Newsletter Issues
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2002-2003 Fellowship Write-Ups
Thomas Abowd Studies Politics of Space in Mandate-Era
Jerusalem
In his research, “Jewish-Arab Relations and the Spatial
Dimensions of Everyday Life in British Colonial Jerusalem,
1917-1948,” Thomas Abowd will examine inter-communal relations
in Jerusalem during the British Mandate.
“I will focus on the politics of space, emerging national
conflicts, and modes of contact between Jews and Arabs in
the city before the flight of the Palestinian refugees in
the spring of 1948,” explains Abowd. He will conduct interviews,
collect life histories and perform archival work in Jerusalem
in order to explore dimensions of life “in a city central
to both communities’ national cosmologies.”
Abowd hopes to answer three broad questions: What was the
nature of everyday encounters between Arabs and Jews during
the British Mandate? To what extent did areas of “mixed”
Arab-Jewish residential life exist in the city at the time?
How did the intensification of nationalist sentiment, expression
and violence during the Mandate’s latter years affect and
alter Arab-Jewish identities and encounters?
The significance of his research lies “largely in its engagement
with historical dynamics and relationships that have not
been adequately explored or theorized in British colonial
Jerusalem, particularly everyday life and quotidian encounters,”
Abowd says, adding that his work “will provide a more nuanced
understanding of the conflict between Palestinian and Jewish
nationalisms, both before and after 1948.”
Given how central Jerusalem continues to be in the current
conflict, Abowd’s work “would be vital for understanding
the roots of that conflict,” argues Salim Tamari of the
Institute of Jerusalem Studies. “His work is significant
for contemporary political reasons and, along with the work
of his dissertation, will make innovative contributions
to an understanding of how an equitable political solution
can be arrived at in today’s city.”
Abowd began his research in Amman in April 2002 under a
grant from CAORC. There he interviewed Palestinians who
were formerly residents of Jerusalem and who were old enough
to remember life during the Mandate period. His PARC grant
allows him to continue this research in Jerusalem, where
he will conduct interviews with Palestinians and Israelis
who resided in the city before 1948 and consult Mandate-era
Arabic newspapers housed at the Hebrew University. “I seek
to explore these communities’ lives, struggles and histories
in a relational way,” he explains. He will do this by looking
at the degree to which the experiences of Arabs and Jews
intersected one another. “I will explore what the era of
British rule offered in the way of residential and commercial
spaces where inter-communal interactions were not structured
in dominance or inequality.”
Among Abowd’s principal aims is to investigate experiences
and interactions in the “mixed” residential areas of Jerusalem.
He plans to identify specific neighborhoods and examine
how they came into being and how they might have changed
over several decades. He wants to find out how Palestinian
Christians and Muslims associated with their Jewish neighbors
and whether Arab Christians’ experiences with Jews differed
from those of Muslims.
His research also examines the extent to which the mixed
neighborhoods changed as political realities grew more intense
and colonial and national violence escalated. “I want to
document the moments of cohesion as well as those of discord
and suspicion,” he says.
Studying residential life is important, Abowd believes,
but he proposes to go further – to explore areas of “mixed”
commercial life. While doing that, he intends to look at
the different interactions accorded men versus women. “Further,
I want to look at the modes of contact between Arabs and
Jews in professional circles,” asserts Abowd. For example,
did business partnerships exist between Arabs and Jews and
how were relations between doctors and patients, shop owners
and customers, architects and homebuilders established?
He also wants to look at how British Mandate officials facilitated
or precluded interactions in this realm.
Abowd began his study in September 2002 by conducting 20
to 25 interviews and life histories with Palestinian and
Israeli Jerusalemites who resided in Mandate-era Jerusalem
and its environs. He also studied Arabic newspapers at the
Givat Ram campus of Hebrew University.
In his interviews, he inquired about relations in the shared
residential spaces of the city and in talks with those who
lived outside in the villages, and what their interactions
were with urban dwellers. “With those willing to speak at
greater length, I will record life histories when I return
in June.”
His study of newspapers included Filastin and Al-Difa,
concentrating on what they had to say about intercommunal
life in Jerusalem. “I believe these written records will
provide an overview of social relations and events that
will compliment the narratives and stories that former residents
of the city provide,” Abowd says. He expects to see evidence
of interactions across cultural boundaries “as well as information
on what some former residents have described as an increasing
institutional separation between Jews and Arabs in the final
phase of the British Mandate.”
