The Bartlett Development Planning Unit DPU WORKING PAPER NO. 150 Advancing the struggle for urban justice to the assertion of substantive citizenship: Challenging ethnocracy in Tel Aviv-Jaffa Dena Qaddumi DPU Working Papers are downloadable at: www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/dpu/latest/ publications/dpu-papers If a hard copy is required, please contact the De- velopment Planning Unit (DPU) at the address at the bottom of the page. Institutions, organisations and booksellers should supply a Purchase Order when ordering Working Papers. Where multiple copies are or- dered, and the cost of postage and package is significant, the DPU may make a charge to cov- er costs. DPU Working Papers provide an outlet for researchers and professionals working in the fields of development, environment, urban and regional development, and planning. They report on work in progress, with the aim to dissemi- nate ideas and initiate discussion. 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Within Israel common discourse refers to Jewish cies, planning provides a key method by which to impact these cities, Arab cities and ‘mixed’ cities. The ‘mixed’ city is con- dimensions of urban space and citizenship. Both ethnocratic sidered a space where Jewish and Palestinian ethnic groups regimes and urban social movements can use planning for defy the logic of separation, which has permeated discourse their own ends, namely to advance a planning as domination on Israel/Palestine. The ‘mixed’ city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa provides or a planning as opposition. a case study that interweaves themes of citizenship, planning Complex, flexible and in a sense strategic, urban social move- and urban space. The objective of this working paper is to ments in Jaffa cut across class, religious and ideological lines examine this planning-citizenship relationship in the context of within the Palestinian community but have yet to effectively create urban space and a particular form of government, the eth- broad alliances with other urban social movements organised in nocracy. Particularly it aims to understand the potential of ur- the wider Tel Aviv-Jaffa metropolis. It is the overarching struggle ban social movements in Jaffa to advance their struggle for not for Jaffa but for Tel Aviv-Jaffa as a whole that must be ad- urban space, effectively an urban justice, to the assertion of a dressed, to mould and dissolve the psychological spatial bound- substantive citizenship. An analytical framework is proposed aries that divide the city. Current urban social movements sug- which is centred on Lefebvre’s spatial triad and theories of for- gest that Jaffa could be a site for multicultural exchange and the mal and substantive citizenships. In the context of ethnocra- formation of an urban citizenship, one that is territorial, not ethnic. Content 1. Introduction: the significance of Tel Aviv-Jaffa 7 List of figures. 1.1 ‘The Only Democracy in the Middle East’ 7 1.1 UN Partition Plan, 1947 1.2 Planning and Citizenship in Tel Aviv-Jaffa 8 1.2 Partial Map of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 2009 2.1 Conceptual Model: Planning in an Ethnocracy 2. Locating urban space and citizenship within 3.1 Map of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, 1923 ethnocracies: theory and analytical approach 10 3.2 Yossi Carmel Square 3.3 Etzel Museum 2.1 Urban Space + Citizenship 10 3.4 Mural in al-Ajami neighbourhood 2.2 Ethnocracy + Planning 12 3.5 Promenade connecting Tel Aviv and Jaffa 2.3 Urban Social Movements + Planning 13 3.6 “Historical Site” marker 2.4 Analytical Framework 15 3.7 Excerpt, “Abridged History of Old Jaffa” 3.8 Peres Peace House, view from the sea 3. Tel Aviv-Jaffa: site of contested space, place 3.9 Fine dining in the Old City of Jaffa and symbols 17 3.10 Advertisement of exclusive luxury housing 3.11 Andromeda Hill logo 3.1 Urban Space + Citizenship 17 3.12 Andromeda Hill 3.2 Planning as Domination: Towards Territorial, 3.13 Site plan, Andromeda Hill Procedural and Socio-economic Control 20 3.14 Hassan Bey Mosque 3.3 Planning as Opposition: Towards Equality, 3.15 Physicians for Human Rights, Jaffa Diversity and Democracy 23 3.16 Mural at Yafa Café 3.17 Poster for Palestinian Folklore and Cultural Festival 4. Conclusions 27 3.18 Past and current streets signs in Tel Aviv-Jaffa 4.1 Street posters in Tel Aviv 4.1 City as Site for Substantive Citizenship: 4.2 Charles Clore Park Implications for the Nation 27 4.3 “Meier on Rothschild” 4.2 Jaffa: Site of a Multicultural Vision? 