The Politics of Suffering

Nell Gabiam

Description

The Politics of Suffering examines the confluence of international aid, humanitarian relief, and economic development within the space of the Palestinian refugee camp. Nell Gabiam describes the interactions between UNRWA, the United Nations agency charged with providing assistance to Palestinians since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and residents of three camps in Syria. Over time, UNRWA's management of the camps reveals a shift from an emphasis on humanitarian aid to promotion of self-sufficiency and integration of refugees within their host society. Gabiam's analysis captures two forces in tension within the camps: politics of suffering that serves to keep alive the discourse around the Palestinian right of return; and politics of citizenship expressed through development projects that seek to close the divide between the camp and the city. Gabiam offers compelling insights into the plight of Palestinians before and during the Syrian war, which has led to devastation in the camps and massive displacement of their populations.

Introduction
1. Informal Citizens: Palestinian Refugees in Syria
2. From Humanitarianism to Development: UNRWA and Palestinian Refugees
3. Sumūd and Sustainability: Reinterpreting Development in Palestinian Refugee Camps
4. "Must We Live in Barracks to Convince People We Are Refugees?": The Politics of Camp Improvement
5. "A Camp Is a Feeling Inside": Urbanization and the Boundaries of Palestinian Refugee Identity
Conclusion: Beyond Suffering and Victimhood
Epilogue

Sujets

• Middle Est
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• Organización de las Naciones Unidas
• Syria
• History of the Middle East
• General officer
• United Nations
• Palestinian people
• Middle East
• Anthropology
• Palestine
• General
• Organisation des Nations unies

