Spatial Alternatives and Counter-Sovereignties in Israel/Palestine

Spatial Alternatives andCounter-Sovereignties in Israel/Palestine1

Nir Gazit

Ruppin Academic Center

and

Robert Latham

York University

The securitization of the spaces of Israeli-Palestinian interaction, fromcheckpoints to the West Bank Separation Wall, continues to intensifyand receive attention from journalists, scholars, and activists. Under-standably, the focus is on the negative consequences of existing spatialconfigurations. Receiving far less attention is the development of alter-native spatial formations which might advance forms of “desecuritiza-tion,” especially in those spaces that are crucial hinges of Israeli-Palestinian interaction (Jerusalem and other mixed cities, the Wall, theGreen Line, roads). This article explores whether alternative ways ofusing, organizing, experiencing, and coexisting in space—especially atthe micro level—hold out promise for helping to reframe significantdimensions of Israeli-Palestinian interaction. It seeks to better under-stand whether disjointed forms of sovereignty that appear—or disappear—across the occupation can be met by counter-sovereignties; whethernew spatial counter-realities can be articulated through everyday life;and whether forms of agency, especially contestation, can reset under-standings of, and perspectives on, spaces. A range of examples are con-sidered within Jerusalem, mixed cities, the occupied Palestinianterritories and at the border, bearing on religious sites, healthcare, gen-trification, security infrastructure, popular protest, and festivals.

The securitization and Judaization (Yiftachel 1999) of the spaces of Israeli-Palestinian interaction—from checkpoints to the Separation Wall in the WestBank—are intensifying and receiving increasing attention from critical geogra-phers and other social scientists (Harker 2010). The focus is mostly on the pro-foundly negative consequences of spatial configurations associated, in particular,with the occupation (Ophir, Givoni, and Hanafi 2009). Receiving far less atten-tion is the existence and possibilities of spatial forms, practices, and understand-ings that might advance desecuritization and de-subjugation, particularly thosewithin the crucial hinges in Israeli-Palestinian interaction (for example,

1Authors’ notes: Authors are listed in alphabetical order. They would like to thank the IPS editors and anony-mous reviewers for their very helpful comments. Joanna Long, Oren Yiftachel, Gillad Rosen, Efrat Ben-Ze’ev, RogerKeil, C�edric Parizot, Ani Mamikon, Yael Navaro-Yashin, Sundus Balata, Matthew Grey, Amira Schiff provided valu-able inspiration and insight along the way.

Gazit, Nir and Robert Latham. (2014) Spatial Alternatives and Counter-Sovereignties in Israel/Palestine.International Political Sociology, doi: 10.1111/ips.12040� 2014 International Studies Association

International Political Sociology (2014) 8, 63–81

Jerusalem, the Wall, and the Green Line). This article understands desecuritiza-tion not just negatively, as a withdrawing and removal of security practices andframings, but also positively, as a politico-normative process producing more justrelations across a variety of sociospatial dimensions, from the everyday to thestrategic-institutional (Huysmans 1998; Aradau 2004).Can different ways of relating to, analyzing, using, and organizing space (that

is, spatial alternatives) help reframe significant dimensions of Israeli-Palestinianinteraction in more just and less violent ways? Are there ways such efforts canchallenge the practices associated with hyper-security, dispossession, contain-ment, occupation, and the brutal assertion and denial of sovereignty? Howeverexecrable, do the relatively varied and rapid re-orderings of space which havemarked Israeli policies and practices in Israel, the West Bank, and at the bordersleave room for Palestinians and Israelis to imagine and pursue what Lefebvrecalled “counter-spaces” or “counter-projects” (1991:382) or even discontinuities?In other words, can such spatial organization and framings—driven by intensiveexpropriation, violence, and neoliberalization—involve alternative spatialities?Marx (1976) likewise pointed to the paradox that deepening proletariatizationopened the possibility of greater struggle against capitalism.We address sovereignty and space-based rights, but not the pursuit of state-

focused solutions regarding two states or a single binational state. We do notreject these comprehensive models out of hand but seek to shift the focus to theside or “downward” in scale (where, of course, the state remains very much apresence and, as pointed out by Mitchell (1991), an effect). At these scales ofanalysis we suggest sovereignty can be seen in three intersecting forms: as frag-mented sovereignty; counter-sovereignty; and social sovereignty.We wish to think across multiple disciplines, fields (for example, political the-

ory, geography, sociology, and anthropology), issues, and themes (for example,rights and sovereignty). The emphasis is less on geographies of conflict and vio-lence per se, and more on the spatial logics that open toward geographies of non-violent “overlapment.” That is, foregrounding “spatial alternatives” is intended tosignal a fundamental commitment not only to the study of how spaces in Israel/Palestine are (re)produced according to a range of contested ontologies (Long2011), but also of how the ways and dynamics that overlap ontologies might gen-erate spatial coexistence and practical cooperation between the communities.These spaces—of nonviolent overlapment—can be understood to be where twoor more groups are able to organize their lives on their own terms through com-munal and institutional uses of the same or abutting spaces and interact in a lesssecuritized and violent manner with one another. We are keenly aware that thespatialities of interest here are also involved in the production and maintenanceof power relations and violence (although in this paper we can address thisintersection in only limited ways).Attention to agency and subjectivity is essential.2 Agency in this context can, in

part, be understood through the frame of “the politics of small things”(Goldfarb 2006), as it is manifest in the routine micro-politics and mundanepractices undertaken by a variety of social actors, as well as official agents. Suchpolitics and practices can give rise to everyday situations and modalities that arepotentially constructive.3 Given the deep pessimism and cynical politics of thecurrent moment, spatial alternatives in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are morelikely to emerge from the practices and understandings of individuals, families,entrepreneurs, civil society organizations, and communities. Sometimes these

2While we underscore the importance of agency and subjectivity, we do not undertake ethnographic research orfocus on narratives, although we do point to examples which rely on that knowledge.