Abowd received his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology at Columbia
University in 2002. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the
University of Michigan. In addition to his PARC and CAORC
grants, he was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation
Research Abroad award and other fellowships and grants.
He has been an editorial assistant and writer for News From
Within, an English monthly put out by the Israeli-Palestinian
collective The Alternative Information Center. He currently
teaches Anthropology at Temple University.
Dr. Yousef S. Daoud Explores the Influence of Gender on
Student Enrollment
In Palestine today there is little difference in enrollment
rates of males and females. However, there are significantly
fewer women than men in the work force (roughly 10 percent
of women compared to 40 percent of men).
In his research, Dr. Yousef S. Daoud intends to continue
his earlier studies of men and women at work by focusing
on women “after the choice to participate is made.”
“The peculiarity of the Palestinian labor market where
many Palestinian males with little education work in Israel
at high wages (coupled with an increase in the number of
university graduates) led many to believe that returns to
schooling are negative for Palestinians,” says Daoud, the
recipient of a 2002 PARC grant. He expects his research
to show the opposite is true for women. Looking at two distinct
periods – one when employment in Israel was at its peak
and the other during the present Intifada – will help him
test the hypotheses that “returns to schooling for men are
influenced by the political situation while this is not
the case for women.”
Women enter the workforce based on a number of socio-economic
factors, points out Daoud, an assistant professor of economics
and coordinator of the economics department master’s program
at Birzeit University in Palestine. These factors include:
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level of education
-
marital status
-
number of children
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age
-
husband’s education
-
experience
“This research will address the gender issue as well as
the marginal contribution of a further stage of education
on earnings,” explains Daoud. It will “also explore the
effects of sibling sex composition on women’s education
and earnings.”
In his earlier research, Daoud found that “husbands’ wages
increase participation in the labor force for women, and
that schooling and experience increase the probability of
joining the labor force.” However, the number of children
reduces the probability of participation. But his study
stopped short of estimating the returns to schooling of
women.
Daoud wants to test whether individuals with similar labor
force characteristics will have the same return to schooling
irrespective of their gender. Another hypothesis he will
test is whether the present Intifada has narrowed the gap
between male and female returns to schooling.
Daoud is using micro-data from the Palestine Central Bureau
of Statistics to analyze and test his hypotheses. The research
uses multiple regression analysis for estimating parameters
and inference about the hypotheses.
The first draft of his study should be available by the
end of March 2003. A first look at early data analysis reveals
that “returns to schooling in Palestine are lower than similar
countries published in the literature.” According to Daoud,
the number of returns “also seem to be lower during the
Intifada, during which male wages declined but female wages
did not experience such drastic changes.”
Daoud holds a B.A. in Arabic/sociology from the University
of Jordan, an M.A. with distinction in economics from St.
Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, and a Ph.D. in
applied economics, international finance, from the State
University of New York at Albany.
In addition to his teaching, Daoud does consulting work
with a variety of institutions and agencies, such as the
Palestinian Hydrology Group, where he participated in the
design and empirical review of studies to determine willingness
to pay for improved water connections. He also participated
as a member of the national team for the study of Palestinian
unemployment for the Social and Labor Statistics Division
of the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics.
The Planning and International Cooperation Division of
the Ministry of Labor of Palestine commissioned Daoud to
be a member of the recommendations committee to review the
papers of the international conference for employment in
Palestine (1998). He was the director of the Economics and
Regulation Group of the Palestine Energy Authority and United
Nations Development Program, which aims to promote energy
efficiency and green house gas reduction.
Daoud has published on foreign exchange market efficiency
and cointegration analysis of Palestinian and Israeli prices.
Amal Jamal to Study Role of Arab Media in Israel
The struggle of national, cultural, linguistic and ethnic
minorities for equality in their home states has been one
of the main challenges that nation-states have had to deal
with. And that struggle has often been undertaken in the
media.
Dr. Amal Jamal, lecturer and coordinator of the M.A. in
political communication program at Tel Aviv University and
a lecturer at Western Galilee College, is examining Arab
media in Israel under his PARC grant. Since there has not
been any study like this before, his work will provide a
serious contribution to the understanding of the structure,
policies and calculations of minority media in a conflictual
ethno-national reality.
