Trans-Colonial Urban Space in Palestine: Politics and Development

1. Trans-Colonial Urban Space in Palestine: Politics and Development MahaSamman, PhD Feb. 23, 2013

2. Settler Colonial Framework • The research builds on recent literature on colonial studies • Colonisers have tended to accumulate knowledge and experience on how to produce advanced versions of colonial practices. • A trans-colonial phase developed in this research is a PROCESS which can help the colonised peoples to be actors in shaping their future.

3. Colonial Urban Research • Importance of colonialism in shaping spatial formation • impacting on the political, social, economic, cultural and all aspects of living • The dynamics of the relation between the colonizers and colonized could be identified by dissimilarity, domination and control • What is comparable in these cases? How can one deduce variables that can explain and analyse the cases in the colonial and post-colonial phases?

4. Research structure and sequence of analysis (1) Colonialism (2) Colonial Urban Development (3) Urban Space Post-colonialism Urban Development Space • (6) • Post-colonial policies: • Modernization • Interpolation • Mimicry • Transformation • Rejection (4) Lefebvre Perceived space Conceived space Lived space (5) Perceived variables Conceived variables Lived variables Perceived space Conceived space Lived space (7) Trans-Colonial Urban Development

5. Henri Lefebvre • Lefebvre (1901-1991) was a French intellectual, regarded as one of the most influential theorists in the twentieth century • His theoretical work was developed in responding to political settings and promoted transformation. • From the 1960s he brought space as the primary issue in his major writings. His book The Production of Space, written in 1974 and translated to English in 1991, was described the most important book ever written about the social and historical significance of human spatiality. • The use of Lefebvre's concepts allows the elaboration of a theoretical and empirical dynamics of colonial urban space. • This is done by surfing over the different levels within the theory of production of space using the colonial settler project as the distinctive mode of production. This provides an analytical framework specifically for the re-reading of colonial and post-colonial urban space.

6. The Production of Space • Perceived Space- The spatial practice of a society secretes that society’s space; it propounds and presupposes it, in a dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates it. • Conceived Space- Representations of space, which are tied to the relations of production and to the ‘order’ which those relations impose, and hence to knowledge, to signs, to codes, and to ‘frontal’ relations • Lived Space- Representational spaces: space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of ‘inhabitants’ and ‘users’

7. Variables affecting colonial urban space

8. Perceived colonial urban space: Motive • These variables are interrelated and interconnected and affect each other as they impact on the indigenous people. • Motive (Ideological or economic): • difference in the time-frame- the initial intention of the economic motive is a temporary settling, the ideological motive aims for permanent settling in the colonized space. • The ideological difference between the colonizer and the colonized makes each perceive urban space differently with its own discourse • To the colonizer, ideology promotes an end goal, or an end-view, of how the indigenous space should be transformed to an exclusively colonial space.

9. Motive - Development of "Zionist Ideology" • Herzl wrote about a future Jewish state in a pamphlet published in 1896 named Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). The idea was developed further by Jews in Europe who were discontent with their lives there. • A plan was set at the Basle meeting in 1897, and WZO was initiated, and a political programme was agreed upon. • Other versions of Zionism emerged which converted the idea into a "national" approach and related to "Zion". What is termed Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) as an ancestral homeland. • Many Zionist leaders adopted this approach such as Chaim Weizmann who found it important to form his own separate faction and to break from Herzl

10. Knowledge • In the colonial context, it is the upper level of the political structure of the colonial state that decides on the knowledge that is needed, manifested and marketed for the purpose of its goals or appointed motive • In the case of the settler colonies, knowledge is a tool to legitimate its ideology and to serve power. It is also the necessary step before the transformation of the colonial perceived to the colonial conceived space • The constructed knowledge - was needed to strengthen the "Zionist Ideology" to attract the maximum number of Jews from around the world. • Levels of the constructed knowledge • 1st: to strengthen a Zionist "nationalist" movement on a space. • 2nd: the need for encouraging and convincing Jews about Zionism as a "national movement". (decided on at the Basle conference) • 3rd: developed within the Israeli society itself, in terms of knowledge needed for the Jews and knowledge needed about the Palestinians