3Salzani (2012) shows how important small changes were to ideas of transformation in the work of Walter Ben-jamin, Ernst Bloch and Giorgio Agamben.

64 Spatial Alternatives and Counter-Sovereignties

spatial acts and practices can be seen as transgressing the formal (and informal)political arrangements articulated by the Israeli and the Palestinian Authoritygovernments.4

Attention to agency is the reason we apply the language of conflict to Israeli-Palestinian interaction. We recognize there are many dimensions to the pro-foundly asymmetrical relationship—an occupation, an expropriation, a form ofneocolonization—and it makes sense to view Palestinians as subjects. But wethink it is important to emphasize that Israeli inflictions have been met withagentful, conflictual resistance across a range of violent and nonviolent actions.We acknowledge that the themes we address can also be found in work on

other conflicts including sovereignty (Williams and Pecci 2004); capitalism(Hozic 2006); divided cities (Bollen 2007); and civil society (Varshney2002). Conflicts from South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Cyprus to India-Pakistan, Sri-Lanka, and the Balkans have unique trajectories and histories, andit is not possible in the limited context of this exploration to draw out therelevant links and comparisons.We start with a short discussion of the significance of space and spatiality in

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as why we believe focusing on the condi-tions for the emergence of spatial alternatives is of value. A second section offersa preliminary heuristic analysis of spatial alternatives. We ask in what ways thefragmented trait of (Israeli and Palestinian) sovereignty can produce projects ofcounter-sovereignties articulated in, and through, spatial alternatives. Using theconcept of social sovereignty, the third section asks how spatial practices, particu-larly at the micro level, might advance new governance arrangements entailingnonviolent overlapment. In a fourth section, we explore spatial alternatives inmixed and contested cities. We ask how urban spatial transformations associatedwith social forces such as culture and capitalism can produce socially sovereign,spatial alternatives. In a fifth section, we ask whether civilian activism and mobili-zation can have explicit transformative spatial effects and to what degree socialagencies, at the micro level, are essential for opening up and articulating spatialalternatives.5 We conclude by reflecting on what we believe are key questionsabout the above concepts and themes (sovereignty, agency, everyday life) andothers that emerge in our exploration (the role of temporality and problems ofscale—from micro to macro) and what they might imply for further multidisci-plinary research.

Spatiality and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

A preoccupation with space is notable in portrayals of the Israeli-Palestinian con-flict. As suggested by Long (2011), geography, politics, power, and identity havebeen knit together in the study of Palestine–Israel. This is not surprising consid-ering the centrality of the territorial dispute between the Zionist and the Pales-tinian national movements (see, for example, Lustick 1993; Ben-Ari and Bilu1997; Yiftachel 2002).Early on, Kimmerling (1983) and Shafir (1984) emphasized the variety of insti-

tutional and sociopolitical patterns of control which Israel uses over the territo-ries within and beyond the green line (the borderline between Israel and theterritories occupied in 1967). Political theorists, sociologists, historians,

4Also of interest is the role, which we cannot address here, of international non-governmental organizations asthey insert themselves in local situations as forces in the emergence of spatial alternatives (Callaghy, Kassimir, andLatham 2001; Yacobi 2007).

5The examples we introduce (i) are drawn from recent events and the work of critical geographers, sociologistsand anthropologists; (ii) engage both Israelis and Palestinians; and (iii) can take form as self-reflexive anti-occupa-tion stances challenging specific conditions of inequality and exclusion or as transformations emerging within every-day life.

Nir Gazit and Robert Latham 65

geographers, and architects, have increasingly focused on how Israel’s territorial—and more broadly spatial—policies undermine Palestinian territoriality andserve as a major repressive tool against the Palestinian population (see recentlyOphir et al. 2009; Zureik, Lyon, and Abu-Laban 2010). Noble and Efrat (1990)and Efrat (1988, 2002), for instance, analyze the geographical and territorialpractices Israel employs (“Apartheid roads” for Jews only and Jewish settlements,for example) in order to maintain and reinforce its control over the OccupiedTerritories. They show how spatial-political policies led to a de facto annexationof these territories.Similarly, Weizman (2004) and Weizman and Lein (2002) focus on the devel-

opmental aspect of Israel’s strategy in the Occupied Territories. They argue thatthe Israeli strategy in the Occupied Territories centers on three-dimensional con-trol over the totality of space: infrastructure, the environment, and sub- andabove-surface domains—a combination which orchestrates a “politics of vertical-ity” using planning and architecture. Linked to this, Graham (2004) distin-guishes Israeli construction (for example, new settlements, barriers, and roads)with the de-construction of the urban and infrastructural assets of the Palestinians(demolishing houses, for example), labeled “urbicide.”Some scholars are now examining the effect of these policies on Palestinian

daily life. Bornstein (2002) and Hammami (2006a) focus on ethnographiesof Israeli checkpoints, examining their effect on the Palestinian daily routine.Linked to this, Jean-Klein (2001), Rosenfeld (2004), and Abu-Zahra (2008)emphasize how Palestinians confront this combination of political, economic,and geographical repression by striving to maintain their daily habitus. Othercritical scholars (Gregory 2004a,b; Jamoul 2004; Yiftachel 2004; Handel 2010)have shown how spatial policies such as road closings, long curfews and closurepolicies, and the Separation Wall, shatter and shrink the Palestinian space. SariHanafi (2005) terms the destruction of the full spectrum of Palestinian life—erased from the land—as “spacio-cide.”Although the negative consequences of existing spatial configurations are

prominent in this work (see Harker 2010),6 some authors are now asking howto move beyond acute pessimism (see Hasson 1996; Ben-Ari, Maymon, Gazit,and Shatzberg 2005; Hammami 2006b; Yiftachel 2006; Hilal, Petti, and Weizman2009). Can these initial efforts be viewed within a wider framing that helps usthink through the possibilities and conditions for a range of spatial alternativeswhich might ultimately begin to transform the nature of the conflict, but whichdoes not automatically resort to a macro-approach organized around varyingstatist models—either binational (Gendzier 1975; Benvenisti 1995; Elazar 1998;Abu-Odeh 2002; Abunimah 2006; Gorny 2006; Hilal 2007; Mavroudi 2010; Ron2011) or two states (Gans 2008; Halper 2008; Rubenstein, and Yakobson 2008;Morris 2009)?7 Such a framing would be guided by the questions whether, andhow, the spatial acts and practices of communities, individuals, organizations,and state agencies matter, as they take steps toward imagining and planningother ways of interacting, moving, and governing in spaces—ways that challengehyper-securitized, separatist, state articulations.In drawing this contrast, we do not suggest treating the state as a unified

subject/object that stands over and apart from what are typically identified associetal and civil institutions, actors, and domains. Rather, the state can be seen