“There is clear evidence that, since the establishment
of the state of Israel, there has been a tremendous rise
in Arab media institutions,” says Jamal, an Israeli citizen
who earned degrees from The Hebrew University and The Free
University of Berlin. “These institutions play a growing
role in setting the public agenda of the Arab public.”
Jamal’s premise is based on the idea that minorities of
different kinds, much like national movements, conceive
of the media as an institution that can help to construct
and preserve their own identity. “On the other hand,” he
comments, “states have sought to develop their own media
institutions directed to penetrate the minority, frame its
worldview and set its agenda.”
Thus, according to Jamal, “in multi-cultural or multi-ethnic
societies, the media becomes a central arena of struggle
between the different social agents.” Journalists, in turn,
as part of the intellectual elite become active players
in the power games of society.
Jamal’s research aims to address two main issues:
-
the role that minority media plays in constructing
the nature of the relationship between the minority,
the state and the larger public of the dominant nationality
in conflictual societies, and
-
the patterns of journalistic consumption among national
minorities and the impact of their media on their worldviews
and patterns of thinking and behaving.
His research will be undertaken in four parts. The first
will examine the organizational structure of Arab media
in Israel. Integral will be identifying who the media players
are, who they represent, and how they are organized. Jamal
points out that “this part will provide a map of the media
network active in Arab society and the interrelationships
between the different media organs.” He also expects this
part “to enable us to understand the political, social and
economic meaning of the organizational structure of Arab
media.” Jamal will pay special attention to the use of new
technologies, such as the Internet, in order to advance
and promote the visibility of Arab media.
The second part of his study will focus on the policies
of the different media and look deeply at the interests,
values and norms that determine their outlook. He will look
at editorial policy – how and by whom is it determined –
and survey and personally interview owners, managers, journalists
and editors who determine editorial policies. Personal interviews
will enable Jamal to “determine the editorial policies of
media in order to establish empirical evidence regarding
patterns of thinking and behavior that explain and justify
media roles in situations of conflict.”
In the third part of his study, Jamal will analyze selected
articles and programs published in newspapers and broadcast
over the radio to clarify the substantial frames and the
agenda of the minority media institutions. “Since the Arab
minority in Israel views itself as an integral part of the
Palestinian people in a state of conflict with Israel, clarifying
the substantial frames and the agenda of Arab media institutions
in Israel could be of great importance in understanding
the way each institution locates itself vis-à-vis the conflict,”
he says. A central question will concern the borders of
identity, identification and solidarity that the editorial
line of each institution portrays.
The final section of Jamal’s study will deal with public
attitudes towards the media, the patterns of media consumption
among the Arab minority and the influence of Arab media
on setting the public agenda of the minority. “This part
will provide us with evidence regarding the role that the
Arab media managed to engrave among its audience and consumers,”
Jamal explains. He will look at questions of what the Arab
public reads, listens to and views; how often; how they
evaluate Arab media; how they are influenced by them; and
what the most trusted media institutions are and why.
Jamal plans to use interdisciplinary methodologies to achieve
his goals. He will use structural analysis of the minority
media, seeking to draw a picture of their organizational
structure. He will make use of personal interviews and a
public opinion survey conducted among the adult Arab public,
and he will make use of discourse analysis in order to identify
the frames utilized by the media to promote its role and
set the public agenda.
“The importance of this study stems from its originality,”
Jamal asserts. “There has been no comprehensive study of
the Arab media in Israel and the role it plays in setting
the Arab public agenda.” His study, he believes, will “enable
us to examine the politics of Arab communications and the
communication of Arab politics in Israel.”
Laleh Khalili To Investigate Common Commemorative Narratives
of Refugees
Having spent time conducting research in Lebanon, including
three months in three of the country’s refugee camps, Laleh
Khalili intends to show the ways in which Palestinian refugees
in Lebanon narrate, collate, elide and classify their narratives
of their original dispossession in 1948 and subsequent violent
conflicts among their various political factions.
She is focusing on the ways in which the articulation of
collective memory and the production and reproduction of
common commemorative narratives and practices serve as the
framework within which Palestinian refugees make political
claims toward their host government. She is also examining
the differing manners in which these commemorative practices
and narratives are deployed during times of conflict and
instability.
“Most importantly, I would like to focus on whether the
production of particular commemorative narratives, collective
memories, and local histories is the particular domain of
the elite or whether the subaltern group itself is active
in the creation and propagation of ‘its’ history,” she explains.
