Negotiating Futures in Palestinian Refugee Camps Spatiotemporal Trajectories of a Refugee Nation

TIINA JÄRVI Negotiating Futures in Palestinian Refugee Camps Spatiotemporal Trajectories of a Refugee Nation Tampere University Dissertations 351 7DPSHUH8QLYHUVLW\'LVVHUWDWLRQV 7,,1$-b59, 1HJRWLDWLQJ)XWXUHVLQ3DOHVWLQLDQ5HIXJHH&DPSV Spatiotemporal Trajectories of a Refugee Nation $&$'(0,&',66(57$7,21 7REHSUHVHQWHGZLWKWKHSHUPLVVLRQRI WKH)DFXOW\RI6RFLDO6FLHQFHV RI7DPSHUH8QLYHUVLW\ IRUSXEOLFGLVFXVVLRQLQWKHDXGLWRULXP. RIWKH/LQQDEXLOGLQJ.DOHYDQWLH7DPSHUH RQ-DQXDU\DWR¶FORFN $&$'(0,&',66(57$7,21 7DPSHUH8QLYHUVLW\)DFXOW\RI6RFLDO6FLHQFHV )LQODQG Responsible 3URIHVVRU/DXUD+XWWXQHQ supervisor 7DPSHUH8QLYHUVLW\ and Custos )LQODQG Supervisor 'RFHQW6XVDQQH'DKOJUHQ 8QLYHUVLW\RI+HOVLQNL )LQODQG Pre-examiners 3URIHVVRU,ODQD)HOGPDQ 'RFHQW6DPXOL6FKLHONH *HRUJH:DVKLQJWRQ8QLYHUVLW\ /HLEQL]=HQWUXP0RGHUQHU2ULHQW 86$ *HUPDQ\ Opponent 3URIHVVRU(PHULWD$QQHOLHV0RRUV 8QLYHUVLW\RI$PVWHUGDP 1HWKHUODQGV 7KHRULJLQDOLW\RIWKLVWKHVLVKDVEHHQFKHFNHGXVLQJWKH7XUQLWLQ2ULJLQDOLW\&KHFN VHUYLFH &RS\ULJKW7LLQD-lUYL &RYHUGHVLJQ5RLKX,QF ,6%1 SULQW ,6%1 SGI ,661 SULQW ,661 SGI KWWSXUQIL851,6%1 3XQD0XVWD2\±<OLRSLVWRSDLQR 9DQWDD Acknowledgements While at times writing a monograph can be a lonely job, completing one is always an inherently relational experience, and therefore, thanks are due to all those involved in the process. My deepest gratitude goes to the Palestinian refugees who made this dissertation possible in the first place. I am indebted to everyone who told their stories, let me into their homes and everyday lives, supported me and took an interest in the research I was conducting. A special acknowledgement goes to my host family in Lebanon who gave me the privilege to join their household. I am also indebted to my field assistant in Lebanon and the multiple interlocutors who volunteered to facilitate my way in the field in West Bank and Jordan. This dissertation would not have been possible without your generosity. I am grateful of all the academic support I received over the years I worked on the dissertation. My primary supervisor professor Laura Huttunen always had time to read and comment the multiple versions I sent her, and she has been an invaluable source of constructive feedback. I also wish to thank my other supervisor docent Susanne Dahlgren for her support and comments, as well as the two pre-examiners, professor Ilana Feldman and docent Samuli Schielke, whose meticulous and insightful reading of the manuscript helped in improving the work. I also thank professor emerita Annelies Moors for agreeing to be my opponent. My drafts and papers were read and commented also by many others in seminars and in academic meetings, and I hope to single out our Tampere University anthropology community who gave their feedback in our seminar gatherings. I have received encouragement and support also from the fellow Middle East anthropologists and other Middle East scholars from Helsinki University, and I thank them for that. I thank Megan Caine for the language edit, which improved the flow of the text considerably. All errors left in the final version are mine. I had the privilege to enjoy economic security provided by a monthly salary almost the entire time I worked on the dissertation. The four-year position at Faculty of Social Sciences allowed me to dedicate all my time and energy to the research without having to worry about funding. I am also grateful to the Academy of Finland iii project Present-futures in/of Palestine - for which I started to work at late 2019 - for allowing me to take my time to finalize the dissertation. My fieldwork expenses were for most parts covered by grants I received from The Foundation of Finnish Institute in the Middle East. I also thank the Institute itself for giving me the possibility to immerse myself to Middle East – and especially to Lebanon – and to the Finnish community of Middle East scholars before I started my doctoral studies. From this community, I wish to single out the former directors of the Institute, dr. Raija Mattila, who supported me to use my working hours to prepare for the fieldwork, and dr. Ari Kerkkänen, who encouraged me to step on the academic path in the first place. While sharing a roof with another Palestine scholar has at times been a source of annoyance – as it has been hard to separate work from leisure time – it has also been enormously enriching, I hope for both of us. I admire Mikko for his dedication to his work and owe him a depth of gratitude for his support, both academic and personal. I also want to thank my sister Anne for providing the cover artwork and for allowing me to vent out my frustrations and insecurities of becoming an academic. Without the two of you I would not have been able to get to this point, and my life would be immanently