Settler Colonialism (Without Settlers) and Slow Violence in the Gaza Strip

Israel's ongoing settler colonialism in occupied Palestinian territory impacts Palestinians' everyday life in all its aspects. In this article we demonstrate how Israel's interventions, in particular since its "withdrawal" from the Gaza Strip in 2005, can be conceptualized through a combined lens of settler colonialism and slow violence. We suggest that settler colonial violence and strategies of carceration, exploitation and elimination of the existing population - without the physical presence of settlers inside Gaza - is not only inherent in the production of a new reality and geography, but also at the core of the transformation of life of Gazans into non-life. While Israel has fewer and weaker moral obligations over Gaza's population, at the same time it creates the possibility of manipulating destructive power and violent practices. With a specific focus on Israel's interventions in the field of health, we examine how power, violence and health are entangled in conflict zones in general and in Gaza in particular, by documenting and critically analysing the effect of violence in general and infrastructure demolition in particular, on the everyday life of Gazans. We conclude that Israel's withdrawal marks not only a continuation but even a radicalization of settler colonialism in the Gaza Strip through (often) slow violence

Compulsory social mix, micro-scale segregation and gentrification: the case of Gan HaHashmal neighbourhood, Tel Aviv

Gentrification is often characterized as exclusionary social process where white upper middle class move to a disadvantaged neighborhood, while excluding the original residents in the site who cannot accommodate to the area's rising prices and change of character. As it brings together people from diverted social backgrounds this process enables to critically examine the concept of 'social mix' as a desirable urban planning and sustainable urbanity tool. Since gentrification is an ongoing multi-layered process it allows in certain time frames to trace different forms of social hierarchies embedded in the transformative locality. In this chapter we will explore the case of "Gan HaHashmal" neighborhood in Tel Aviv which is currently undergoing extensive urban change and gentrification with the well-known new presence of fashion designer boutiques, restaurants, cafés, and clubs, as well as high-end real estate projects fueling the gentrification process. At the same time, it is also home to vulnerable agents including poor people, drug and alcohol users, homeless people, and asylum seekers who rotate to the area from the vulnerable southern "black" neighborhoods of Tel Aviv

Decolonisation, gentrification, and the settler-colonial city: Reappropriation and new forms of urban exclusion in Israel

Focusing on the immigration of upper-middle-class Palestinian families to the Israeli town of Upper-Nazareth, originally built by the state to enhance Jewish presence in the area, this paper frames the concept of decolonising gentrification. Accordingly, it studies a unique inconsistency between economic class and ethnonational hegemony, which enables upwardly Arab minority families to overcome ethnic barriers and to exercise social and spatial mobility. Therefore, this paper explains how these socio-political dynamics challenge the local settler-colonial aspects of urban development and enable the reappropriation of colonised urban space. Focusing on the case of Upper-Nazareth and its former ‘Officers’ Neighbourhood’, we examine a distinctive contradiction between political power and economic abilities that triggers a unique case of gentrification, where the colonised minority gentrifies the colonising hegemony. At the same time, this decolonising gentrification, as we argue, takes place in restricted urban enclaves, and relies on an ethno-class price gap as it is only the minority upper-class who is willing to pay the increasing prices, due to their limited options. Therefore, as this paper shows, decolonising gentrification simultaneously challenges and recreates urban settler-colonialism, enabling limited market-oriented reappropriation while triggering ethnic-based accumulation and new forms of neoliberal exclusion