Her hypothesis is that it is not solely an elite activity,
and she hopes to show how the socioeconomic and political
climate in which the telling of the past takes place “greatly
influences not only the form but also the content of the
memories.”
A doctoral student at Columbia University, Khalili hopes
to address the ways in which individual and collective agencies
of political actors affect outcomes and the ability of the
subaltern groups to “speak” for themselves, “to recount
their histories, to use their memories as a means of normative
pressure, and their ability and capacity to engage in claim-making
and political contention on their own behalf rather than
as ‘foot soldiers’ in ‘wars’ waged by their leaders.”
The puzzle she focuses on is the variance in the internal
content, form, and tone of legitimating narratives during
the widely variant instances of cyclical conflict, in which
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have been engaged – whether
as active participants or as unwilling targets. “Why have
the Palestinian refugees acted collectively to make civil
and social claims against the Lebanese government during
some periods and not others?” she asks. “When a dispossessed
refugee group has deployed violence, how have the legitimating
narratives invoking collective memories differed from those
times when the refugees have been targets of violence?”
Since Khalili’s project addresses the processes by which
conflict is legitimated and perpetuated, its application
reaches far beyond its geographical boundaries. “As civil
and international strife seems to increasingly produce refugees
in all regions of the world, understanding the modes and
level of their engagement in their own fate will be of utmost
importance,” she says. Finally, since the project examines
a wide variety of states as well as sub- and supra-state
political actors, “we will have a better understanding of
whether the role of the state in producing or hindering
conflict is truly diminishing or simply transforming.”
In her dissertation proposal, she posits that “times of
conflict produce different stories than times of relative
stability and that stories of conflict are told differently
depending on the present context.” Khalili plans to combine
the ethnographic methods of anthropology with the analytic
methods of oral history, using documentary and archival
evidence as backup.
Additionally, her research will show that the point at
which various commemorative narratives diverge from one
another and from “official” accounts is the important entry
point that can reveal the manner in which subaltern social
memory appropriates, transforms and sometimes subverts the
process of elite memory-making. Finally, she hopes to show
the mechanisms “by which these narratives of the past frame
current claims-making, affect intra-group relations, and
hinder or help local, national, and international alliances.”
Khalili was selected by Dr. Gary G. Sick as rapporteur
for the Columbia University Seminar on the Middle East and
as principal research assistant to the Gulf/2000 electronic
archives project, which he directs. Khalili’s “impeccable
judgment and her growing familiarity with Middle East politics
and developments in the Gulf has earned her an excellent
reputation with the scholars, journalists and others who
rely on this source of primary documentary material,” he
adds.
Professor Anthony W. Marx of Columbia notes that Khalili’s
research is unique in that the literature on human rights
has tended to downplay the role of claimants. He argues
that “the plight of refugees and their response to the situation
and memories of statelessness, requires an expansion of
the analytic assumptions we have too long taken for granted,
and [Khalili] is poised to provide a breakthrough.” Her
research will “shed light and expand analysis to the growing
populations of peoples who do not fall neatly within a state
framework, and therefore whose human rights can and must
be pursued through other institutions.”
Khalili spent eight months living in Beirut, including
an extended period in Burj al-Barajneh, one of the largest
refugee camps in Lebanon, in order to collect histories,
memories, and stories of the past. She also spent shorter
periods in Nahr el-Bared camp in the North and Ein el-Hilweh
camp in the South “in order to ensure that I addressed differentials
in regional conditions and camp-specific histories.” She
will add to these stories the intellectual productions of
the elite who have influenced or been influenced by the
more popular commemorations by the subalterns.
“These competing and complementing narratives will be then
situated within the particular historical context in which
they operate and interact to show the interrelation of the
micro-processes and macro-historical changes taking place
on the regional and, ultimately, world stage,” she explains.
Khalili, who is of Iranian descent, was born in the United
States and raised in Iran. She was forced to leave Iran
at the age of 17 since she would not have been able to attend
a university because her parents were political dissidents.
Fluent in Persian and Arabic, she has found her unusual
background conducive to her research. She received a bachelor’s
degree in chemical engineering from the University of Texas
at Austin and worked for several years as a business and
systems consultant before returning to school.
Mezna M. Qato Explores the Palestinian Contribution to
the Historiography of the 1948 War
While Israel and the Arab regimes have produced significant
public writings for their people on the ramifications of
the 1948 war, Palestinian contributions to the historiography
“remain surprisingly under explored” asserts Mezna M. Qato,
a 2002 recipient of a PARC grant.