6All critiques imply positive (justice) claims, on the assumption that changed conditions and practices aresought by authors. But this can be insufficient if one is seeking to identify the conditions and logics which mightlead to transformation.

7These writings typically focus on “big issue” institutional and legal aspects of the proposed models, includingthe discourses of national-rights and national self-determination, the Jewish and Palestinian “right-of-return” toIsrael/Palestine, and the final borders of the Jewish and future Palestinian states. What tends to be neglected inthese macro-approaches is the more daily—spatial—routines of the conflict.


as coproduced by, and in all sorts of social forms manifest in and through, thestructures, imaginings, and practices across a sociospatial realm (Mitchell 1991;Painter 2006). Likewise, territory is usefully seen as (re)produced by states, aswell as coproduced by nonstate actors.8

It is now widely accepted that space is multidimensional—geographical, social,political, economic and cultural—and dualistic, a product of social relations aswell as a producer of social relations (Gottdiener 1985; :XV; Lefebvre 1991[1974]). According to Henri Lefebvre (1991) [1974]), space is always a field ofaction, projects, and practical intentions. It is the ultimate locus and medium ofstruggle, and therefore a crucial political issue: “there is a politics of spacebecause space is political” (Lefebvre 2000 [1972]:59; Elden 2007:822, 2004).Michel de Certeau (1984); see also Clifford (1997), who unfortunately abandonsthe broader critical-political framings of Lefebvre, nevertheless helps us with hisintensive focus on micro-“spatial practices” which are enacted through the deci-phering of space by social agents. For de Certeau, “space” is never ontologicallygiven but rather discursively mapped and corporeally practiced. Social agents usespatial schemes to give sense to their surroundings and to organize their experi-ence (Gattis 2001). Thus, a distinction should be made between the physical andterritorial dimensions of “spaces”—whose borders can be mapped, whose interiorsare secure and whose occupants can be controlled—and the ways spaces areunderstood, imagined, and mobilized through social and political practices.Most literature that adopts a spatial perspective on contemporary ethno-

national conflicts concentrates on the way spaces accommodate, facilitate, andshape political violence and political repression (Migdal 2001; Gregory and Pred2007; Gazit 2009; Ophir et al. 2009; Zureik et al. 2010). Can acts, projects,schemes, and practices in any way transform the spaces in the Israeli-Palestinianconflict and help produce the conditions for new forms of sovereignty entailingnonviolent overlapment, especially within the hinges of tension and rivalry?

Sovereignty and Spatial Alternatives

The perception of territorial control as an inherently zero-sum condition is asso-ciated with frequent political impasses, repetitive cycles of intense violence, anddisregard for or rejection of proposed alternative ways to organize spaces. Peacenegotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are rooted in conventionalinterpretations of sovereignty which suggest that only one state or independentpolitical entity should control a designated territory.But conventional understandings of sovereignty fail to capture the complex,

multitudinous, and fragmentary nature of sovereignty increasingly observed inthe Israel/Palestine context (Weizman 2007; Gazit 2009; Shenhav and Berda2009). Sovereignty, as produced by the Israeli state along the borders and withinthe Occupied Territories, is “under-institutionalized… [tending] to lack a firmbureaucratic administration or a formalized legal system that affixes authoritativecontrol. Instead of a comprehensive institutionalized military or civilian adminis-tration… [there are] multiple, localized and temporal cores of political power”(Gazit 2009:84). This is the sort of paramountcy one is more likely to see at afrontier (Ron 2000) than a metropole. But what is distinctive about the Israel/Palestine context, compared to frontiers across history, is the conscious programof transitory, mobile, and destabilized forms of sovereign coding (Weizman

8See the thoughtful exploration of the production of territory by states in and beyond the work of Lefebvre inBrenner, and Elden (2009) and Elden (2007). These works explore the way states with nominally preserved bor-ders, but without effective territorial control, leave a vacuum that others, including terror groups, may be able toutilize. Such groups operate in nominally sovereign space either through the tacit consent or ineffectual control ofthe sovereign power.


2007). So while similar observations have been offered about political power inAfrica (Reno 1998; Mbembe 2000; Stoler 2006)—including the notion that con-strained, temporary, and bounded deployments of power can have devastatingand forceful effects on peoples and spaces (Latham 2001)—typically these for-mations are treated as the effects of limited power (of African state organs) orminimized institutional mandates (of external actors) rather than part of areflexive program of transitoriness.How can recognition of the fragmentation of sovereignty help produce pro-

jects of counter-sovereignties—opposing claims as well as approaches to sover-eignty—articulated in and through spatial alternatives, in specific spaces fromneighborhoods to agricultural fields and religious sites? In other words, theattempt to move beyond holist or fragmentary framings of sovereignty does notnecessarily require that the concept of sovereignty—understandably still deeplytied to desires for autonomy, control, and self-determination in [micro] spaces—be abandoned. Instead, we suggest it can be opened up.One option is to alter the starting point from a focus on sovereignty as an