11. Power • Colonial projects are based on both military and political power-relationships. • Power is the actual variable that makes and perpetuates the big difference between the colonizer and the colonized. Those Jews who agree with our idea of a State will attach themselves to the Society, which will thereby be authorized to confer and treat with Governments in the name of our people. The Society will thus be acknowledged in its relations with Governments as a State-creating power. This acknowledgement will practically create the State. (Herzl, Der Judenstaat (the Jewish State), 1896). • The first approach rested on empowering the idea. It aimed to strengthen the attachment of individual Jews to Zionism as an ideology. • A second approach rested on building a relation with space. Settling Jews in Palestine was a means to empower the ideology. • The third approach was to strengthen the relations with various governments of powerful countries to get their support, and to achieve world-power alliances

12. Conclusion- Israeli perceived • For more than one hundred years,the five variables of the colonial perceived space have been, and are, acting continuously in an ongoing process. • A stage where all Jews believe in Zionism has not been reached, and there has been some reversal in this aspect • The on-going process of having to encourage all Jews to believe in Zionism and to live in the Israel means: 1- that the belief in this ideology is not a given. It still has to work on it, to construct knowledge, to maintain power, to use violence and new technologies to achieve the goals of Zionism 2- there is a growing criticism of Zionism from within Israeli

13. Conceived colonial urban space: Strategic Planning • The conceived space is related to the intervention, the order and the organization. It is not a product of action, the translation of the perceived space • By strategic planning, aims are set, resources are evaluated, strategies planned and actions are implemented. • We must not imagine the departure of the Jews to be a sudden one. It will be gradual, continuous, and will cover many decades. The poorest will go first to cultivate the soil. In accordance with a preconceived plan, they will construct roads, bridges, railways and telegraph installations; regulate rivers; and build their own dwellings; their labor will create trade, trade will create markets and markets will attract new settlers, for every man will go voluntarily, at his own expense and his own risk. The labor expended on the land will enhance its value, and the Jews will soon perceive that a new and permanent sphere of operation is opening here for that spirit of enterprise which has heretofore met only with hatred and obloquy. (Herzl, from Der Judenstaat (the Jewish State), 1896). • There was an envisioning of the conceived and lived space back in 1896 that could strengthen the perceived space. Ideas of construction, communication and habitation were all put within the plan

14. Conceived colonial urban space: Strategic Planning • Strategic planning:Strategic actions, continuous ongoing strategies, pending strategies • The strategic plans were part of a trial and error process as the whole Zionist project was a new one with new developments. Both war and peace strategies were applied. • Strategic actions:These are actions that were implemented in the past in response to unfavourable conditions in order to initiate new conditions. They were usually turning points which ended a certain phase and represented the start of a new one. • Examples are, Basle Conference in 1897, the Balfour Declaration, 1948 war, The 1967 war, the1978 Camp David peace agreement with Egypt, 1982 Lebanon War, the Oslo agreement of 1993, Camp David 2000 Peace Talks, War on Gaza in 2008-9

15. Strategic Planning- Continuous ongoing strategies - "unfinished business": • These are strategies which have not yet been completely fulfilled, the outcomes of which have been partial due to the enormity of tasks and the length of time needed to implement them. • Settling Jews in Palestine- This began in the 1890s and still on-going today • Building settlements - Parallel to both war and peace negotiation strategies, settlement building has been an on-going process • Uprooting of the indigenous people- aimed at displacing Palestinians with Jewish immigrants.

16. Conceived colonial urban space: Conclusion • When strategic planning, land acquisition, spatial planning, military actions and sovereignty are all used by the colonizer to work upon the indigenous space, urban space becomes dominated by the spatial ideas of the colonial power. • While knowledge and power prepared the grounds for achieving the authority, the violent strategic acts especially the war of 1967 led to authority over the WB • Technology is a synergist variable that intersects with all the variables of the perceived, conceived and lived spaces to help achieve a lived space • The strategic planning, land acquisition, spatial planning, and military actions - show that their weight and impact in the WB have been, and are, enormous. • Reaching the state of sovereignty was a result of an overall progression towards achieving an Israeli conceived space • The five variables of the conceived space are continuous and often increase in intensity, an act that is perceived essential for the existence of the State of Israel.

17. Lived space under colonial rule: Occupation of Space, Demography, Economic Structure, Social Structure, and Culture • Lived space is the combination of space, the time of living and of appropriating. It is a goal of the colonizer after having realized a perceived and a conceived space. • The impact of the Israeli perceived and conceived spaces on the lived space of the Palestinians is enormous especially after the Peace Process. • Occupation of space is the variable that actually affects the daily lives of the colonizers and consequently the colonized. The Israelis put enormous efforts to achieve a successful conceived space. • The space of the WB has become divided by force, for two peoples, the settlers and the indigenous Palestinian people. • Palestinians have compressed space but need an expanded time to move within it. • The settlers on the other hand have an expanded space but need a compressed time to move within, from and to it.