Qato intends to use her dissertation and research to fill
the crucial gap in the study of Palestinian life in the
early period of the “torment of dispersal, exile and occupation.”
She will be looking at “the development and ‘life’ of the
Palestinian historiography on the 1948 war” produced from
1948 to 1964.
According to Qato, Israel has the “New Israeli Historians”
and the Arab regimes were able to incorporate the defeat
of 1948 “into their ongoing attempt to produce a national
culture and identity.” Until now, she argues, “no work has
attempted a thorough study of the Palestinian narratives
of 1948, how such narratives were shaped, constructed, or
functioned; nor have the lesser-known narrators themselves
been given much attention.”
The years between 1948 and the formation of the Palestinian
Liberation Organization in 1964, she explains, “saw an intense
interplay of Palestinian voices attempting to assess the
cause, impact and solution to the ‘catastrophe.’” In the
literature, Palestinians in this period are portrayed as
apolitical and worried about issues of physical survival,
isolated from or entangled within the new Israel ‘national’
project, or as working on the margins of the Arab nationalist
movement.
“In fact, narratives of what happened in 1948 were composed
by all the actors in the war” and “they all competed for
adherents in the public sphere.” Qato asserts that only
through a proper assessment of the various narratives can
there be “any comprehension of how the 1948 war is remembered
and described, or an understanding of its significance as
a national ‘moment’ be complete.”
Palestinian narratives were not all alike, Qato claims.
While they vary widely in both content and form, they are
similar in “many of their rhetorical flairs and in the general
assessment of the immensity of the loss of 1948.” The Palestinian
traditional elites and urban notables wrote their accounts
and memoirs, “prescribing accommodationist solutions and
long-term proposals for Arab ‘rehabilitation.’” Meanwhile,
a new class of first and second generation, Mandate-educated
peasant teachers and activists began to assert their positions
through their own narratives, Qato points out. In them,
they projected a “self-perceived pragmatism in their assertion
of a narrative subversion as form of political protest.”
“This sense of the possibilities of dissent reflects a
wariness of an engagement in the mass street demonstrations
and campaigns orchestrated only 10 years earlier that had
proven to be such a resounding and crushing failure,” says
Qato, adding that “the character of these narratives, their
location, and their ephemeral nature, in the form of leaflets,
pamphlets, history lessons in UNRWA schools, in small-distribution
newsletters and internal party communiqués, speaks to the
conditions of the newly diasporic life of the vast majority
of the Palestinian refugees, and to the coercive nature
of life under the Jordanian regime.”
Her focus is on Transjordan and the West Bank, two places
inhabited by the majority of Palestinians after the 1948
upheaval. The informal nature of the historiography also
challenges the ways in which historiography has traditionally
been conceived. Qato adds that, “In the Palestinian case,
early 1948 war history was only rarely written in book form.”
Qato is doing the first part of her research in Jordan
on a grant from the American Center of Oriental Research
(ACOR). She is exploring holdings in private collections
of UNRWA teachers, institutional archives, including those
of the University of Jordan library, the National Library,
the Salt Museum, and the resources of the Al-Urdun al-Jadid
Center and CERMOC. She is conducting extensive interviews
with the numerous historians and activist-writers currently
residing in Amman as well as teachers from the early post-war
period.
The remainder of her research time will be in Palestine,
“where I will be looking at the private archives of activists
who opposed the Jordanian regime, in Tulkarm, Nablus and
Jenin.” She will utilize the papers of Ahmad Daur and several
senior members of the political parties active under the
Jordanian regime who have a large collection of communiqués
from the period. In addition, she will peruse the textbooks
and lesson plans of former students and teacher training
manuals housed in the Khaduri College, the Ramallah Teacher’s
Training College and the UNRWA branch offices in the Jenin,
Balata and Dheisheh camps, as well as the archives of In’ash
al-Usra in El-Bireh.
These testimonies and histories, she explains, ran “parallel
to the oral narratives of the adult Palestinian population
that understood the events befalling them, and the tomes
written by notables and participants in the 1948 war.” Qato
also plans to view collections of leaflets distributed in
the 1950s, housed in private family libraries in Nablus.
Her work will also take her to the University of Haifa,
the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, and the Truman
Institute at Hebrew University.