attribute or status of agents, to sovereignty as an effect of the paramountcy ofsocial structures coproduced by a variety of agents, including state organs.Within a “social sovereignty” framing (Latham 2000) what is supreme is the bodyof institutions, relations, norms, and practices that shape forms of life within aparticular space. The state is thus understood as one constellation of agencyamong many (civil society organizations, community associations, firms, etc.), co-producing the sovereign structures and codes which frame social and politicallife in a given space (for example, the West Bank) or institutional and disciplin-ary field (for example, education). The recognition that sovereignty is social andstructural opens up possibilities for pursuing a continuum and a multiplicity oforders and authorities across spaces, not centered around one supreme agent,and which present options for framing forms of self-determination and controlof spaces on the part of Palestinians, not just Israelis. Perhaps ultimately, frag-ments of sovereignty—in time and space—need not be limited to the securitypractices of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) or settlers, or be limited as onlyprovisional.What is being considered here is not just a form of “prosthetic” or “soft” sover-

eignty, labels aptly used by Weizman (2004, 2007) to describe a sort of titular sta-tus doled out by the Israelis and attached to the severely limited authority of thePalestinian Authority. Instead, recognition of sovereignty as social—rather thanjust an attribute of state organs—is meant to provoke a questioning of whatcodes and structures frame the terms and possibilities of everyday life in a spaceand who is afforded power to coproduce these.9

Possibilities for Alternative Sovereign Framings

Under current conditions transformations toward new forms of sovereignty andoverlapment would likely occur alongside continuing violence and conflict,either within the same space or adjacent to it. This suggests that one way into ananalysis of alternatives is to distinguish between spatial logics, practices, under-standings, designs, and experiences that tend toward violent separation andthose alternatives that tend toward nonviolent overlapment. By “violent separa-tion” we refer to spatial logics and practices that are hostile, characterized byhyper-securitization and frequent violence, with violence understood as entailingboth the violation of rights, bodies and spaces, and the use of harmful, destruc-tive force (Bufacchi 2005), all of which advances or reproduces segregation or

9We view this questioning as consistent with the discussion of desecuritization as a broader normative-politicalendeavor in Huysmans (1998) and Aradau (2004).


erasure, thereby supporting an Israeli ethnocracy or the sometimes armed Pales-tinian resistance to it (both of which continue to be associated with the desirefor conventional approaches to sovereignty).10

It is important to recognize that there are different forms of violent separationin the Palestinian Occupied Territories, associated with different (and sometimesinterrelated) rationales and fields of tension. The most common framing of sep-aration rests on claims about Palestinian insurgency and Israeli counterinsur-gency. For Israelis, who have the power to set the terms of spatial order,separation is taken to be necessary to deal with the intersection of ethnic politics(including Judaization) and security. Spatial manifestations of violent separationinclude military checkpoints, the Separation Wall, and military installationswithin the West Bank. The heavy military presence in those areas reinforces terri-torial partition and undermines opportunities for desecuritizing coexistence.Spatial alternatives are very unlikely to be achieved in such areas given the con-stant and substantial presence of Israeli state agents who represent and reinforceIsraeli rule.Violent separation often emerges in areas of political tension which are under

political and international dispute (Jassal and Ben-Ari 2007). Such places includethe Israeli settlements and settlers’ unauthorized strongholds (Ma’achazim). Evenholy sites, both for Jews and Muslims—for example, the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem and the Cave of Patriarchs/Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimiin Hebron—are contested along separatist lines.We understand that the face of ethno-territorialism is present and growing at

all geographical scales, and there are violent, separatist alternatives actively information, especially via Israeli settlements. But it is because of this backgroundof ethno-territorialism that we explore the possibility of spatial alternatives at dif-ferent scales, including the localistic, micro-political approaches of communitiesand activist organizations. The possibilities for nonviolent overlapment and alter-native sovereign framings in this context are likely to be located across a widespectrum of social forms, ranging from isolated acts of institution-building andcollaboration, to discrete spatial redesigns and reuses (a road, a concrete struc-ture), to ultimately transforming a space away from its violent, separatist constitu-tion. We are depressingly aware that these possibilities, in the current climateand context, are difficult to imagine, let alone enact. It is far from clear that thenecessary social and political mechanisms are available to help limit existing vio-lent separatist practices and policies. In international diplomacy, neutral placesusually refer to extra-territorial grounds where rivals meet to negotiate. Suchplaces are very hard to find in Israel/Palestine, especially because of the strongterritorial and highly securitized dimensions of the conflict. Optimism abouttransgressing such spatial framings is especially unwarranted given how deeplyanchored they are in international law and public discourse (Benvenisti 1990,1993, 2002) and how often ethno-national conflicts anchored in territorial dis-pute end up in occupation or partition (Jassal and Ben-Ari 2007).Consider, for example, an alternative way to govern the Temple Mount/

Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured the Tem-ple Mount/Haram al-Sharif together with all of East Jerusalem and the WestBank from Jordan, who had controlled it since 1948. In order to secure Muslimaccess and minimize friction between Jewish and Muslim pilgrims, the Israeligovernment has decided to keep control over the El-Aqsa mosque in the handsof the Islamic waqf, although formally it remains under Israeli control. Responsi-bility for the Western Wall (Ha’Kotel) was transferred to the Chief Rabbinate ofIsrael, which is the Israeli government authority responsible for Jewish religious

10Iris Young (1990) distinguishes separation—a negative outward assertion against others—from separatism—the inward positive assertion of a group, consistent with self-determination.


affairs. This policy has had two important ramifications. It reinforced spatial andadministrative partition between Jews and Muslims—that is, although the inten-tion was to reduce friction between the sides, it actually reinforced it, raising thequestion of who would be the dominant authority in the site. Second, since1967, the Israeli government has become a major force in shaping the everydaypolitics of the holy sites in Jerusalem. Although Israel committed itself to theprinciple of free religious ritual in Jerusalem, the Israeli government intermit-tently restricts Muslim pilgrims’ access to Haram al-Sharif (for example, duringJewish Holidays), underscoring how the mountain is not only a religious spacebut also a political space of the conflict (Klein 2004, 2008).Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco also claim to have direct responsibility over

the Jerusalem holy sites (Dumper 1997). On the one hand, this reinforces thesense that what is at stake is total and exclusive control and that the possibilityof creating a space of meditation is limited. On the other hand, this situationhad led many officials and observers to suggest that Jerusalem should becomean international city (governed by the UN).As part of an alternative holistic political model for Jerusalem, Yiftachel and