27 4.3 Towards a New Discourse of Israel / Palestine 29 * All photographs are by the author. References 31 1. Introduction: the significance of Tel Aviv-Jaffa “There is a fear in Israeli society of mixing with the the form of government operating in Israel. While the eth- ‘other’ community in the country: purified localities are nocracy model agrees that the state has democratic ten- preferred as a bulwark against erosion of the state’s dencies, it argues that these are present in the features, special character.” (Falah, 1996, 827) not the structure of the regime (Yiftachel, 2006). As the state is part of the dominant ethnic group, its ability to remain neutral is considered doubtful in a setting where no measures exist to prevent the tyranny of the major- 1.1. ‘The Only Democracy in the Middle ity. Were they present, such mechanisms might include East’1 a constitution, a bill of rights, the scope for minority veto and cultural-regional autonomy (Yiftachel, 2006). Accord- ingly, the lack of democracy is not so much attributed to Ethnic Democracy or Ethnocracy? The association the Jewish character of the state but rather these sys- of Israel, as a self-defined Jewish state, with democracy temic shortcomings, which ensure a constant process of was established from its founding and used as a politi- Judaization and de-Arabization. cal bridge, connecting it to governments in the West. This rhetoric has conflated the notion of being Jewish with Land + Identity in Israel / Palestine3. At its core the that of being democratic, suggesting that one cannot ex- Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of land, of the contesta- ist without the other. Despite the overt tensions between tion of competing narratives by the ‘rightful’ inhabitants citizenship and ethnicity (Yiftachel, 2002), this assumption of the same territory. Two ethnic groups are, in essence, was not called into question until the 1990s when a debate asserting separate national projects with the aim of gain- among Israeli academics began to interrogate the com- ing the most territory carrying the least number of peo- patibility of the definition of the state as Jewish with the ple belonging to the ‘other’ (Monterescu and Rabinowitz, values of democracy. A model of ‘ethnic democracy’ was 2007). This logic has permeated all proposed resolutions offered (Smooha, 1990), which recognised the systemic to the conflict from the start of the 20th century, including discrimination against the state’s Palestinian2 minority the ubiquitous United Nations Partition Plan of 1947 (Fig- yet located it within an overall cloak of democracy, which ure 1.1), which called for the creation of two states within guaranteed political and civic rights (Yiftachel, 2002). In historic Palestine4. Peace plans have continued to forge practice however, this only served to justify a “two-tiered ahead, predicated on the assumption that the populations democracy” (Peled, 1992, 440), one that prevented the must first be separated and partitioned (Weizman, 2007). Arab minority from participating in the ‘common good’ and the republican facet of citizenship (Peled, 1992). The 1948 War and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 have deeply fragment- The acceptance of such a citizenship, while consistent ed the Palestinian community, dividing it into three distinct with liberal sensibilities, inherently prevents Arabs from ex- groups: Palestinians who remained in historic Palestine in ercising a citizenship equal to their Jewish counterparts 1948 and would later become citizens of the Israeli state (Jamal, 2002). By extension the ethnic democracy model (approximately 20% of the current Israeli population), Pal- is primarily concerned not with the principles of democ- estinians who currently reside within the occupied West racy, but rather with the preservation of the dominant eth- Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Diaspora, which nicity (Ghanem, 2000) albeit within a framework of limited resides outside present-day Israel and the Occupied democratic freedoms. It holds an “ideological outlook that Palestinian Territories. These three forms of separation to begin with is not one of equality” (Jamal, 2002, 425) (Bishara, 2008) are evidenced today in the continued ex- and is reliant not on the consent but the control of the pulsion of Palestinians from their homeland through the ethnic minority (Yiftachel, 2006). It also fails to address the denial of their right of return, the building of the separation effective expansion of Israeli control into the West Bank wall between Israel proper and the West Bank, and the and Gaza Strip in the absence of any channels for the exclusion of Palestinian-Israelis from equal citizenship.