A student working on her doctoral dissertation at St. Anthony’s
College at the University of Oxford, Qato was a USIA/Fulbright
Scholar to Jordan in 1999-2000, where she conducted research
on the early historical politics concerning Palestinian
refugees. She is currently a project research assistant
at the Refugee Studies Centre, Queen Elizabeth House at
Oxford, and has served as a researcher at the University
of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies.
Shira Robinson Researches the Social History of Palestinians
under Israeli Military Rule
Focusing on Nazareth and the “little triangle” in Israel
between 1948 and 1967, Shira Robinson used her PARC fellowship
to complete her doctoral research, which explores the range
of mechanisms which the Israeli state has used to try to
subordinate, discipline and transform Palestinian subjects
into obedient “Israeli Arab” citizens as well as the diverse
ways in which Palestinians experienced, negotiated and challenged
those measures. “Only through a combined analysis of the
everyday and the ritualized attention to state spectacles
as well as brute force can we see the full manifestation
of power, adaptation and defiance at work in the making
of the Israeli state and the Palestinian minority within
it,” Robinson maintains.
Her work, which is based on archival research as well as
oral history interviews, analyzes these dynamics by examining
Palestinians’ experiences of and responses to a variety
of state practices, including police surveillance, census
registration, banishment orders, travel and work permit
denials, radio shows, Independence Day celebrations and
museum exhibits. The years she examines “were marked by
personal and family tragedy as well as social reconfiguration”
for Palestinians in Israel, she observes. “It was a time
of adjustment to becoming an indigenous minority, as well
as a period of isolation.” In order to provide a historically
grounded analysis of the period, “I am examining the encounters
between Palestinian citizens, state structures and their
representatives, analyzing how and why they changed over
time.”
In her thesis, she focuses on elements of continuity and
rupture rather than presuming that the 1948 war led to the
absolute destruction or metamorphosis of Palestinian life.
She also explores how the enactment of national celebrations,
the physical presence of the military forces in Palestinian
areas, the rhetoric, categories and practice of surveillance,
and other forms of representation “all helped to create
the idea of the state and ‘the Israeli Arab.’” Further,
she examines the extent to which the celebrations, performances
and ideological campaigns that were imposed on Palestinians
can be understood as a particular kind of “civilizing mission,”
with all the contradictory goals and effects such projects
have entailed. “My review of ministry, police and Israeli
radio files thus far reveals a dynamic effort by state authorities
to instill in Palestinians a ‘loyal’ and ‘Israeli’ sensibility,”
Robinson says.
A doctoral student at Stanford University, Robinson received
her bachelor of arts in Middle Eastern and North African
Studies from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She
participated in an overseas student program at Tel Aviv
University, where she completed coursework in Hebrew, Arabic
and modern Middle Eastern history. She was in residence
in Israel through September 2002 to conduct interviews,
state and local archival research and press surveys. She
spent a year in Cairo studying Arabic at the Center for
Arabic Study Abroad and began her field research during
winter 2001-2002 with funds from Stanford and the Fulbright
Foundation.
Her primary advisor at Stanford, Professor Joel Beinin,
comments that “If Shira succeeds, and my judgment is that
she will, she will be able to substantially revise the history
of the Palestinian citizens of Israel and their relations
with the state and its Jewish citizens.” Calling Robinson
“an outstanding student and a passionate researcher,” Beinin
notes that, Robinson has already written a lengthy seminar
paper on the 1956 massacre of Arab citizens by Israeli border
guards at Kafr Qasim, which was accepted for publication
in the International Journal of Middle East Studies.
Richard Roberts, professor of African history and director
of the Center for African Studies at Stanford, points out
that Robinson has identified an important gap in the historiography
of modern Israel, namely the social history of the Palestinians.
Her research is “a novel project that has as its center
the internal social and economic networks of the Palestinians
who remained within Israel’s borders after 1948,” he adds.
“She [is] especially concerned not with the political mobilization
of the Palestinians in Israel, which must be a part of any
history of the region, but with their cultural, social and
economic experience.” She is also attentive to the differences
among the Palestinians, “thus moving away from the ahistorical
tendency to explain all Palestinians experiences in terms
of struggle.”
Robinson has received a full doctoral fellowship from Stanford,
the Stanford History Department Award for Excellence in
First Time Teaching, and research and travel grants from
the Stanford History Department, the Dorot Foundation and
the Newhouse Fund.
