Holding on to place : spatialities of resistance in Israel and Palestine : the cases of Hebron, Silwan and al-Araqib

Abstract

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict centres on ensuring the control of land and territory; space thus plays a critical role in the power relations between the parties involved in the conflict. Acknowledging space as a central tool of domination used by the Israeli authorities, the following question arises: how is space mobilized by those opposing this control? This thesis endeavours to shed light on the way in which space can become both a resource for and an outcome of protest, with an emphasis placed on the way it is used in and produced through practices of resistance. This research will utilise a comparative approach, relying on material collected in the course of fieldwork conducted between 2012 and 2014 in Israel and Palestine. The three "sites of contention" analysed here include the H2 area in Hebron (the Old City under Israeli authority), the "core" neighbourhoods of Silwan (Wadi Hilwe and al-Bustan) and the unrecognized Bedouin village of al- Araqib, in the Negev desert. Through the prism of these three case studies, the thesis will tackle different strategies built around the materiality of space, place, sense of place, territory, landscape, network and scale. We will see that beyond the struggle against occupation and discrimination, the protests also attempt to re-appropriate the local space and make territorial claims in multiple ways and at different scales. It appears that place is the fundamental spatiality used in the contention in each of the three cases: inhabiting the place, and affirming one's attachment to the neighbourhood is considered to be one of the only viable strategies available. This attachment, or sense of place, is connected to the attachment to the land, and to a territory, conceived in light of nationalist, religious and cultural perspectives. Through place-based practices and representations, but also via international advocacy, the actors of contention attempt to affirm the everlasting Palestinian rooting in space, thus challenging the deterritorialization provoked by the Israeli measures of control.