Emerging geographies of Israeli occupation and Palestinian resistance in East Jerusalem

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This doctoral study will critically investigate Palestinian social and political life in the context of Israel's settler-colonial spatial practices in occupied East Jerusalem. There, Palestinians face various techniques of control and removal - e.g., house demolitions, threatened residency removal, real estate speculation - that are implemented by a range of actors: the state of Israel, private citizens and settler NGOs. In the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan - both of which have been in the international headlines in the past year, and the areas on which this research is focused - thousands of Palestinians live everyday threatened with the loss of their homes. This is a site on the frontline of contemporary colonialism in need of critical geographical examination in terms of making and unmaking colonial space. I will undertake this task via archival research, participant observation and semi-structured interviews with the specific aim to understand life in East Jerusalem and the ways that colonialism impresses on daily routines and the forms of activism, negotiation and resistance that emerge. This will be the first study of its kind to work on a site of ongoing displacement from this perspective and thus has the potential to make a significant contribution to the field of political geography on the crucial theme of the function of power in the colonial present.