Abstract
In a bid to Judaize the Palestinian space, Israel has imposed through its planning policies and practices different temporal structures and narratives of ruinations on Palestinian cities inside its 1948 borders. These different forms of ruins have created temporal segregation in adjacent spaces. This paper provides a temporal analysis of planning policies and practices imposed on Jaffa, a Palestinian city emptied of the bulk of its residents and turned after the 1948 war into a city of ruins. It provides an outline of Jaffa’s temporal map, which illustrates the varying temporalities that had been imposed by the municipality and governmental bodies on the city’s various quarters. Special attention is given to one section of Al-‘Ajami district—Suknet Al-Huresh/the Maronite Quarter which has taken a particular trajectory. To track these changes a micro and macro geography methods have been employed: a study of a specific house as well as an analysis of local urban plans and journalistic archives has been undertaken. The main findings show that neoliberal governmentality has enabled individual settlers’ control over time and space. While such a control maybe blatant in expanding settler colonialism’s frontiers, this article illustrates how it is assumed in a ‘normative setting’. Moreover, it shows how colonizers, as agents, create through neoliberal tools a linear temporality of terra sine tempore and contribute to the reproduction of the settler colonial structure. Yet, it is found that Palestinian inhabitants continued to perceive the space beyond such temporal presentations.
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Notes
In June 1948, the Ministerial Abandoned Property Committee was established, which split responsibility for state-appropriated Arab land between the Finance Ministry and the Agricultural Ministry (Forman and Kedar 2004: 813).
In this respect, Mazawi and Makhoul (1991: 66) describe how its polluted, neglected and ruined surroundings turned Al-‘Ajami into a slum, which best served as a film location for depicting war zones, as used in the American movie ‘The Delta Force’ (1986). In a symbolic restitutive act, Kamal Ja’fari, a Palestinian filmmaker, collected scenes from Israeli and international commercial movies from the 1960s–1980s that featured Al-‘Ajami, erased the actors from the chosen scenes, and made a documentary exhibiting the ruins of the place (2015).
The Municipal Historical Archives n.d. Retrieved from: tel-aviv.millenium.org.il/The + Municipal + Historical + Archives.htm.
Both newspapers were mapped according to the following terms: the street names (in Hebrew) “Shahaf,” “Tsedef,” “Dolphin,” “Maronite neighborhood,” and some individual names that later became associated with this space, such as the architect “Pivco”. The choice of these Hebrew keywords followed a pilot study that included various relevant terms, in Arabic and Hebrew.
According to various articles in Al-defaa’, published in 1935, the Jaffa municipality built King Faisal Road (today named Yehuda Hayamit Street), which connects the city with the port and passes through Suknet Al-Huresh. These articles discuss the land confiscations conducted at the time, and the compensation paid to the inhabitants, as well as the discovery of archeological artifacts. Beyond these maps and technical data, very little documentation survived. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that Al-defaa’ was closed during the Palestinian revolt (during 1937–1939) by the British authorities for its political line, although, in fact, it appeared under various names, including Al-Jihad and Al-Hayat.
Shashun-‘Ezir, S. (April 10, 2014). ‘How much Jaffa, How much?’ Retrieved from: www.calcalist.co.il/real_estate/articles/0,7340,L-3401267,00.html (in Hebrew).
Brashi Mfn, E. (October 9, 2017). ‘That's How We Celebrated Ilan Pivko's 70th Birthday.’ Retrieved from: home.walla.co.il/item/3101099 (in Hebrew).
Examples from interviews with Tirosh’s son: Bahour Nir, Diana (February 17, 2011). “My father always closed deals with a handshake, explaining to me: ‘If the partner is good [you] do not need a contract" (retrieved from: www.calcalist.co.il/local/articles/0,7340,L-3508429,00.html); Uri, A. (September 16, 2010). ‘Serge and the art of housekeeping’ (retrieved from: www.yaffo.co.il/article_k.asp?id=1554) (both texts in Hebrew).
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Sa’di-Ibraheem, Y. Settler colonial temporalities, ruinations and neoliberal urban renewal: the case of Suknet Al-Huresh in Jaffa. GeoJournal 87, 661–675 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10279-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10279-0