RECONFIGURING THE “MIXED TOWN”: URBAN TRANSFORMATIONS OF ETHNONATIONAL RELATIONS IN PALESTINE AND ISRAEL

Abstract

Identifying ethnonational mixed towns as an analytical and comparative category, we show how in Palestine and Israel such towns underwent six major historical transformations and how their history under Ottoman, British, and Israeli rule displays an emergent and bifurcated sociospatial configuration. On one level, they personify the political conflict over space and identity as it evolved from millet -based confessional communities to modernist nation-based collectives shaped by milestones of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. On another level, they form political and cultural arenas that defy the binary logic of ethnonationalism and urban colonialism. Avoiding the restrictive Manichaean conceptualizations of the colonial, the divided, and the dual city, we show how such towns embody segregation and exclusion while actively resisting them. Scrutinizing demographic diversification, cultural expansion, intercommunal relations, and the secularizing, modernizing effect urbanity has had in the region, our analysis, which emphasizes relationality, reconfigures the sociospatial history of Jewish–Arab mixed towns.

Full text

Int. J. Middle East Stud. 40 (2008), 226a. Printed in the United States of America
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743808080811
Dan Rabinowitz and Daniel Monterescu
RECONFIGURING THE “MIXED TOWN”: URBAN
TRANSFORMATIONS OF ETHNONATIONAL
RELATIONS IN PALESTINE AND ISRAEL
Identifying ethnonational mixed towns as an analytical and comparative category, we show how
in Palestine and Israel such towns underwent six major historical transformations and how their
history under Ottoman, British, and Israeli rule displays an emergent and bifurcated sociospa-
tial configuration. On one level, they personify the political conflict over space and identity
as it evolved from millet-based confessional communities to modernist nation-based collectives
shaped by milestones of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. On another level, they form political and
cultural arenas that defy the binary logic of ethnonationalism and urban colonialism. Avoiding the
restrictive Manichaean conceptualizations of the colonial, the divided, and the dual city, we show
how such towns embody segregation and exclusion while actively resisting them. Scrutinizing
demographic diversification, cultural expansion, intercommunal relations, and the secularizing,
modernizing effect urbanity has had in the region, our analysis, which emphasizes relationality,
reconfigures the sociospatial history of Jewish–Arab mixed towns.
© 2008 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/08 $15.00
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