Doctoral Dissertation Research: Urban Space, Place and the State in Palestinian-Israeli Mixed Towns, 1948-2000

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0090197Comaroff / MonterescuThis dissertation research by an anthropology student from the University of Chicago studies how Palestinian and Jewish Israelis living in mixed towns understand and express their identity. Arab Israelis live in a democratic state that excludes the possibility of their full citizenship, yet at the same time they are territorially, demographically and politically peripheral in the Arab world at large. Palestinian Israelis are caught between the Israeli state and the Palestinian nation, neither of which is capable of providing full commitment and membership. As a collective this group lives a paradoxical existence: the more it remains intact in its traditional place and asserts a right to sovereign determination, the more it finds itself disconnected and excluded from nationhood and citizenship. The project will study this paradox in the nationally and ethnically mixed urban contexts of Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and Ramla. Ethnographic research in Jaffa will study the effects of accelerated gentrification involving affluent Jews and poor mixed neighborhoods as well as the process of change involving Arab inhabitants moving into formally Jewish neighborhoods. Using participant observation in Jaffa the student will study Muslim and Christian Palestinians as well as three sub-groups of Jewish inhabitants: old lower-class immigrants, new wealthy gentrifiers, and young students. Using archival research the student will document the comparative history of Jaffa and Haifa, Acre and Ramla as mixed towns. This research is important as it will advance our understanding of the sources and nature of the intergroup tensions in this important area of the world, as well as providing training for a young social scientist.