Musa Abdel Karim Sroor to Study Infrastructural Change
in Waqf Status
During the period from 1858 to 1917 numerous religious
endowments (waqf) in Jerusalem were transformed into private
property. In his doctoral research, Musa A.I. Abdel Karim
Sroor is studying the infrastructural change of the waqfs
during the 19th century until the close of the Ottoman period
at the end of World War I. “In particular,” he notes, “I
am focusing on the analysis of the process by which certain
waqf assets as well as public space that had been consecrated
as waqf were being transformed into a type of private property,
especially through long-term rent leases on foundation property
and through physical occupation of waqf space by individuals
and families.”
While private property had always existed “in shari’a and
in fiqh, which regulated the norms of waqf behavior, “the
moves towards the privatization of some waqf assets and
waqf space in 19th and 20th century Jerusalem occurred on
a larger scale than in previous times,” Sroor says. Documents
from these times show, for instance, that numerous waqfs
which financed soup kitchens and religious schools were
transformed into private property. “Moreover, revenue destined
for those institutions was used for the creation of a government
education system,” Sroor explains. During the period of
his study, several changes affected the institution of waqf,
including the sale of numerous properties and the transfer
of their revenues to the state treasury, Sroor points out.
“At the same time, the state pursued its policies of waqf
confiscation under the pretext of their use for the public
good.” Sroor adds that several Jerusalem Muslim families
which had managed these endowments over a number of generations
began to consider them as their own property. According
to documents he has studied, forty religious schools in
Jerusalem were transformed into family housing, and some
waqf foundations were transformed into private property
for the benefit of foreign countries, such as Germany, Russia
and France, as well as for the benefit of different Christian
communities, including the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant.
The documents show, too, that part of the waqf became the
property of people living in the vicinity of these pious
foundations.
Sroor’s study will consider many questions, including was
there, in reality, a veritable transformation of waqf assets
into private property in Jerusalem; when did this happen;
what were the exact modalities of the transformations; what
were the reasons and motivations for the transformations;
and do the transformations go along with or contradict the
contractual stipulations of the endowments and their founders.
His work “is not only important in relation to the individual
research project itself but is indispensable in order to
identify and comprehend overall trends in the transformation
of waqf assets into private property which will develop
in a much larger way during the Mandate period,” commented
Randi Deguilhem, tenured researcher at the Institut de Recherches
et d’Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (IREMAM), Universite
(accent) de Provence Aix-Marseille, where Sroor is a graduate
student. “Using numerous pious foundations in Jerusalem
as a case study, analyzing the internal transformation of
different waqfs away from their original purposes of supporting
charitable or public causes towards a system of private
property which is indicative of modifications in the waqf
system itself, will allow him to study the profound changes
experienced by both Muslim and Christian society at this
time in Palestine.”
Sroor believes his work will increase the understanding
of the history of waqfs in late Ottoman Jerusalem and in
Palestine and also contribute towards the understanding
of the place of the endowments within 19th and 20th century
Mediterranean history and the movement towards privatization
of property. “It will be the first study focusing on waqfs
during the period 1858-1917 in Palestine which is dedicated
to the study of the process of transformation of waqfs on
the basis of primary sources,” he explains.
In order to carry out his research, Sroor intends to use
primary sources consisting mainly of religious court registers,
the Jerusalem archives of the Ministry of Waqf and documents
from the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem. He will adopt a quantitative
and qualitative methodology; quantitative because he will
use several hundred documents which will be processed using
computer technology and qualitative because he will analyze
these facts in light of Ottoman legislation, most notably
the Land Law of 1858.
Sroor, who was born in Nalin, Palestine, taught for five
years in the secondary school system of Ramallah before
embarking on his doctoral degree. He is fluent in Arabic,
English and French. He holds a master’s degree in contemporary
Arab studies from Birzeit University. Sroor presented his
first research research results during an international
workshop on endowments at IREMAM in June.
Haim Yacobi Examines the “Settler Society” in Israeli
Mixed Cities
An architect and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography
at Ben-Gurion University, Haim Yacobi is focusing his research
on contested cities in Israel, using Lod (formerly the Palestinian
city of Lydda) as a case study.
“My argument is articulated within two theoretical fields,”
Yacobi says. “The first relates to the contested meaning
of citizenship in multi-ethnic societies, and the second
relates to the theoretical urban criticism.” Both are examined
within a wider theoretical framework of “settler society.”
