Jaffa Shared and Shattered

Daniel Monterescu

Description

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Binational cities play a pivotal role in situations of long-term conflict, and few places have been more marked by the tension between intimate proximity and visceral hostility than Jaffa, one of the "mixed towns" of Israel/Palestine. In this nuanced ethnographic and historical study, Daniel Monterescu argues that such places challenge our assumptions about cities and nationalism, calling into question the Israeli state's policy of maintaining homogeneous, segregated, and ethnically stable spaces. Analyzing everyday interactions, life stories, and histories of violence, he reveals the politics of gentrification and the circumstantial coalitions that define the city. Drawing on key theorists in anthropology, sociology, urban studies, and political science, he outlines a new relational theory of sociality and spatiality.

Introduction: Contrived Coexistence: Relational Histories of Urban Mix in Israel/Palestine

Part I. Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Communal Formations and Ambivalent Belonging
1. Spatial Relationality: Theorizing Space and Sociality in Jewish-Arab "Mixed Towns"
2. The Bridled "Bride of Palestine": Urban Orientalism and the Zionist Quest for Place
3. The "Mother of the Stranger": Palestinian Presence and the Ambivalence of Sumud

Part II. Sharing Place or Consuming Space: The Neoliberal City
4. Inner Space and High Ceilings: Agents and Ideologies of Ethnogentrification
5. To Buy or Not to Be: Trespassing the Gated Community

Part III. Being and Belonging in the Binational City: A Phenomenology of the Urban
6. Escaping the Mythscape: Tales of Intimacy and Violence
7. Situational Radicalism and Creative Marginality: The "Arab Spring" and Jaffa's Counterculture

Conclusion: The City of the Forking Paths: Imagining the Futures of Binational Urbanism

Notes
References
Index

Sujets

• Middle Est
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Sociology
• Israel
• History of the Middle East
• Middle East
• Anthropology
• Urban

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 24 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253016836
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

JAFFA Shared and Shattered
PUBLIC CULTURES OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
Paul A. Silverstein, Susan Slyomovics, and Ted Swedenburg, editors
JAFFA
SHARED AND SHATTERED
CONTRIVED COEXISTENCE IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE
DANIEL MONTERESCU
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
2015 by Daniel Monterescu
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 Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Monterescu, Daniel, author.
Jaffa shared and shattered : contrived coexistence in Israel/Palestine / Daniel Monterescu.
pages cm. - (Public cultures of the Middle East and North Africa)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01671-3 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01677-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01683-6 (ebook) 1. Jaffa (Tel Aviv, Israel)-Ethnic relations-History. 2. Jaffa (Tel Aviv, Israel)-Social conditions-20th century. 3. Palestinian Arabs-Israel-Tel Aviv. I. Title.
DS 110. J 3 M 65 2015
956.94 8-dc23
2015002896
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
IN MEMORY OF
Yehuda Elkana (1934-2012), and for Hillel, Gaia, Mar i, Nadia, and Michael-the promising futures . . .
The superficial inducement, the exotic, the picturesque has an effect only on the foreigner. To portray a city, a native must have other, deeper motives-motives of one who travels into the past instead of into the distance. A native s book about his city will always be related to memoirs; the writer has not spent his childhood there in vain.
- WALTER BENJAMIN
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Note on Transliteration and Translation
INTRODUCTION
Contrived Coexistence: Relational Histories of Urban Mix in Israel/Palestine
PART ONE
Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Communal Formations and Ambivalent Belonging
1
Spatial Relationality: Theorizing Space and Sociality in Jewish-Arab Mixed Towns
2
The Bridled Bride of Palestine : Urban Orientalism and the Zionist Quest for Place
3
The Mother of the Stranger : Palestinian Presence and the Ambivalence of Sumud
PART TWO
Sharing Place or Consuming Space: The Neoliberal City
4
Inner Space and High Ceilings: Agents and Ideologies of Ethnogentrification
5
To Buy or Not to Be: Trespassing the Gated Community
PART THREE
Being and Belonging in the Binational City: A Phenomenology of the Urban
6
Escaping the Mythscape: Tales of Intimacy and Violence
7
Situational Radicalism and Creative Marginality: The Arab Spring and Jaffa s Counterculture
CONCLUSION
The City of the Forking Paths: Imagining the Futures of Binational Urbanism

