THE POLITICS OF HOME IN JERUSALEM: PARTITIONS, PARKS, AND PLANNING FUTURES Nathan W. Swanson A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Geography. Chapel Hill 2016 Approved by: Banu Gökarıksel Sara Smith John Pickles Sarah Shields Nadia Yaqub © 2016 Nathan W. Swanson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Nathan W. Swanson: The Politics of Home in Jerusalem: Partitions, Parks, and Planning Futures (Under the direction of Banu Gökarıksel) At a time when Palestine and Palestinians are ubiquitously framed through the “Israeli- Palestinian conflict” and the “peace process”, the spaces of everyday life for Palestinians are often ignored. This is in spite of the fact that so many of the Israeli policies and technologies of occupation and settlement are experienced materially by Palestinians in these spaces. In this dissertation, then, drawing on feminist geopolitics, I consider everyday Palestinian spaces like the home, neighborhood, and village—with a focus on Jerusalem—to better understand geographies of occupation and settlement in Palestine/Israel today. I argue, through attention to Palestinian experiences on the ground, that widespread representations of Jerusalem as either a “united” or “divided” city fail to capture the Palestinian experience, which is actually one of fragmentation, both physical and social. As a case study in fragmentation, I turn to the zoning of Israeli national parks in and between Palestinian neighborhoods, arguing that parks have served the purposes of settlement in less politicized ways than West Bank settlement blocs, but like the settlement blocs, have resulted in dispossession and restrictions on Palestinian construction, expansion, and movement. In the second half of the project, I turn to resistance against dispossession and the confines of the “peace process,” looking first at recent Palestinian and Israeli community mapping projects and arguing that they resist erasure and fragmentation through their maps and through the mapping process. Finally, while Palestinian refugees displaced in the creation of Israel are marginalized from the formal peace process, I argue that iii those internally displaced in Israel continue to politicize and struggle for their dispossessed homes, villages, and lands by challenging the state’s development plans and by planning alternative futures. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this dissertation project was made possible by the guidance and support of so many people, and to them I am grateful. Thank you, first and foremost, to my doctoral advisor, Banu Gökarıksel, for her endless support, feedback, encouragement, challenges, and advocacy over the course of my program at UNC-CH. That I once phoned Banu from the field, on her birthday, while she was on vacation, asking for a last-minute reference letter in a 24-hour window, and she turned around and submitted it without hesitation, should be a testament to her personal and professional commitment to the success of her students. (And to her patience in handling the many obstacles that grad students encounter their first time doing fieldwork!) I would also like to thank the members of my dissertation committee—Banu Gökarıksel, Sara Smith, John Pickles, Nadia Yaqub, and Sarah Shields—who have all taught me so much and challenged me in so many ways, both in the classroom and in my research and writing. I am grateful for their guidance in shaping and refining this dissertation project and for their suggestions toward taking forward the ideas and arguments presented in the text. They have also been incredibly supportive outside of the classroom and the dissertation, helping me to develop as a teacher and a scholar, and for all of that, I am thankful. Thanks is due as well to many other faculty members at UNC whose courses and conversations informed the development and writing of this dissertation, including Yaron Shemer, Jean v Dennison, Altha Cravey, Elyse Crystal, and members of the “Rethinking Israel/Palestine” Carolina Seminar from UNC, Duke, and beyond. I would also like to thank the Arabic and Hebrew language instructors who prepared me for fieldwork in Israel/Palestine, including those in Chapel Hill, Jerusalem, Fez, and Cairo, and those from Damascus who are currently displaced in Lebanon and elsewhere (May they be able to go home too.). I would also like to thank my classmates, comrades, colleagues, and friends in UNC Geography and beyond for every conversation, every brilliant idea, every critique, every reassurance, every laugh, every tear, and every distraction. Among them are members of the Counter-Cartographies Collective (3Cs)—Liz Mason-Deese, Craig Dalton, Tim Stallmann, Tu Lan, Maribel Casas- Cortes, Sebastian Cobarrubias, and Cecilia R Durbin—and many others, including (alphabetically): Adam Bledsoe, Amy Braun, Yousuf Al-Bulushi, Agnes Chew, Rachel Cotterman, Chris Courtheyn, Mike Dimpfl, Kevin Fox, Mabel Gergan, Joe Gerlach, Annelies Goger, Elizabeth Hennessey, Maggie Kovach, Jim Kuras, Stevie Larson, Basil Mahayni, Sara Maxwell, Katie Merriman, Chris Neubert, Devran Koray Ocal, Helen Orr, Mark Ortiz, Linda Quiquivix, Sertanya Reddy, Ben Rubin, Elissa Sampson, Darius Scott, Haruna Suzuki, Autumn Thoyre, Pavithra Vasudevan, Priscilla Vaz, Willie Wright, and Shengjun Zhu, to name a few. Last but not least at UNC-CH, I am incredibly thankful for the tireless efforts of Barbara Taylor, Nell Phillips, and Daniel Warfield in the Geography Department office, who make everything actually happen, and for the labor of the housekeepers and other workers across the UNC-CH campus, who make everything possible. Thank you, too, to the UNC-CH librarians, including vi Middle Eastern/African Studies Librarian Mohamed Abou El Seoud, who have spent the past several years regularly fulfilling my requisition and interlibrary loan requests. For dissertation fieldwork funding, I would like to thank the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), based in Washington, D.C., and Ramallah, as well as the Graduate School at UNC-CH. I am also thankful for the support on the ground provided by the PARC staff from the Ramallah office. Thanks for pre-dissertation language training funding—through Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships—are also due to the UNC-CH Center for Global Initiatives and the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations. I am deeply grateful to all of those in Palestine/Israel who shared so much with me—from personal stories and community struggles, to contacts and resources, to coffee, shisha, meals, and rides around town. For their professional, logistical, and/or personal support during fieldwork, I would like to specifically thank Daphna Golan, Rima Essa, Amany Khalifeh, Yonathan Mizrachi, Manal Timraz, Mohammed Al-Atawneh and family, Basem Yasen and family, Gila Avni, Mark and Susanne Brown, and Martin and Angela Zimmann. I am also thankful for the programming and/or assistance provided by Yabous Cultural Center, Grassroots Jerusalem, Zochrot, the Wadi Helweh Information Center, and Emek Shaveh. Thank you all for your generosity, your kindness, your brilliance, and your challenges, and—to borrow from Rafeef Ziadah—thank you for “teach[ing] [me] life.” vii Finally, thank you to my family and friends for your endless patience, support, and encouragement throughout my extended periods of fieldwork and throughout the writing process. (And yes, I will finally stop going to school now.) viii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................................... xiv LIST OF MAPS .............................................................................................................................xv LIST OF IMAGES ....................................................................................................................... xvi INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 Home and Geopolitics..........................................................................................................4 Methodologies and Evolution of the Project .....................................................................11 Fieldwork Ethics ................................................................................................................16 Outline of the Dissertation .................................................................................................20 CHAPTER 1: TERRITORY, BORDERS, AND SETTLEMENT: JERUSALEM IN FRAGMENTS ...............................................................................................................................24 Introduction ........................................................................................................................24 Questions, Methods, and Outline .......................................................................................26 Expanding Jerusalem: A Brief History ..............................................................................29 Late Ottoman Period (mid-1800s–1917) ...............................................................29 British Mandate for Palestine (1917–1948) ...........................................................32 1948–1967..............................................................................................................35