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 09 mai 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253021526
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE POLITICS OF SUFFERING
PUBLIC CULTURES OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
Paul A. Silverstein, Susan Slyomovics, and Ted Swedenburg, editors
THE POLITICS OF SUFFERING
Syria s Palestinian Refugee Camps
Nell Gabiam
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2016 by Nell Gabiam
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gabiam, Nell, author.
Title: The politics of suffering : Syria s Palestinian refugee camps / Nell Gabiam.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, [2016] | Series: Public cultures of the Middle East and North Africa | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015050921 | ISBN 9780253021281 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253021403 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253021526 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Refugees, Palestinian Arab-Syria. | Refugee camps-Syria.
Classification: LCC HV640.5.P36 G33 2016 | DDC 362.87089/927405691-dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050921
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
To my mother, Mary Jo Gabiam
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
1 Informal Citizens: Palestinian Refugees in Syria
2 From Humanitarianism to Development: UNRWA and Palestinian Refugees
3 um d and Sustainability: Reinterpreting Development in Palestinian Refugee Camps
4 Must We Live in Barracks to Convince People We Are Refugees? : The Politics of Camp Improvement
5 A Camp Is a Feeling Inside : Urbanization and the Boundaries of Palestinian Refugee Identity
Conclusion: Beyond Suffering and Victimhood
Epilogue
Notes
References
Index
Acknowledgments
W RITING THIS BOOK would not have been possible without the support of the Palestinian refugees of Ein el Tal, Neirab, and Yarmouk who opened their homes and lives to me between spring 2004 and spring 2006 and, under much more tragic circumstances, during spring and summer 2015. I am immensely grateful for the kindness and generosity they showed me and for the trust that they gave me. Syrian friends and acquaintances contributed to the generally warm and friendly atmosphere I encountered while doing fieldwork. I am also grateful to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees ( UNRWA ) for allowing me to engage in participant observation during the Neirab Rehabilitation Project and to the UNRWA staff that I interviewed. The views expressed by UNRWA staff during interviews do not necessarily represent the official views of UNRWA as an agency.
The research that is at the origin of this book started roughly ten years ago while I was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. In the anthropology department, I am grateful to Donald Moore and Laura Nader, who provided crucial guidance and support from the very beginning and helped shape me as a scholar, and to Stefania Pandolfo for her useful feedback on an earlier incarnation of the book. Nezar AlSayyad, in the College of Environmental Design, has been a sympathetic and helpful reader and listener. I also benefited from the support of faculty outside uc Berkeley. I am particularly indebted to Dawn Chatty at the University of Oxford s Refugee Studies Centre and to Ghada Talhami at Lake Forest College in Illinois, both of whom read and commented on earlier versions of the book. I am grateful for the encouragement and support I have received from my colleagues in the departments of anthropology and political science at Iowa State University, which has been my academic home for the last five years. The support of friends and colleagues helped sustain me during the grueling process of writing and attempting to turn what began as my doctoral dissertation into a book. I would especially like to thank Anaheed Al-Hardan, Salom Aguilera-Skvirsky, Diana Allan, Leila Hilal, Ali Bangi, Christina Gish Hill, Alan Mikhail, Saida Hod i , Derrick Spires, Lisa Calvente, Monica Martinez, Rosemary Sayigh, Ted Swedenburg, Lex Takkenberg, Alex Tuckness, Maximilian Viatori, David Vine, and Brett Williams.
Research for this book was made possible by a Fulbright ( DDRA ) grant, a Social Science Research Council-Mellon Mays research grant, a uc Berkeley Normative Time grant, and an Iowa State University Professional Development grant. A University of Chicago Provost Postdoctoral Fellowship (2009-2011) provided me with the time to write an initial draft. A Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement fellowship (2014-2015) gave me the opportunity to take a sabbatical and focus on completing the final draft. My sabbatical year was spent at Georgetown University s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. I am grateful for the warm and welcoming environment and for many fruitful exchanges with the center s faculty, students, and staff.
My gratitude extends to Indiana University Press and to the two anonymous reviewers for their incredibly helpful and constructive feedback. My thanks also go to Rebecca Tolen for her guidance and feedback and to the editorial and production team for the care and attention they gave the manuscript. I am grateful to Paul Silverstein, Susan Slyomovics, and Ted Swedenburg for welcoming the book into Indiana University Press s series on Public Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa.
As a scholar, I was introduced to the Middle East and to the Palestinian refugee issue through an undergraduate anthropology class I took at Columbia University with Avram Bornstein on Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. It is through Bornstein s class that I discovered my ignorance with regard to the world and, especially, with regard to the Palestinian question. I am grateful to him for inspiring me to want to learn more about the world I live in.
Finally, I wish to thank my biggest source of support and inspiration, my mother Mary Jo Gabiam. My mother spent seven years in Kuwait and a summer in Gaza as an elementary and middle-school teacher. It is through her that I discovered the Middle East as a real place and with her that I traveled to Syria for the first time, in 1999. Many of the early books I read on the Middle East and on the Palestinian question were plucked from her bookshelf. She read and commented on countless drafts of this book and has been a loyal companion on this long journey. It is to her that I dedicate the book.
Note on Transliteration
F OR A RABIC WORDS and phrases that appear in this book, I followed the transliteration guide of the International Journal of Middle East Studies . I made an exception with regard to the Arabic names of individuals, in that I privileged the phonetic pronunciation in order to make them more accessible to an English-speaking audience. I also simplified the transliteration of well-known Arabic terms that are routinely used in English (for example, intifada or Al Jazeera ) using their common spelling in English-speaking contexts.
THE POLITICS OF SUFFERING
Introduction
I N D ECEMBER 2005, as we sat in the living room of his family s house in the Palestinian refugee camp of Neirab in Syria, Younes, a young Palestinian university student in his early twenties, reflected on the controversial Neirab Rehabilitation Project that was taking place in the camp. Sponsored by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (known as UNRWA ), the project sought, among other goals, to relocate families living in Neirab s World War II-era barracks to brand-new UNRWA -built houses in the neighboring Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el Tal. Speaking about the families who had already made the move from the Neirab barracks to the new houses in Ein el Tal, Younes referred to them as having gone from a life of death ( ay t al-mawt ) to real life, from living in coffins to living in nice houses (field notes, December 23, 2005). But Younes could not leave it at that. To live in comfortable houses, he quickly added, was one of the refugees rights as human beings, a right that should be clearly separated from their right of return to their homes in what is now the state of Israel. Living in good conditions, Younes explained, should not mean the disappearance of the right of return (field notes, December 23, 2005). Younes s comments illustrate refugees fears that supporting camp improvements will be understood as acknowledging that refugees might stay in their host state permanently, thus undermining their claim to return. They allude to suffering as emblematic of the Palestinian refugee condition and as legitimating Palestinian insistence on the right of return.
One of the most potent symbols of Palestinian suffering and of Palestinians commitment to the right of return to their former homes is the refugee camp, which serves not only as a reminder of the suffering that Palestinians have experienced since their forced displacement during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war but also as a sign that its inhabitants stay is to be temporary (Al Husseini 2011; Farah 1997, 1999; Feldman 2008b; Khalili 20