less fulfilling. Thank you for being there. iv Abstract Palestinian refugee camps have been housing Palestinians for seven decades. They were formed after 1948, when in the process of establishing Israel as a Jewish state the majority of Palestinians living in Mandatory Palestine were dispossessed. Over these decades, the camps have become a durable part of the Middle Eastern landscape, and several generations of refugees have already been born, and are living, in them. Despite the fact that Palestinian camps have also been framed as temporary, not only by definition but also in the national narratives stressing the right to return to Palestine, in practice the camps have become sites where lives are lived and futures built. Due to their long history, unique institutional framework, and strong connotation as centers of Palestinian political struggle, Palestinian refugee camps have their own specificities that affect how they frame the life of their dwellers. Yet, this dissertation is not an ethnography of the camps per se; the aim is rather to look through them in order to explore the manifold futures that are negotiated by the Palestinian refugees dwelling in them, and especially by those just reaching adulthood. This ethnographic study has been conducted in several refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and the West Bank. A multi-sited approach was adopted with the presumption that the context of refugeeness affects the ways in which futures are imagined. Palestinian refugees have been positioned differently in these places: as stateless and excluded in Lebanon, as refugee-citizens in Jordan, and as being among their own people yet enduring the difficulties of the oppressive Israeli occupation in the West Bank. Understanding these contextual specificities in the different host sovereigns has hence been central to the aims of this work. In this dissertation I argue, in line with ontological hermeneutics, that it is not possible to explore the future without first addressing the differing pasts and present conditions of the refugees. Therefore, to understand these differing experiences of Palestinian refugees living under the three host sovereigns, I start by looking at the histories that form the present realities through which Palestinians look to, have hopes for, and plan for their futures. The histories of Palestinian refugeeness have witnessed violence, multiple displacements, and enduring uncertainty. In all the fields that were included in this research it was the camp that embodied the difficulties of v being a refugee. The material living conditions, crowdedness, camp community, and relations with the surrounding area and society, as well as the identificational and political connotations, have all affected how the camps have been experienced as places of dwelling by my interlocutors. In many ways they were considered inadequate in terms of providing the hoped-for standards of living, yet simultaneously they formed a significant community that was viewed from a positive perspective, though more so in the West Bank and Jordan than in Lebanon. Nevertheless, while the camps functioned as a marker of Palestinian refugeeness, and were even equated with Palestine and the right of return, as everyday spatialities they left much to be desired. Similarly, this research shows that the possibilities available to the refugees under the host sovereigns were not usually enough for my interlocutors to achieve their aspirations. Hence many – especially in Lebanon and the West Bank, though for different reasons – have come to consider that emigration could fulfil their hopes and provide better conditions for them and their families. Better futures were negotiated via different routes – education, employment, and marriage being the ones explored here. While both return and the national future of Palestine also emerged in these negotiations, they were situated in a different, more abstract timeframe, not one that could provide better possibilities or enhancements in the deprived conditions faced in everyday life. The specificity of Palestinian refugees’ negotiations on the future nevertheless emerges from this discrepancy between the national and the personal. On the level of national discourse, Palestinian refugees (especially those living in camps) are people steadfastly waiting for the return, enduring life in the camp and fighting for the national cause. However, on the level of the everyday, they are – as is anyone – aiming to improve their situation with the means available and, as became evident in my ethnography, in the present situation and in light of past experiences those means direct their attention somewhere other than to the political objectives they hold as Palestinian refugees. This, I claim, reflects

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