Jerusalem is a city mired in spatial conflict
Whose Right to Jerusalem?
GILLAD ROSEN and ANNE B. SHLAY
Abstract Jerusalem is a city mired in spatial conflict. Its contested spaces represent deep conflicts among groups that vary by national identity, religion, religiosity and gender. The omnipresent nature of these conflicts provides an opportunity to look at Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the right to the city (RTC). The RTC has been adopted and celebrated as a political tool for positive change, enabling communities to take control of space. Based on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews, this article explores the complexity of the RTC principles and examines three urban battlefields in Jerusalem — Bar-Ilan Street, the Kotel and the Orient House. The RTC is a powerful idea, providing the opportunity to examine people’s everyday activities within the context of how space can be used to support their lives. Yet Jerusalem’s myriad divisions produce claims by different groups to different parts of the city. In Jerusalem, the RTC is not a clear vision but a kaleidoscope of rights that produces a fragmented landscape within a religious and ethno-national context governed by the nation state — Israel. The growth of cultural and ethnic diversity in urban areas may limit the possibility for a unified RTC to emerge in an urban sea of demands framed by difference. Space-based cultural conflict exemplifies urban divisions and exacerbates claims to ‘my Jerusalem’, not ‘our Jerusalem’. Identity-based claims to the RTC appear to work against, not for, a universalistic RTC.
Introduction The role of community participation is a central focus in urban scholarship (Martin, 2003; Shlay and Whitman, 2006; Ron and Cohen-Blankshtain, 2011). Concerned with the all-encompassing nature of neoliberal politics, many are now asking how popular participation and more vocal community activities can be used to mitigate some of the negative effects of austerity policies and government cutbacks (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Harvey 2003; Kohl, 2003; Fernandes, 2007). State protection of the free market has pitted the rights of the many against the rights of the few, as evidenced by the myriad protests that have taken place across the globe (Mayer, 2006; 2009; Marcuse, 2009,). Given the backdrop of the rising wave of neoliberalism, it is no wonder that those concerned with escalating inequality have embraced Henri Lefebvre’s right to the city (RTC), a relatively new political concept on the urban scene (McCann, 2002; Purcell, 2002; Staeheli and Dowler, 2002; Harvey, 2003; Mitchell, 2003; Marcuse, 2009; Nagle, 2009; Weinstein and Xuefei, 2009; Parnell and Pieterse, 2010; Carpio et al., 2011; Kipfer et al., 2012).
The RTC is a direct challenge to conventional property rights (Purcell, 2002; 2003; Mitchell, 2003). It argues for democratizing development decisions, by having citizens
This research was supported by a Temple University Summer Fellowship. We are grateful to the numerous respondents for their willingness to speak with us, to Emma Giloth for assistance with our interviews and to several anonymous IJURR reviewers.
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Volume 38.3 May 2014 935–50 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research DOI:10.1111/1468-2427.12093
© 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA
take power over the production of space. Within this framework, urban citizenry is not rooted in political nationality but in local residency. Originating in Lefebvre’s (1976; 1991; 1996) concern with class segregation and the displacement of poor immigrants and the working class to the Parisian suburbs during the 1960s, the RTC redefines local political membership, challenges capitalistic logic and alters residents’ vision on control over spatial production. Decisions regarding land use must not be made by landowners or elites, but rather by the people most directly affected by them (Purcell, 2002).
The RTC is not a call for local protest to be removed from broader national and international struggles for democracy, economic change and redistribution. Following Marxist theory, control over space is akin to control over the workplace. Like labor organizing, movements for democratic control over land-use activities and the right to appropriate space are connected to broader political strategies because land-use control (in common with control over the labor process) is intrinsic to the human condition (Harvey, 1982; Lefebvre, 1991; Purcell, 2003). Class struggle and revolution are the ultimate solution to the inherent conflict between those who control land use and land users, and those who control the labor process and laborers. In the case of space where land users are largely urban, the right to control space becomes the RTC. It is not a slogan, but part of a political movement for social, political and economic transformation.