Yacobi (2002, cf. Hirsch, Housen-Couriel, and Lapidoth 1995) propose that thecity, or at least parts of it such as the Old City, be governed directly by its Jewishand Arab residents through self-governing localities. Similarly, Ma’oz (2000:4)suggests that Jerusalem ought to be the undivided capital of the two peoples, inwhich components of sovereignty are scattered among various authorities alongfunctional lines. This would require the residents of Jerusalem to act not only asnational citizens but also as custodians of Jerusalem’s special character, and toshare the identity Jerusalemite (Nusseibeh 2000). Inayatullah and Blaney(2004:187) posit that such a shared custodial local identity would only be possi-ble if the Israeli and Palestinian governments transfer privileges to the city’s gov-ernment, thus making certain that city functions are treated as a sharedresponsibility. Consistent with this, we want to suggest that the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, in the Old City of Jerusalem, could serve as a pilot for Israeli-Palestinian “social sovereignty.”A first step in this direction would require the minimization of any direct

(Israeli, Palestinian, binational, or international) governmental involvement, thecreation of a joint ethno-religious-national local authority (Inayatullah andBlaney 2004:188) that might have other administrative functions such as sharedurban planning and development,11 and the direct involvement of Jewish andArab residents of the Old City.12 Co-management of the Temple Mount/Haramal-Sharif, as a unified territory, would not only discharge one of the mostcontested sites in the region but also open the possibility of its transformationinto a space of Israeli-Palestinian nonviolent overlapment.We want to be clear that what is at stake here is not simply shared sovereignty,

a concept that has emerged in multiple conflicts from Northern Ireland and theBalkans to the South Pacific (for example, between Bougainville and Papua NewGuinea). In the social sovereignty framing, the sharing of sovereignty does noteven make sense in that what is recognized as being sovereign are the codes,rules, and structures governing and shaping action in a given space or

11Yiftachel and Yacobi (2002) propose that the Holy City Council of Jerusalem would comprise, and be man-aged equally by, international religious representatives. Following the principle of social sovereignty, we advancethe idea that it would be elected from the local members of the three religious communities.

12Interestingly, a similar model of such self-community management already exists in the Jewish neighborhoodsin Jerusalem, although they are subject to the overall municipality of Jerusalem. These Community Councils areresponsible for the development of the neighborhood’s infrastructure and environment for the benefit of the localresidents, according to their priorities. The rasion d’etre is to work toward shaping a pluralistic community in Jerusa-lem, building its programs around the values of responsibility and involvement in all parts of the community (forfurther exploration in this direction see Hasson 1996).


institutional field. Instead of sharing, overlapment is the coproduction and main-tenance of those paramount codes and rules, which could emerge jointly or evenbe contributed separately by members of the ethno-national communities in agiven space.We are aware that the potential alternatives represented by the Temple

Mount/Haram al-Sharif emerge in the context of different scales of power (asso-ciated, for example, with Israeli state organs such as the Jerusalem municipality)that are not susceptible to direct transformation. However, we contend that suchalternative everyday spatial practices and actions (and their emergent codes andrules) could create new spatial counter-realities (that is, counter to the “reality”created, say, by a new Jewish stronghold in a Palestinian Jerusalem neighbor-hood)—counter-realities that might in the future serve as the basis for furthertransformation and emerging links between them.

The City and Spatial Alternatives

The potential value of micro-alternatives as stepping stones raises the question ofhow spatial alternatives might emerge and operate across varying scales, forms ofpower, and modes of interaction and conflict. The Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif example suggests that cities are notable as locales where these complexfactors in the way different communities confront one another are more visible(Gazit 2010).While mixing between rival communities—especially in the context of deep

power asymmetries—is typically seen as the basis for conflict, through the lens ofthe everyday, notably in cities, we can also see the basis for coexistence. Forexample, cities from Nicosia in Cyprus, to Mostar and Belfast, have proven them-selves well suited to all sorts of ethno-national spatial divisions. They have alsocaptured the imagination of activists, planners, and officials as spaces where vio-lent separations can be mediated differently (Bollen 2007), as the example ofapartheid-era Durban suggests. Local activist organizations, such as the DurbanHousing Action Committee and the Campaign for a Democratic City (also inDurban), not only resisted still extant apartheid policies through such tactics asrent boycotts and protest, but also laid the foundations for nonviolent and non-racial spatial organization and action. They fostered biracial cooperation in re-imaging local, non-apartheid forms of governance and representation bearingon living conditions in specific Durban neighborhoods (Maharaj 1996).Mixed cities can be sites of contention characterized as “conflict urbanism”

(Misselwitz and Rieniets 2006b). Conflict urbanism “produces a city where mod-ernization and adaptation always intertwine with political agendas; a city thatchanges its physical form, infrastructural systems and in an accelerated, at timesalmost daily fashion” (Misselwitz and Rieniets 2006b). We are interested inwhether, how, and when urban spatial transformations are, or can be, shaped byeveryday practices which produce socially sovereign, spatial alternatives.Cities such as Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel-Aviv-Jaffa, Lydda, Ramla, Acre, and Upper

