'You cannot really live (or die) here’: ongoing struggles over cemeteries and housing in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 1957-2020
In the summer of 2020, protests erupted in Jaffa against a plan to build a homeless shelter on the site of the ancient Al-Isaaf Muslim cemetery, and in the following year, the community mobilized to protest a wave of housing demolitions. These were the latest in a long line of actions by the Muslim community opposing the sale and demolition of Muslim cemeteries and fighting to remain in their homes in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. This paper maps these struggles over everyday spaces of living and dying from the 1950s to the present day and investigates how activists recently gained tangible achievements by framing their protests as an urban citizenship mobilization. The aim of the paper is twofold: it seeks to demonstrate the inter connections between the history of colonialism, partition, new state formation, and contemporary urban conflict; and to theorize the role of the built environment that facilitates daily life, rituals, and mourning, in shaping urban citizenship under post/coloniality. The paper builds on a participatory ‘walk-along’ ethnography, interviews with community leaders and activists, as well as archival tracing of court rulings, newspaper reports, and spatial plans. Utilizing this framework, it will show how activists invoked and reinterpreted the right-to-the-city ideas; deploying creative spatial performances and appealing to municipal governance to demand a deeper geo-temporal right-to-the-city that encompasses its religious and historical dimensions.
Date: 29 October 2024, 14:15 (Tuesday, 3rd week, Michaelmas 2024)
Venue: St Anne's College, Woodstock Road OX2 6HS
Venue Details: Seminar Room 5
Speaker: Dr Michal Huss (University of Manchester)
Organising department: Oxford School of Global and Area Studies
Organisers: Dr Davidi Borabeck (University of Oxford), Professor Yaacov Yadgar
Organiser contact email address: charlotte.guillain@area.ox.ac.uk
Hosts: Dr Davidi Borabeck (University of Oxford), Professor Yaacov Yadgar
Part of: Israel Studies Seminar
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Charlotte Guillain