Overview

The contest to maintain and reclaim space is firmly tied to the identity and culture of a displaced population. Palestinian Citizens of Israel is a study of Palestinian communities living inside the Jewish state and their attempts to disrupt and reshape the physical and abstract boundaries that contain them. Through extensive fieldwork and numerous interviews, Sharri Plonski conducts a comparative analysis of resistance movements anchored in three key sites of the Palestinian experience: the defence of housing rights in Jaffa; the protest against settlement in the Galilee region; and the campaign for Bedouin land rights in the Naqab desert. Her research investigates the dialectical relationship between power and resistance as it relates to socio-spatial segregation and the struggle for national recognition. Plonski's examination of Palestinian activism and transgression offers valuable insight into the structures and reaches of power from within the Israeli state. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of both Middle East Studies and Palestinian-Israeli politics.

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9781784536565

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Reviews

This book is an excellent study of the spatio-politics of Palestinian citizens in Israel. It offers an in-depth ethnographic investigation and critical analysis not only of Israel's policies of social, spatial and cultural control over its Palestinian citizens, but also of their politics of protest and their social agency. Framed within the settler colonial paradigm, this book conceptualizes the creation and preservation of ethnic divisions: powerful groups, often linked to the state are able to `plan' the territory so as to exclude and segregate minorities. In such a process, as the book demonstrates well, the new geographies of exclusion work to essentialize both collective identities and the hierarchies of citizenship. Throughout the book a theoretical discussion leads to our understanding of the ways in which the making of space is inseparable from the on-going contestation within settler colonial societies, and that in this context, planning, land and development policies, despite their common representation as `technocratic' or `neutral' are central tools with which dominant ethnic group work to preserve its urban dominance. - Haim Yacobi, Professor of Development Planning, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London, This is a perceptive, powerful, and highly readable account of the struggles of Palestinian citizens in Israel. Its fascinating insights across a wide-ranging array of case studies are framed by a sophisticated theoretical approach to borders, space, and resistance. An invaluable contribution to understanding how power works in Israel, and - most importantly - how it is contested. - Adam Hanieh, Reader in Development Studies, SOAS

Author Information

Sharri Plonski teaches Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. She is a post-doctoral research associate with the university and managing editor of the Middle East Review of Books.

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