Trapped in mirror-images: The rhetoric of maps in Israel/Palestine

The map of Israel/Palestine has long been used by both Israelis and Palestinians, from their unequal power positions, as a celebrated national symbol. It is virtually the same map, depicting a sliver-shaped land between River Jordan and the Mediterranean, two overlapping homelands in one territory. Thus, a single geo-body appears to contain two antagonistic and asymmetrical nations, locked in a bitter struggle. The article interprets the uncanny mirror-maps of Israel/Palestine by drawing on recent work in critical cartography. One approach has read maps as rhetorical claims for power and over territory; indeed, the mirror-maps of Israel/Palestine are often read as indications of maximalist territorial ambitions and hidden wishes to “wipe the other off the map”. However, this article suggests an alter- native, de-territorialised reading of political maps as “empty signifiers” of multiple meanings. Following analysis of maps as objects of performance, whose meaning depends on users and contexts, the article emphasises the ritualistic sacralisation of the Israel/Palestine map. Embedded within discourses of memory and history, maps are tools of narrating the nation, often in diasporic contexts, carrying with them vast emotional significance to both peoples. These issues were largely left unaddressed by the territorial paradigm which has dominated scholarship and political negotiations. Moving the discussion of geography beyond narrow territorial claims towards an appreciation of the richness and heterogeneity of space is crucial, yet faces formidable challenges both politically and conceptually

Jerusalem's Lost Heart: The Rise and Fall of the Ottoman City Centre

This chapter outlines the dramatic rise and fall of Jerusalem’s late Ottoman city centre, the physical destruction of which by British and Israeli planners was accompanied by its erasure from cultural memory. The cosmopolitan town centre around Jaffa Gate, emerging in the 1880s, embodied late Ottoman notions of non-sectarian civic modernity, technological progress, and urban development. As the central node of the expanding network of neighbourhoods, connecting the walled city to developments outside the walls, the new centre pointed towards a plural and integrative vision of manifold communities that made up the city. The 1917 British occupation brought an entirely new ethos to Jerusalem, based on historicism and ethno-religious segregation. The British viewed the city centre as an eyesore which they tried unsuccessfully to demolish, to make way for a park around the walls that would accentuate Jerusalem’s sacredness and historicity. The disdain toward the town centre corresponded with a view of the city as a tapestry of segregated neighbourhoods, with no common civic identity. This vision was finally implemented by Israeli planners after the 1967 occupation of East Jerusalem, and the consolidation of ‘united’ Jerusalem as a ‘divided city’, a segregated city with rival communities lacking a shared civic heart

Creating a country through currency and stamps: state symbols and nation-building in British-ruled Palestine

Recent studies have examined the use of currency and stamps for nation-building in various contexts, with these artefacts seen as vehicles for indoc- trination and gaining legitimacy by ruling elites – as a form of ‘‘banal nationalism’’. This article goes further to argue that in moments of geopolitical upheaval, these symbolic artefacts can play a crucial role in shaping the very framework of nation- hood. This article focuses on the Middle East during World War I and its aftermath, and on British efforts to shape public opinion through the issuing of Palestine postage stamps and currency (1920–7), which were intended to convey Britain’s commitment to Zionism. Parallels are drawn to the introduction of Arab stamps and flags during the Arab Revolt (1916–18). The benefit to Zionist nation-building and ‘‘Hebrew Revival’’ is discussed, as well as the strikingly different reactions of local constituencies – Arabs and Jews – to the political message of these symbolic objects

How to fight antisemitism? Lessons from the Russian Revolution

Brendan McGeever’s book on Antisemitism in the Russian Revolution provides an analysis of Soviet response to “Red Antisemitism” – the involvement of some Bolsheviks in the pogroms of the Civil War. McGeever’s analysis provides insights that are relevant to contemporary anti-racist praxis, and particularly to response antisemitism on the left. Antisemitism, in 2021, takes place radically different set of material entanglements than in 1919, and it offers significantly different challenges. Antisemitism is not only a potential lynchpin between left wing and right-wing populism; the struggle against antisemitism is a contested terrain which is claimed by both the left and the right, as antisemitism is set apart from, and sometimes against, other conversations of racism and anti-racism. Even in these very different circumstances, McGeever’s insights appear valid: understanding antisemitism as a threat to the left is crucial; as is the role of Jewish activists in leading the struggle against it

The racial logic of Palestine’s partition

The partition of Palestine was first proposed more than eight decades ago. It remains a consensus international approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Why was Palestine the only settler-colonial context outside Europe in which partition became a dominant “solution”? This article argues that the explanation is found in European racial attitudes towards Jews and Arabs in the first half of the twentieth century. British and international policy makers regarded (European) Jews as a non-European, Semitic race. This led them to view Jewish Zionist migrants and native Palestinian Arabs as somewhat comparable groups. Rather than a clash between European settlers and Arab natives, they saw in Palestine a conflict between two nations living side by side. Reading through key documents – the Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and the Partition Reports of 1937 and 1947 – I show how this racial logic informed the framework of partition