Nazareth are notable as places where Arabs and Jews live in the same locale(Falah 1997). They are especially significant because even though these citiesencapsulate the ethno-national conflict, they also provide an opportunity andspace for reconciliation. This is reflected in the attitudes and perceptions of resi-dents. For example, Falah, Hoy, and Sarker (2000) found that Arabs and Jewsalike perceive coexistence as positive, based on the sharing of urban space,neighborhoods, services, and cultural values. The ranking for positive percep-tions of coexistence among Arab respondents was highest in Haifa (and second-highest for Jewish respondents). Arab respondents were more concerned aboutissues relating to coexistence in cities than states, suggesting the salience of thelocal and need for continued work there (Yiftachel and Yacobi 2003). Historical


frameworks are also significant (Monterescu and Rabinowitz 2007), especially theway in which previous experience with mixed living among older Palestinian ref-ugees produces hopes for a return to more mixture (see Habib 2007:73, 79–80).13 This raises questions about the effects of a history of overlapment and, inreverse, the longer-term effects of continued violent separation. It also serves tounderscore the urgency of exploiting possibilities now.Experience and historical understandings can also be shaped by culture and

what Lefebvre (1996:188) calls “spatializing social activity.” LeVine (2007) consid-ers the import of this for how Palestinians in Jaffa use more mobile forms (per-formances, art protests) to try to remake and reframe the city—what LeVinecalls an “architecture of resistance.” He underscores that Palestinians cannotplan or build, and thus, the most potent spatial power is, as he puts it, a “poeticgeography,” meant to reach both ethno-national audiences.This raises the question of whether public biethnic art and cultural events also

hold potential for spatial alternatives. One of the most notable examples is theHoliday of Holidays festival in the Israeli-Palestinian neighborhood of WadiNisnas, in Haifa. This festival, which takes place every year in December, simulta-neously celebrates Christmas, Ramadan, and Chanukah. The low-income, denselypopulated Palestinian neighborhood is transformed into an outdoor art galleryand colorful fair. As demonstrated by Kallus and Kolodney (2010), the festivalreproduces the asymmetrical power relations between the Jewish and the Arabdwellers of Haifa. Many of the Wadi Nisnas residents complained about theunbalanced utilization of the public space of their neighborhood. Others claimthat it cultivates cultural stigmas that do not represent Arab or Palestinian cul-ture. More importantly, the leading theme of the festival, coexistence, hasbecome a negotiation between the residents and the municipality over plans todevelop the neighborhood and potentially damage its Palestinian character.Despite the “official origins” and disparities of the festival, it is a shared cul-

tural activity within which multiethnic mingling occurs against the backgroundof contested discourses about coexistence. It creates both a geographical spaceand a time in which Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, share—even if onprofoundly unequal terms—not only their mixed city but also their religious tra-ditions and customs. This constitutes a contingent, temporary, spore-like spatialformation, a contact zone (Klein 2001:14; Inayatullah and Blaney 2004:189)which provides an alternative for possible exploitation through, for example, dis-cussions about inequalities and further steps toward more equitable engage-ment.14 Moreover, it illuminates how, as discussed above, fragments ofsovereignty—in time and space—can emerge provisionally and are not limited tothe security practices of state agents. Further research is needed to determinewhether and how the festival shapes imaginaries about coexistence across anentire urban space, and beyond.These examples raise the question of how to think about the role of capitalism

more broadly. Markets and economic relations have been held out as forces forfostering nonviolent, inter-ethnic relations, where space is re-inscribed alongmore integrative, transnational and commercial, rather than separatist political,lines (see, for example, Hozic 2006). We seek to approach capitalism, space, andconflict from a different perspective. We ask whether the “making of newgeographies” (Harvey 2010:181) that continues to mark capitalist power in

13Ironically, and tragically, the Nakba forced these people to leave and thus retain a memory of coexistence thatmight not have existed if they had stayed.

14“Contact zone” refers to a space in which transculturation takes place—where two different cultures meet andinform each other, often in highly asymmetrical ways. Mary Louise Pratt (1992) explains the advantages and disad-vantages that “contact zones” bring. Her view is that a contact zone allows people to interact between cultures andto break the cultural boundary. When a contact zone is established, people can potentially gain a new perspectivebecause they are able to interact with people of a foreign culture.


Israel/Palestine are interventions that, however problematic, can be seen asdepartures from spatial patterns at work in other parts of the occupation andthus create an opening for (positive) alternatives.15 As Harvey (2000:206) arguesregarding spaces of hope in the midst of the spaces of capitalism: “Capitalism isnothing more than a gigantic speculative system… If such fictitious and imagi-nary elements surround us at every turn, then the possibility also exists of ‘grow-ing’ imaginary alternatives within its midst.”Consumption is an especially important domain of respatialization. Jabareen

(2009), for example, looks at the renovation and gentrification of the previouslyimpoverished and neglected German Colony neighborhood in Haifa into a lei-sure place of restaurants and bars. Bourgeois Jews and Palestinian citizens ofIsrael visit it and feel there now exists a unique space of cosmopolitan consump-tion, expression, and interaction for them (Palestinian to Palestinian and Pales-tinian to Israeli).Gentrification justifiably raises concerns about social justice and uneven devel-

opment (Smith 2002), especially where innovation, as suggested by the conceptof urban conflict, might work as a neoliberal mechanism of ethnic exclusion(Monterescu and Fabian 2003). While the capitalist dynamics of consumptionand bourgeoisization associated with class-based gentrification create spaces ofeveryday cosmopolitan consumption, this development should provoke questionsnot only about how such an opening could be framed more inclusively acrossclass differences, but also about the possibilities for peaceful overlapment that isnot based on consumption alone (and which places political questions morecentrally).16 Notably, Amalia Sa’ar (2007) points to joint Palestinian-Jewish activ-ism around gentrification in Jaffa, where the process is politicized and moreproblematized. Even this more critically oriented collaboration is tension-filled,because of its context of deep inequalities in power and resources.In Jerusalem, against a background of heightened xenophobia and spatial divi-

sion into islands of cultural containment and social exclusion, we propose thatsimple acts of consumption can potentially be seen to hold out glimmering,counter-sovereign possibilities.Not only is ethnic-boundary crossing mostly avoided (Misselwitz and Rieniets