The Geopolitics of Neighbourhood: Jerusalem's Colonial Space Revisited

This article will focus on an ongoing process of Jerusalem’s contested urban space during the last decade namely the immigration of Palestinians, mostly Israeli citizens, to “satellite neighbourhoods”, i.e. Jerusalem’s colonial neighbourhoods that were constructed after 1967. Theoretically, this paper attempts to discuss neighbourhood planning in contested cities within the framework of geopolitics. In more details, we will focus on the relevance of geopolitics to the study of neighbourhood planning, by which we mean not merely a discussion of international relations and conflict or of the roles of military acts and wars in producing space. Rather, geopolitics refers to the emergence of discourses and forces connected with the technologies of control, patterns of internal migrations by individuals and communities, and the flow of cultures and capital.This article forms a part of the research of ‘Conflict in Cities and the Contested State’, funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (RES-060-25-0015), and the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship ‘Neighbouring and the Geopolitics of Ethnically “Mixed Cities”’ (No: 252369)

Sacred Rhythms and Political Frequencies: Reading Lefebvre in an Urban House of Prayer

In recent years, Lefebvre’s concept of rhythm analysis has been implied in various ways to critically examine how rhythms are formed, disrupted, and reformed through different urban venues. One theme that this body of knowledge has yet to comprehensively examine, however, is how changes in the urban sphere impact the spatial rhythms of religious institutions in cities, which can be pivotal for understanding how religious institutions are formed as urban public spaces. This article addresses this issue with a rhythm analysis of a particular religious urban locus: a synagogue in the mixed Palestinian and Jewish city of Acre in northern Israel. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and an urban survey, the article discusses how different forms of rhythm making undergo a process of contested synchronization with linear and cyclical rhythms of the city. More specifically, how the ability to forge a space hinges on the ability to maintain a rhythmic cycle of attendance, which, in turn, is not only dependent on the ability to achieve synchronization amongst the needs of the different participants but is also intertwined with the larger linear cycle of urban life as a rhythmic equation that fuses the personal with the political, the linear with the cyclical, and the religious with the urban

Borders, Boundaries and Frontiers : Notes on Jerusalem's Present Geopolitics

This article explores the relevance of geopolitics to the study of urban space in contested territories, with a specific focus on Jerusalem's colonial geographies. The main theoretical argument is that the geopolitics of cities have to do with a crossing of scales - from the neighbourhood scale to the city level and then to the colonial apparatuses of the state. This is related to the fact that the consequences and impacts of borders and territoriality are not diminishing. Instead we should pay attention to new scales of territorial affiliations and borders. At the same time as recognising that borders may be flexible, they are still selective on different geographical scales

Circular Migration in Israel: Socio-Political Aspects

Euro-Mediterranean Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration (CARIM

Irregular Migration to Israel: The Sociopolitical Perspective

Euro-Mediterranean Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration (CARIM)This paper focuses on socio-political dynamics in Israel in relation to increases in the irregular migration of non-Jewish workers, as well as refugees and asylum seekers from Africa. The main argument outlined here is that despite the significant ethnocentric ideologies and territorial controls that characterise Israel, the country is witnessing a significant influx of non-Jewish migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. The theoretical insight that stems from this paper is that the irregular migration of “foreigners” to Israel challenges Israeli politics of identity and attitudes towards the “Other”, whilst simultaneously unveiling complexity in Israel's ethno-national identity and collective history

From "Ethnocracity" to Urban Apartheid: A View from Jerusalem\al-Quds

In the core of this article stands an argument that while ethnocracy was a relevant analytical framework for understanding the urban dynamics of Jerusalem\al-Quds up until two decades ago, this is no longer the case. As this article demonstrates, ver the past twenty years or so, the city’s geopolitical balance and its means of demographic control, as well as an intensifying militarization and a growing use of state violence, have transformed the city from an ethnocracity into an urban apartheid.  Theoretically, this article aims to go beyond the specific analogy with South African apartheid, the most notorious case of such a regime. Rather I would suggest that in our current market-driven, neo-liberal era, an apartheid city should be taken as a distinct urban regime based on urban trends such as privatization of space, gentrification, urban design, infrastructure development and touristic planning. I would propose that these practices substitute for explicit apartheid legislation (of a sort introduced in the South African case), bringing to the fore new participants in the apartheidization of the city, such as real estate developers and various interest groups