18. Lived space under colonial rule: Conclusion • The five variables of the lived space under colonial rule, occupation of space, demography, economic structure, social structure and culture, are the major variables which result in the transformation of dominated space into controlled space when appropriated by the colonizerat the expense of the indigenous, this leads to more control over that space, and people. • The"space"of the West Bankis characterized by segregation and fragmentation, boundary construction, and surveillance in multi-dimensions and levels • This divides the Palestinian space into complicated forms with a complete division and control from all sides. • Most water resources are under Israeli control in C areas. The vertical policies are also imposed overground where all the air over the West Bank is controlled by Israel.

19. Lived space under colonial rule: Conclusion • The"people" of the West Bank of each urban area are confined and isolated from other areas • The features that characterize the space of the West Bank have deeply affected the daily lived space of the people. Movement for any Palestinian is not an easy thing. It is not a means to reach a place; rather it has become an end in itself. • The "time"of the West Bank is also enormously affected. Every new dynamic, change and development of the Israeli policies on space and people affects "time" in terms of who gains and who loses it • Each temporary phase of time is needed to feed into and towards a permanency that would become in the end an objective to be achieved and not a starting point; a clear contrast with the case of Palestinians

20. POST-COLONIAL URBAN POLICIES • One of the important aspects is how to deal with post-colonial space. This space is contradictory; it reminds the indigenous population of a colonial past. • It reflects the power of the colonial state and the weakness of the colonized. It was built and constructed according to the ideologies of the colonial state. • For the indigenous people , this space should reflect a national present and a promising future • What are the priorities, and how do they manifest themselves? What does the new post-colonial geography look like? • Post Colonial Policies: • Modernization, • Interpolation, • Mimicry, • Transformation, • Rejection

21. Mimicry • Mimicry is concerned with appearances and not the essence of colonial residues (reality) itself. • Within the concept of mimicry an indigenous elite uses the same dominant colonial discourse against the indigenous people itself. • It maintains the strategic and existing spatial structure that was in the colonial era • the difference of race was replaced by class • landscape retained its colonial image through the persisting colonial regulations, and where the upper class(es) occupied the privileged spaces that were previously occupied by the colonizers; the planners who drew the plans in many cases were foreigners from the previous colonial state

22. TRANS-COLONIALISM AND NEUTRALISATION, TRANSFORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT • The criticism to the policies is that they did not deal with the source of the colonial problem. They did not remedy the discrepancies from the source, as they avoided addressing the root causes and their comprehensive effects on the whole urban context and fabric. • Modernizationsidesteps the spatial composition, and does not address the impact of the colonial perceived, conceived or lived spaces • Interpolation, although an attitude of the indigenous, maintains the colonial medium rather than an indigenous. Interpolation maintains the colonial lived and perceived spaces, and moves within the conceived space. It is based on the criticism and transformation of the colonial conceived space and the criticism of the variables that transform the perceived into the lived space.

23. TRANS-COLONIALISM AND NEUTRALISATION, TRANSFORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT • Mimicrymaintains all three colonialperceived, conceived and lived spaces albeit by another agency of power • Rejection, a policy that rejects all that is colonial, does not deal with the conceived and lived colonial spaces but rejects them due to an over-emphasized perceived space • Transformation, a policy that deals with the conceived and lived colonial spaces, does not necessarily address the perceived. Transformation needs a conscious perception of where it leads to; it needs to be managed, led and directed • These post-colonial policies strategically do not counter the structures of dominance and control within the perceived, conceived and lived colonial spaces

24. A trans-colonial stage • A trans-colonial stage involves the methodologies of how to deal with the past, to use the present and plan for the future, resisting modes of previous or possible subsequent dominance and control by maintaining balanced and interactive modes of power within the state and society of the decolonised situation. • It is a new phase that can lead to a stage when the indigenous people have control of the perceived, conceived and lived spaces. Therefore people would begin to produce their own time on their place by transforming and developing their own urban space • Trans-colonial is 'beyond, surpassing, [and] transcending’the colonial and the domination and control • In terms of urban development, a trans-colonial stage is when the indigenous people control and shape space rather than being controlled and shaped by space.