But what is this RTC when needs are not rooted in economic and social inequality? What happens when articulated needs are not germane to households’ social and physical reproduction but are relevant to social and cultural reproduction? Can the RTC include concepts of culture and identity as features of democratic place-making? In particular, how are rights negotiated in situations where there exist competing claims to citizenry by groups united by diverse cultural elements and identities? Cultural diversity adds complexity to the RTC with globalization and its attendant intensification of immigration. Whose rights are more ‘right’ in global cities such as London, Paris or Los Angeles, where difference rather than similarity is the standard of urban residency? Cultural and ethnic differentiation adds a dilemma to implementing a right to the (global) city (Harvey, 2003; Purcell, 2003; Fenster, 2005). Equally challenging is applying the RTC to divided cities — where socio-spatial divisions are starkest. Broader geopolitical conflicts are largely characterized by hostile struggles to control space (Bollens, 1998; 2012; Kliot and Mansfeld, 1999; Silver, 2010). Despite differences in their histories and the nature of their conflicts, these divided cities have important similarities such as multi-layered divisions between social groups (e.g. national, ethnic, economic) and sovereignty disputes in which equally valid yet diametrically opposed positions are voiced (Kotek, 1999). Recently the idea that the RTC concept could be applied to the context of divided cites has been postulated (Khamaisi, 2007; Nagle, 2009), but has not been sufficiently explored.
Jerusalem is mired in spatially manifested conflict (Friedland and Hecht, 2000; Klein, 2004; Gazit, 2010; Shlay and Rosen, 2010). It is dually claimed as the capital of the state of Israel and as the future capital of a would-be Palestinian state. Jerusalem is a battleground for those who live within it and for many others around the world who contest its boundaries (Hasson, 2010; Shlay and Rosen, 2010). It is consumed by spatial conflicts over landownership, resource distribution and neighborhood identity. These seemingly irresolvable conflicts are between different groups that vary by national identity, religion, religiosity, gender and sexual identity. Power to control the use of space, and thus to control the everyday experiences of Jerusalem’s residents, represents the power to permit or deny expression of identity. These conflicts — that thwart social expression and coerce behavior — are in part what led Lefebvre to call for the RTC.
Conflicts exist in every city although they may not overtly manifest themselves. Racial and class segregation, neighborhoods suffering from disinvestment, rich and poor suburbs existing side by side, newly rebuilt downtowns glittering above undeveloped areas — all wreak conflict between social groups. However, few cities trump Jerusalem as a site for overt conflict over space. Jerusalem reveals a series of conflicts — among many rival groups (national, ethnic and religious) at multiple sites across the city, but also at differing levels and intensity of state intervention. Another issue concerns the potential
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International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38.3 © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited
gap between the appeal of the RTC as an idea promoting greater participation and equality, and its implementation (that might advance anti-democratic values and spatial practices, e.g. increased authoritarianism, inequality and exclusion). In other words, the translation of a right (or a perceived right) to political change into spatial form is not always straightforward and might be perverted from its original objective.
To assess and analyze the various expressions of the RTC, we focus on three Jerusalem-based case studies. The first examines the struggle over Bar-Ilan Street, a site of cultural and ideological conflict between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews over its use during Shabbat. This location has come to represent a profound division between the groups, reflecting each side’s passions, visions and needs over the image and identity of the road and the city as a whole. The second case is the clash over the Kotel (the remaining portion of the Western Wall of the Second Temple, returned to Jewish control after the 1967 Arab–Israeli war). A major source of ethno-national and religious conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, it is also a site of conflict framed by gender and Judaism (i.e. between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, and between men and women). The third case relates to the Orient House, longtime home of the eminent Husseini family, former headquarters for the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Jerusalem, symbol of demands for a Palestinian state, and closed by the Israeli government during the second intifada. Located in East Jerusalem (around the corner from the famous American Colony Hotel), this case study represents the classic political fault line of the city — the ethno-national divide. The Orient…