The term “mixed cities” is widely used in Israel to describe
an urban situation in which ethno-national communities share
the same urban space. Yacobi contends that the occurrence
of mixed spaces in Israel results from historical circumstances
that proved the complete Judaization of the Israeli national
territory an unattainable mission. Accordingly, his research
will analyze critically the way in which such contested
urban spaces in Israeli mixed cities are produced. “I suggest
that these urban phenomena originate from the exclusionary
Israeli-Jewish national identity and from the construction
of hierarchical citizenship, which are based on ethnic belonging,”
he says. His research will focus on aggression and oppression
on one hand and minority resistance on the other. “Both
have produced these urban landscapes,” he contends.
Yacobi says his research aims:
-
to analyze the way in which the ex-Palestinian city
of Lydda was transformed into the “mixed city” of Lod
dominated by Jewish inhabitants
-
to expose the way that ethno-national dominance is
used as a tool for shaping daily spaces of Palestinian
citizens in Israel
-
to analyze the spatial meaning of minority protest
and resistance vis-á-vis hegemonic oppression in the
urban context
-
to conceptualize theoretically the interrelations between
power, identity, and space within the urban arena
-
to develop a qualitative methodology for urban analysis
Yacobi recently traveled to London on his PARC grant to
conduct archival research at the British Library, Royal
Institute of British Architects Archive, the Palestinian
Exploration Fund, and the Public Record Office. His research
has also included conducting interviews with Palestinian
and Jewish inhabitants of Lod.
Located at the edge of the coastal plain of Israel, Lydda
was occupied by the British in 1917,and they invested intensively
in developing the city. The year 1948 was the city’s turning
point. The Israeli army occupied the city and its 20,000
inhabitants escaped or were forced to leave. The need for
labor and specific professionals, such as railway workers,
was Israel’s reason for allowing 500 Palestinians to remain
in the city, which was renamed Lod. After the establishment
of the Israeli state, the Palestinians were moved to an
area surrounded by a wire fence. Under constant surveillance,
the daily lives of the Palestinians were controlled, including
their movement and their right to work. “Thus every aspect
of this population’s life was – and still is – under surveillance
including education, social services and above all – spatial
planning,” he adds.
Yacobi notes that since the 1950s “waves of Palestinian
‘internal refugees' have settled in the city.” Today the
Palestinian population of the city has grown to 21 percent,
or about 14,500 inhabitants.
Yacobi found that two areas in Lod are dominated by Palestinians.
These segregated enclaves are the locus of the Palestinian
citizens’ daily lives “and reflect the debate concerning
city space and citizenship as theoretically discussed.”
Lacking basic infrastructure, the spaces are characterized
by massive informal construction. According to Yacobi’s
estimation, “65 percent of the Palestinian population in
the city lives in ‘illegal’ structures.” As in other mixed
cities in Israel, “this demographic flow embodies political,
cultural, and economic tensions that are expressed spatially.
In the city of Lod, within the same city, two separate 'places'
exist.”
Policy toward the Palestinian citizens of Lod, Yacobi says,
has not changed over the years: “They are still the enemies,
subjects of spatial and demographic oppression.”
Yacobi contends that this spatial organization of the city
is not a natural process reflecting solely economic differences.
“Rather, it is integrated into unequal urban niches that
spatially express power relations,” he asserts. “These segregated
battlefields are the locations in which struggles for the
right to the city take place. Hence, understanding the patterns
of segregation in housing, economic activities and everyday
life is tightly linked with the analysis of minority-majority
power relations.”
The relevance of Yacobi’s work has become apparent notes
one of his former teachers, Ronaldo Ramirez of University
College London, “as the extreme rigidity of housing solutions
– that tend to ignore the social and cultural peculiarities
of minority groups, migrants, etc. – has led to an enormous
waste of resources and serious social conflicts in many
countries.”
Associate Professor Oren Yiftachel, chair of the Department
of Geography and Environmental Development at Ben-Gurion
University, argues that Yacobi’s research has uncovered
“a vast pool of original, primary material.” Yacobi received
a bachelor of architecture degree from Bezalel Academy of
Art and Design in Jerusalem and a M.Sc. in international
housing studies from University College London. He teaches
a course on urban development at Ben-Gurion Univeristy and
is a lecturer at the Academy of Art and Design. He formerly
worked as an architect for St. Yves Human Rights Organization
on a self-help housing project for the Jahelin Bedouin tribe.
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