25. A trans-colonial stage In spatial terms, the trans-colonial urban development entails , it is a process where: • Neutralizationis the "action of counterbalancing, counteracting, or offsetting something”, declaring a place or party neutral, acts in urban ways to resist the negative aspects of colonization from the past. • Transformation is a strategy of intervention to functionally and morphologically change the form, characteristics and meaning of the spatial order, aims to reinstall indigenous functions and meanings • Developmentis a strategy of progress that looks towards a future taking into consideration existing needs and aspects for a successful, sustainable and beneficial spatial urban development.

26. A trans-colonial process

27. A trans-colonial stage

28. A trans-colonial stage

29. THE PRODUCTION OF PALESTINIAN TRANS-COLONIALISM • A trans-colonial stage aims at reaching the ability of the indigenous people to control the perceived, conceived and lived spaces within a balanced relation amongst the three. • This balance is maintained within a cyclical relation of power in a way that each is strong yet dependent on and accountable to the other two • The resulting power relation is one space that permeates through the others to produce another level of consolidated combined strength • Power possessed by the representatives of the perceived, conceived and lived spaces needs to reach a level where none are controlled or dominated by the other

30. Path towards TRANS-COLONIALISM • A trans-colonial perceived space begins on the level of the consciousness. • Here the Palestinian case has a specific feature of two forms of post-colonial situations existing under the colonial, as well as about half of the Palestinians living abroad • The Gaza Strip, after the Israeli colonial contraction in 2006, has provided a rare case in which the colonized have internal control over the perceived and conceived spaces • The West Bank on the other hand is almost completely under Israeli control affecting the Palestinian people’s lives in every way through various means of manifesting the Zionist conceived space. These include roadblocks, walls, broken up land into areas A, B, C and East Jerusalem, and being isolated from neighbouring Arab states

31. Path towards TRANS-COLONIALISM • The West Bank thus provides another rare case which has qualities of a neocolonial phase yet is still under colonial control on the land itself. • Both conditions may be producing specific spaces of consciousness but nevertheless could be used to move towards a potential trans-colonial future • The WB being a neocolonial within colonial and the Gaza Strip being a post-neocolonial within the colonial suggests that these stages may already be running their course. • It may possibly give way to a Palestinian trans-colonial phase. It follows that time could be used to generate a process of determined action to develop this state of being • Achieving the above would require a dynamic and globally interactive body capable of not only representing all Palestinians, but collaborating with regional and international support groups as well as capitalizing on alliances with states that already recognize the State of Palestine

32. Path towards TRANS-COLONIALISM • On the conceived level power is an objective infused in all the other variables. The more the other variables are strengthened the more power the Palestinians could acquire, especially by more compatibly allied with other regional and international states • For example, the Gaza Strip could open up towards the region through Egypt particularly after the fall of its former president Husni Mubarak’s regime • The WB on the other hand, being land locked and currently surrounded from all sides by Israeli forces, does not have such an access to neighbouring countries. It has numerous institutions which could develop in preparation for future phases

33. Path towards TRANS-COLONIALISM • External solidarity and support for the Palestinians could take a more structured and unified form so that effort is consolidated and unified at specific times and in different geographical locations worldwide • Also activities could be developed and implemented with focus at a particular time on a particular issue or location in the OPT • Therefore, both the Palestinians expatriate communities as well as international supporters would have a larger role in implementing strategies to pressure respective governments – particularly with those having regional and international clout • The activities would be both internally and externally simultaneously utilizing the latest technologies for coordination and mobilization, and media and press would be used to cover and document the events

34. Conclusion • The impact of the cyclical relation on the trans-colonial urban space means that the notion it represents could transcend spatial, human and temporal constrains • Under the policies extracted from the trans-colonial constitution, particular spaces could have global, international, regional and local significance while maintaining the balanced relation under any one scale • Although the trans-colonial concept could be applied to other colonized, post-colonial or neocolonial cases, when addressing the balanced relation, the specificity of the place should be examined

35. Conclusion • At a national level, the balanced relation of the trans-colonial urban space in Palestine controlled by Palestinian people without a dominated and controlled relation by any specific group may evolve in a form of a matrix of both vertical and horizontal interactive developments • On the district scale, urban space would be transformed from the colonial to the indigenous using various urban strategies. Specific to the circumstances they would maintain the balanced relation in terms of the spatial development and the allocation of spaces to Palestinians • A pivotal hub for generating action could be Jerusalem. Its significance on various levels and its importance to the three religions enable it to be a focal point homogenizing place and space • Thus urban space of Jerusalem could generate and maintain the cyclical rather than the linear time dynamic. It is informative, responsive, and generative giving clarity to the Palestinian path

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