2006b), segregation was exacerbated with the second Intifada (Al-Aqsa Intifada2000–2005) and the construction of the Separation Wall—in the name of reduc-ing terrorist attacks originating in the Palestinian territories (Kliot and Charney2006; Gelbman and Keinan 2007) and as a physical mechanism of the de factoterritorial annexation of Palestinian land.17 The Wall has limited social interac-tion in the city between Jews and Arabs and constrained their social and eco-nomic relations, notably by restricting the access of Palestinian laborers to workin the Western neighborhoods. In addition, since the second Intifada, JewishJerusalemites have significantly reduced their business activities in East Jerusalem(Klein 2008:61).Yet, given the spatial proximity between Jewish and Arab neighborhoods,

together with the relatively small size of the local commercial market, one seesPalestinians increasingly going to Israeli shopping malls and centers such asMamilla, Malha Mall, and Pizgat Zeev. These shopping centers are sites wherevaried interaction between Palestinians and Israelis occurs. Significantly, Jewsalso shop in Arab neighborhoods in the Old City and in Beit Safafa.Similarly, service economies in West Jerusalem, accessible to Palestinian

15Similarly the rise of large-scale factories and urban pools of surplus labor were departures in the nineteenthcentury, helping to open up the possibilities of working-class formation.

16Although it entails little direct Israeli-Palestinian interaction, the gentrification and cosmopolization of Ramal-lah also stands out as a notable example (Taraki 2008).

17See http://www.btselem.org/separation_barrier. (Accessed July 8, 2013.)


employees—health, transportation, or construction—are also places whereregular personal exchange takes place between Jews and Arabs (Garb 2006).Even if we need to be very cautious about ignoring the restrictions on mobility

associated, most poignantly, with the Wall, or the continued penetration of Jew-ish settlers into Arab neighborhoods, it would also be categorically cynical tooverlook how critical economic life, especially consumption, is to everyday exis-tence.18 At stake here for spatial alternatives is how daily economic routine—within the context of a capitalist world not necessarily of anyone’s choosing—might reframe the symbolic ethno-national separate coding of these spaces. Thismutual re-coding of spaces as accessible and overlapping (however partial) cancreate spores of transformation toward new counter-sovereignties that couldbegin to shift space-making away from the separate and exclusive post-secondIntifada trajectory.These examples point to ways that both everyday and non-everyday structures

and events might constitute, however haltingly, starting points for the transfor-mative spatial effects we are concerned with. A key question for future analysis ishow these openings—around everyday forces associated with capitalism as well asculture—can be exploited and appropriated for far more transformative and just(and ultimately socially sovereign) alternatives and how they might be articulatedin spaces beyond their original locale.

Spatial Protest and Activism

The possibilities of social agency to open up spatial alternatives and form coun-ter-sovereignties can also be seen in the political protest and campaigns againstspatial repression. In this section, we present examples that illustrate how con-tested spaces might initiate micro-political mobilization that cuts across ethno-nationality, particularly by emphasizing civilian solidarity which opposes officialgovernmental spatial policy. These mobilizations and actions might be taken, innegative terms, as mere resistance to the spatial alterations imposed by Israelis.However, this view fails to recognize two factors that bear on sovereignty as wehave treated it: One is the way that in resistance agents are repeatedly reassert-ing, in a positive sense, codes, spatial meanings, and structures counter to thoseimposed by the Israeli government; and two, the degree to which acts of resis-tance, which depend on new forms of cooperation across ethno-national lines,are recoding the spaces in question as spaces of collaborative resistance.A first illustrative example focuses on the Bedouin Arabs in the Negev. In the

face of attempts to appropriate and transform their land and relocate them incities, a policy that includes the destruction of villages, homes, and fields, theBedouins strive to remain steadfastly on the land, refusing forced urbanization,and continuing their way of life (Yiftachel 2009). Even as the most marginalizedand impoverished group in historic Palestine, Bedouins are struggling to main-tain the existing social sovereign codes and structures they live by in thesespaces. Interestingly, this spatial protest against the demolition of villages byIsraeli authorities involves both local Arab dwellers and a growing number ofJewish activists from the area. Activists who belong to both communities togetherconfront Israeli government officials, rebuild demolished villages, and replantdestroyed fields. These practices not only challenge the Israeli government’s

18There has been long-standing discussion of whether, and to what degree, consumption and its spaces (forexample, malls) can potentially pose an opening for alternatives, which runs back through Marx, Simmel, Benjamin(especially around his Arcades Project), Lefebvre, and de Certeau. We hold to the dialectical view, mentionedabove, expressed strongly in The Communist Manifesto and more recently by Fredrick Jameson (1991:47), who urgedus to understand “late capitalism dialectically, as catastrophe and progress all together.” See Paterson (2006, esp.47); also Miller (2001); Rollason (2002); Slater and Miller (2007); and Dunn (2008).


attempts to recode the Bedouin space, but also constitute a shared Arab-Jewishspace, characterized in civilian solidarity. Inter-ethnic solidarity is seldom a non-problematic relationship and may certainly encapsulate an array of rival interestsand tensions. However, in a sense, it creates an alternative localized polity whichtransgresses the official sovereignty of the Israeli state and even the traditionalcodes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Also of note is the set of protests during the 2000s against the construction of

the Wall in villages such as Budrus, Biddu, Bil’in, and Nil’in. These protests werereflexively understood by organizers and participants as micro in scale—that is,focused on the village level (Pallister-Wilkins 2011).19 The aim has been to pre-vent—through protest—wall construction from destroying the spatial integrityand resources (such as agricultural fields) of the villages. At the same time, thesecumulated actions also counter the Israeli spatial repression policy in the Occu-pied Territories as a whole. The constant interference of the protesters sabotagesthe ongoing construction of the separation wall and, like the example above,not only prevents the Israeli recording, but also establishes a joint Arab-Jewishmobilization across the seams of these specific but linked spaces (the West Bankand Israel).Another form of relevant spatial protest is initiated and documented by the

