The regulation of Palestinian everyday life: workshop proceedings

Since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Palestinian society has been subjected to multiple regulatory frameworks and normative rules enacted by a range of national and external actors and institutions. By regulatory frameworks, we mean forms and mechanisms of control within everyday life. These frameworks include Israeli occupation military regulations, Palestinian national laws and agendas of national and international non-governmental organisations, such as donor organisations. In November 2017, the LSE Middle East Centre and LSE Human Rights organised a workshop examining theoretical and methodological questions on ethnographic research in Palestine and the challenges of doing ethnography within a society affected by a continuous state of violence. This workshop is part of a collaborative research project with Birzeit University, which seeks to explore how Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are affected by complex regulatory and normative systems, and the ways in which they perceive and negotiate such frameworks in their everyday life. The workshop took an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together researchers to discuss their findings while addressing the project’s key research questions: (a) How do regulatory frameworks enable and constrain Palestinians in their daily lives? (b) How are these multi-layered regulatory frameworks perceived by Palestinians, and what are the discourses developed by them to engage with these frameworks? (c) How do neoliberal modes of governance influence the way these regulatory frameworks operate

Surviving together: infrastructures of care in Palestine during the Covid-19 pandemic

This paper explores how everyday communal infrastructures of care and practices of coping in crisis unfolded in urban life in Palestine during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic (March–December 2020). It highlights day-to-day practices produced by social and informal initiatives in Palestine during Covid-19 in Ramallah. Situating care practices within urban space during Covid-19, we explore how the urban structure, residents’ social networks and past care infrastructures interact to produce care practices that sustain communities during times of crisis. Using interviews, mapping of care initiatives, and socioeconomic analysis of urban spaces – including markets and residential neighbourhoods – this report explores everyday practices during the pandemic and varied agents of care within urban space. Data analysis revealed different ways residents expressed their care for others, including wellness-checking, service and information provision, isolation, and consolation. Everyday care practices that are a result of a Palestinian legacy of care are performed through interpersonal relations and built on communal values, and remain valuable for the survival of communities in times of crisis

Palestinian everyday life: living within and without legality

This report is part of the project ‘The Regulation of Palestinian Everyday Life’, a collaboration between LSE and Birzeit University. It inquires into the changing modes of governance impacting upon Palestinians in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, their reaction and engagement with these systems, and the social effects of these engagements. The research investigates regulatory frameworks and how they affect the everyday lives of Palestinians living under the governance of the Palestinian Authority and Israeli occupation. Specific case studies addressed include the impact of colonial and neoliberal regulatory frameworks on farmers in their everyday life; the process of family reunification and ‘illegal’ statuses; and the specific situation of Palestinians who hold the ‘Jerusalem ID’. The report describes the features of these frameworks and the areas of everyday life that they influence. To engage with the research questions concerning how people experience and live these regulatory frameworks, the authors focus on the latter’s meanings and actions rather than their consequences alone

Navigating the Time of Arab Jerusalem: a perspective from within

For many Palestinians, the colonial denial of Palestinian self-determination in an independent nation-state has rendered futile the very notion of a future. But it is imperative to challenge the colonial logics that produce the native’s future as always already failed, unachievable, or impossible. This essay examines snippets of the life of Arab Jerusalem between the two major ruptures of 1948 and 1967 to deconstruct colonial and nationalist epistemologies of time and to challenge the persistently violent present and its domination of Palestinian pasts and futures. Using as its lens the memories and attachments of Jerusalemites who lived, worked, and struggled in the city, the essay examines the ways in which they thought of, imagined, produced, fulfilled, or were deprived of a future—in other words, how Jerusalemites shaped futurity. Such a nonlinear unfolding of time challenges dominant perceptions of the Nakba as constituting a clean break between past and present

A city yet to come a story of Arab Jerusalem 1948–1967

This thesis introduces a historical documentation of Arab Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967. Following the Nakba in 1948, mandate Jerusalem was partitioned into an Arab city and a Jewish city. The western neighbourhoods of Jerusalem were occupied by Israel, while the Old City and the eastern neighbourhoods outside the walls were annexed to Jordan. These parts became known as Arab Jerusalem, a polity that was shaped by the Palestinian residents, the municipality and other social institutions, as well as the Jordanian government. The thesis documents the history of the (re)making of Arab Jerusalem after the Nakba, including its urban revival and development. This historical documentation sheds light on dimensions of communal dynamics and urban revival after 1948, which are not thoroughly documented in Palestinian narratives on the Nakba. The thesis illuminates the ways in which Arab Jerusalem represented a state of in-betweenness during the first two decades after the Nakba, as a partitioned city of refugees located at the border with its lost homeland, while it sought at the same time to revive and become a productive space for its residents. The historical documentation introduced in the thesis particularly engages with the struggle and efforts of the municipality under Jordanian rule, in light of the municipality’s loss of the town hall and resources in the Israeli occupied part of the city in 1948. The thesis considers the history of the Jerusalem municipality from the late mandate period (1945–1948) through Jordanian rule and ends with the first few weeks following the Israeli occupation in 1967, when the Arab municipal council was dissolved. For this documentation, the thesis relies primarily on the records of the Arab municipality, which are located at the Jerusalem Municipality Archive. In addition, it deploys historical materials collected from archives and libraries in Palestine, Israel and the United Kingdom