildings on the basis of certain boundaries, dimension and density. The second is associated with the dissemination of the value system including attitudes, norms, and behaviours where the 'urban' is viewed as a place of encounter and assembly, and simultaneity and social interaction. Evidently, the first is about 'urban' form and second is about 'urban' culture or 'urban' life. 'Urban' form has been, and continues to be, the key domain of architects, and urban designs and planners, and 'urban' life has been the domain of social scientists. This has been the case throughout the 20th century. However, over the past two decades 'urban' life has gained substantial attention among architects and urban designers. Likewise, contemporary urban discourse has portrayed the 'urban' life dimension within two poles. The first is a set of positive qualities including diversity, tolerance, sophistication, cosmopolitanism, integration, social interaction, negotiation of differences. The second is a number of characteristics that represent undesired conditions including detachment, withdrawal, loneliness, social control, segregation, individualism, isolation, fear, and seclusion. Framing the preceding standpoints, one should refer to a cycle of three main symbiotic pillars on the 'urban': the imagined, the measured, and the experienced, which contribute to the development of insights that elucidate various parameters for interrogating urban challenges in the Middle Eastern City. These three pillars stem from the Lefebvrian conjecture on the production of space, which postulates a triadic relationship of three different but related types of 'urban': the conceived (Imagined), the perceived (measured) and the lived (experienced).

Dearq, 2018

This article proposes an interpretation of the symbolic dimension of urban landscapes that are mediated by symbols. The study aims to prove that the spatial symbols can be both an instrument of political power, a challenge of resistance against neoliberal global images, and an image of identity when referring to the spirit of the place. It does this in several ways: through studying the saturated places of symbolic loads and their collective memories in the case study in Baalbek, a spatio-temporal analysis of rituals related to the daily surroundings, and the analysis of the urban/landscape master planning and urban development strategies. Keywords: landscape, spatial symbol, power, identity, neoliberalism, Baalbek

CITY, 2016

Although Palestinian society is urbanizing at a rapid rate, the land and its people remain seeped in rural imagery and symbolism in the Palestinian self-imagination. Meanwhile, to accommodate real estate demands in Ramallah, the West Bank’s cultural and political hub, an ambitious new satellite city is being built that markets itself as the ‘first planned city in Palestinian history’. I develop the position in this paper that Rawabi, situated 9 km from Ramallah in the central West Bank highlands, is a symptom of an emerging trend in which a new capitalist class is reimagining the Palestinian symbolic self-image in terms of an urban strategy that Henri Lefebvre believed ‘can only proceed using general rules of politi- cal analysis’, and that this political process relies on emulating successful Zionist models of state-building that Palestinians have observed for about a century. This reimagination transcends the existing status quo of the existential relationship between Palestinians and the land, generally understood as sumud ‘steadfastness’, and brings into form a new ethics in Palestinian politics that is at once global while also particular to a distinctly colonial situation.