“Decolonizing Architecture” research and activist group, including the architec-tural theorist Eyal Weizman.20 Recognizing that Israeli settlements and militarybases are among the most excruciating instruments of domination, they suggestusing subversion to speculate on the use of colonial architecture for purposesother than those they were designed for.21 The key principle is to reorient thedestructive potential of the occupation’s built spaces or, put differently, toexploit the negative in order to advance a greater good. Interestingly, the Decol-onizing Architecture project does not aim to present a single, unified architec-tural solution, but rather symbolic “fragments of possibility.” Although theirfocus is on protest and resistance to the Israeli occupation through expressivepractices (for example, writing pacifist graffiti on military posts, organizing socialevents in abandoned IDF military bases, and transforming an Israeli watch towerin Bethlehem in to a bird-watching tower used by Palestinians), they also signal apotential for an alternative, desecuritized political reality through spatial trans-formation (and manipulation). Ultimately, this suggests the possibility of newsovereign codings. As in the Negev and in Budrus, the project brings togetherPalestinian, Israeli, and international activists who collaborate not only to chal-lenge the Israeli colonial regime, but also to produce new spatial organizationand framings.The reframing of spatial arrangements is also appearing around access to

healthcare. Most hospitals and clinics in the Occupied Territories are strugglingwith very limited resources (Eklund 2010), with the harsh Israeli mobility regimein the West Bank gravely affecting the ability of Palestinians to obtain propermedical treatment in the West Bank and in Israel (OCHA 2011).22 The hun-dreds of physical obstructions, dozens of checkpoints, and the separation wall,result in very limited access to medical treatment and sometimes none at all.Under these conditions, it is not surprising that almost any attempt by Israeliand international NGOs to facilitate healthcare to Palestinians in the West Bank

19Interestingly, one of the leading groups of this campaign is a group of Israelis—Anarchists against the Wall—who challenge Israeli government sovereignty beyond the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. See http://www.awalls.org/. (Accessed July 8, 2013.)

20http://www.roulottemagazine.com/?p=234. (Accessed July 8, 2013.)21http://www.decolonizing.ps/site/ (accessed July 8, 2013) and http://arenaofspeculation.org (accessed July 8,

2013.)22To illustrate, according to B’tselem, the Israeli Human Rights organization, between October 2000 and Sep-

tember 2008 66 deaths in the OPT were directly related to delay caused by limited mobility (B’tselem 2008).


involves not only spatial contestation (of separation) but also the creation ofspaces of mobility (Beckmann 2001) within which Israelis and Palestinians con-vene and circulate. For example, Physicians for Human Rights—Israel’s mobileclinic project23 —brings together Israeli and Palestinian health professionals andcivil society actors for weekly cooperative, volunteer medical work in rural Pales-tinian villages and towns. Beyond providing practical options for residents of theOccupied Territories who must contend with restricted access and availability ofmedical services, it also seems to bend the spatial restriction by reversing theexpected direction of movement, with medical caregivers going to patients. Thecreation of “spaces of mobility” inscribes new grooves of movement within andacross material as well as ideational lines of separation, offering alternative coun-ter-sovereign framings of the social purpose of spaces and infrastructures andundermining the Israeli government’s attempts to recode appropriated space(Handel 2010).

Conclusion

This article is concerned with the possibilities for spatial alternatives which chal-lenge the spatial logics laid down by state power, especially as they bear on issuesof boundary formation, territoriality, and coexistence. Of concern are not onlyeveryday forms of individual or small group resistance and spatial-recasting (deCerteau 1984; Hammami 2006a; Parizot 2009), but those alternatives whichmight remake what is understood to be, in Lefebvrian terms, the structure andsignificance of a given space, local in scale [recognizing these are related(Lefebvre 1991)]. We suggest that sovereignty can serve as a productive basis foranalysis of these micro-political contexts when it is viewed through the lens of threeintertwined articulations: fragmented, counter, and social sovereignties. We haveargued that (i) sovereignty can be seen as fragmented (taking multiple, localized,and temporary forms); (ii) the state is not the only producer of fragmentedsovereignty; (iii) one form of fragmentation is counter-sovereignties—opposingclaims as well as approaches to state fragmented sovereignty; and iv) these counter-sovereignties can be articulated in the different uses and codings of specific spacesby those individuals and groups that frame the terms and possibilities of everydaylife in a space, thereby forming what we term social sovereignties.We believe that our approach to nonstate, micro-social process (the politics of

small things) suggests a number of relevant avenues for research across fieldssuch as sociology, geography, international relations, and anthropology. Theseinclude the question of how the interplay of various geographical scales shapes—and is shaped by—alternatives. So, for instance, even in starting with a focuson the micro and local, the co-presence of multiple scales (as in when the localintervention of an NGO refracts back to its global networks) is rapidly visible,producing spillovers, disseminations, distributions, amplifications, and reverbera-tions across scales (Moore 2008).Also relevant is the need for further analysis of how and when forms of agency

focused on and in spaces—especially of contestation—can reset understandingsof, and perspectives on, spaces; how rights, justice, and collaboration across linesshould be inscribed in new spatial figurations (for example, in Budrus, Katzir,and the Negev); and how the spatial inscriptions of capitalism can become sitesfor struggles over the relationship between space and justice, where even smallmoves might constitute the start of counter-appropriations.Finally, further research is needed on the ways that temporality—a central

aspect of how we approach sovereignty—bears on alternatives throughBakhtinian (Bakhtin 1993) carnivals (for example, holiday of holidays) or Lefebvian

23http://www.phr.org.il/default.asp?PageID=25&action=more. (Accessed July 8, 2013.)


festivals, moments, and rhythms (2004); temporary but salient spatial reframing(for example, Decolonizing Architecture); histories and experiences of somethingother than violent separation (for example, pre-1948 diaspora); seasonalities (forexample, cycles of nonviolence); and spaces of encounter and possibilities in cities.Given the current deep and pervasive pessimism, spatial alternatives might

most accurately be viewed as attempts to articulate possibilities for transforma-tion (somewhere between the traps of credulity and hopelessness). This initialexploration gestures toward some provisional, prospective starting points forthinking about modes of strategic expectancy in the context of Israel/Palestine.

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Spatial Alternatives and Counter-Sovereignties in Israel/Palestine

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