Notes

References

Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the culmination of a personal and intellectual obsession with Jaffa that has lasted well over a decade. In my case this Jaffa-mania stems from my own quotidian experience of living in the city for almost three decades, prior to fieldwork, without being capable of, or particularly interested in, theorizing it. During that time, the history of my family since its arrival in Manshiyye in the early 1950s with the massive immigration waves was only that-my own personal family story. This changed of course with my increasing involvement with urban activism and my attempt to critically situate the city and its subjects in time and space, history and context. Inevitably, therefore, I could not but write a native s book about his city, as Benjamin puts it. However, in Jaffa, where nothing can be taken at face value, not least the question of belonging, I therefore remain, like many Jaffans, both a native of and a stranger to the city at one and the same time. In a city that prides itself on being known as the Mother of the Stranger ( Umm al-Gharib ), I am no exception.
Writing from the perspective of alterity thus required disentangling myself from the city s webs and observing it from a critical and physical distance. In the last fifteen years I have been a recurrent returnee, and I wrote this book from this oscillating perspective of ethnographic recidivism. Many of the communications and miscommunications with my informants-some of whom I have known since childhood-that form the backbone of this book were in one way or another an exchange of reciprocal differences. While it is futile to thank a community as a whole without reifying it in the process, I wish to express my gratitude to my interlocutors for helping me chart the limits of personal and political alterity.
This odyssey would not have been possible without the support, guidance, and collaboration of a lifelong friend and three mentors. In Jaffa I wish to acknowledge the crucial input of Hicham Chabaita, my alter ego, a mythical classmate, and a relentless critic. The constitutive experience we shared at the Coll ge des Fr res will always nurture and challenge my anthropological way of seeing. At Tel-Aviv University, Haim Hazan and Danny Rabinowitz have been, for almost two decades now, precious sources of inspiration and collegiality. The collaboration with Haim Hazan resulted in our co-authored monograph on the life stories of Palestinian and Jewish elderly people in Jaffa ( A Town at Sundown: Aging Nationalism in Jaffa ) and changed the way I understand both the personal and the political. Following in his giant footsteps and keeping up with his pace was a joy rarely attained before or after. Haim also deserves credit for many of this book s poetic moments and chapter titles. The collaboration with Danny Rabinowitz resulted in the first edited volume published on urban mix in Israel/Palestine ( Mixed Towns, Trapped Communities: Historical Narratives, Spatial Dynamics, Gender Relations and Cultural Encounters in Palestinian-Israeli Towns ) and in a co-authored article in IJMES . His unmatched talent in writing fine-grained history into cities and our ongoing dialogue continue to nourish my thinking on binational urbanism in Jaffa and beyond. At the University of Chicago John Comaroff has been a role model of intellectual rigor, integrity, and creativity. I will be forever indebted to him for transmitting the pleasure in theory-making and for his infinite generosity. In many ways, all four of these individuals can be considered implicit co-authors of this book.
The journey from Jaffa to Chicago and back again would not have been as fruitful without the support of Jim Fernandez, Saskia Sassen, and Rashid Khalidi. From their respective disciplinary and personal perspectives, each has offered me invaluable insight and advice. A very special tribute must be paid to Anne Chien at the Department of Anthropology for her unwavering kindness and unbroken resourcefulness. I am equally indebted to my companions on the European leg of this journey, my colleagues and students at the Central European University Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, for their support and solidarity. Many have read parts of the manuscript but all were loyal partners in the research and writing process.
The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence provided an idyllic working environment and a cultural adventure for three memorable years from 2008 to 2011. The Jean Monnet Postdoctoral Fellowship enabled me to meet Donatella della Porta, Pascal Vennesson, Laszlo Bruszt, and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, and to join the members of the European Forum on Political Violence. Most of this manuscript was written in Florence with the support of a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship for Career Development and a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant within the Seventh European Community Framework Programme, which also funded this research upon my return to CEU . While my Europeanness remains an open question, it was a privilege to be part of the European research network.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the generous support awarded by the following funding agencies and academic institutions: the University of Chicago (the Century Fellowship and the Council for Advanced Studies on Peace and International Cooperation Dissertation Fellowship); the Palestinian-American Research Center; the Lady David Fellowship Trust at the Hebrew University; the National Science Foundation (Doctoral Improvement Grant); the United States Institute of Peace (Peace Scholar Dissertation Fellowship); Le Centre de Recherche Fran ais de J rusalem; Tel-Aviv University (the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Herczeg Institute); the Dan David Prize; the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation; and the Josephine de K rm n Foundation (Dissertation Write-Up Fellowships).
I am indebted to Oren Yiftachel, Sandy Kedar, and the Israel Science Foundation for funding my research assistants as part of their project entitled Israel s Land Regime, 1948-1998. I am grateful to Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Oded Korczyn, and Luna Barakat for their excellent assistance with the archival work. I also wish to thank