Conclusions

After talking to men who have migrated to live in Ramallah about their relationships with their families and neighbours, what did I find out this summer?

1. Extended families and distant neighbours
When people move to Ramallah they maintain good relationships with their families in their place of origin. However, few migrants know their neighbours in Ramallah very well. This creates a binary between family (spatially distant, socially close) and neighbours (spatially close, socially distant). Social relations become stretched across space. Further research might explore women and children’s social relations, since they may not conform to this pattern.

2. Rethinking the city

Ramallah is currently thought about as a bounded space in various ways (e.g. Bantustan, enclave, bubble). Ramallah is the political and economic centre, and thus quite different from other Palestinian cities. However, it is also connected with those cities and villages through the lives of migrants. The movement of people, money, knowledge, and goods (esp. food) between Ramallah and other parts of the West Bank (e.g. through weekly visits, telephone calls, financial transfers) suggests that the city can be thought of as a series of emotional, social, economic and political networks that stretch across the West Bank. The city is thus not just buildings and infrastructure, but also people.

3. Political economy and affective atmospheres

Migrants experiences of Ramallah must be understood in the context of changing political and economic relations. They must also be understood in relation to the atmosphere of the city. Many research participants talked about an atmosphere of ‘freedom’. For different people this meant: 1) freedom from familial & social obligations; 2) freedom to make money; 3) freedom from occupation (although these are all interlinked). This atmosphere is actively produced in various ways by the Authority, the municipalities and by residents themselves. In addition to the political and economic factors that make Ramallah distinct, this atmosphere also defines Ramallah. Further research on this issue is necessary.

And with that, another trip comes to a close.

Ramadan

Ramadan, the Holy Month, began a few days ago. In preparation brightly coloured lights had been appearing outside toys stores since last weekend. A number of houses in the neighbourhood also have an array of fairy lights, many in the shape of crescent moons and stars, attached to exterior walls and roofs.

One of the most interesting things about Ramadan, is the way in which it changes time and space for an entire month. The city is transformed during the day, as food vendors shut down (some use the time to conduct renovations), and fewer people walk around – not surprising given that many are neither eating nor drinking during daylight hours. [I should actually say most of the city is transformed. I went to the Ramallah municipality – a ‘Christian municipality’ even though I presume many of the staff are now Muslim – and was promptly served tea at 10 o’clock in the morning. The restaurants in that area are also open during the day, although people eat and drink inside rather than on the patios). Later in the afternoon, there were fewer services running into town, and at sunset (iftar – the breaking of the fast), the streets become almost totally deserted, until people start going to the mosque for the prayer one hour after sunset. On the first day of Ramadan, so many people were going to my local mosque in Umm Alshariyat, that some literally had to pray in the street. After prayers many presumably return home to watch the Ramadan soap operas (Bab el Hara is in its 5th and final season now). Others walk around the neighbourhood. It seems that each night a group of men jog around around my neighbourhood, while singing. I can’t make out what their song is about. Unable to sleep last night, I also heard the drums beating notice – at 3am – to tell people to eat before the next day’s fast begins.

For many the day becomes night and visa versa, ensuring that while the body cannot eat and drink it remains asleep for many hours. However, even for those of us who are not fasting, time changes. The clocks have been put back an hour – reverting to ‘winter time’ in the middle of summer (a whole month earlier than they normally would). While many recognize that this makes fasting a little easier, it has also led to a great deal of confusion. This is something that has just been done in the West Bank. We are now one hour behind Israeli time. Can Palestinians living in East Jerusalem travel to Ramallah and arrive at the same time they left? When they are in East Jerusalem and beholden to the power of the Israeli state, do they live two times simultaneously? The settler-colonists in Psagot that I can see living on top of the nearby mountaintop are living in a different time, even as these exist in an adjacent space.

Johannes Fabian talks about how colonial regimes consign the colonized to a different time, as part of discourses and practices that promote the modernity of the colonizer at the expense of the ‘backwards’ indigenes, who belong to another time. (These ideas then underpin various ideas around ‘development’ among other things). But the multiple chronologies that came into being here on the first day of Ramadan are something different. Apparently it is Salem Fayyad (Palestinian PM) and the PLO that has the power to change time in this way. Thus this is a form of indigenous biopolitics – self-governance – highlighting that the colonized also participate in making their own temporal experiences. And it is also quite mundane. While I am certainly experiencing different ways (temporalities) of existing in the world simultaneously, for most people here the time change makes easier the task of sustaining bodies when particular (religiously inspired) conditions are placed on those bodies.  

p.s. Talking of bodies, I have come into contact more than once – in communal taxis – with some very sweaty, odorous bodies since Ramadan started. While the weather has been hot – as usual – I don’t remember there being a prohibition of bathing. I wonder if (a) some areas are experiencing water shortages; or (b) fasting increases sweating.

Methodological limitations

I now have a little over 2 weeks left in my field visit, and hence have started to feel a sense of heightened urgency to get work done. This temporality – not getting much done explicitly at the beginning of the trip, then rushing to get lots of ‘data’ towards the end – is quite familiar to me. It was certainly the basic pattern of my two previous visits here in 2006 and 2007. In some ways the early weeks can be frustrating, because it doesn’t seem like you’re doing much. However, I try to remind myself that these weeks are important too – both in terms of orientating oneself to the context one finds oneself in, and also ‘presencing’ oneself in that context: becoming known, familiar, and hence (hopefully) becoming less unknown/threatening/strange.

This act of ‘presencing’ oneself in the space of research has been particularly important this summer, because my primary sampling strategy – snowball sampling – has to all intents and purposes not worked. Snowball sampling, which I intended to use to generate interview participants, involves getting to know a few people, and then using their social networks to generate further research participants. In more concrete terms and in the context of my research, this would involve interviewing people, and then asking if they know other people who might be able and willing to help with my study. This is a useful method in contexts where a researcher doesn’t know many people themselves, and where time (and particularly the time to establish relations of trust) is limited. It can also give a sense of what social networks exist in a particular place and how they are maintained.

This method worked well in my previous project because the social networks were quite dense in the locality where I conducted research. However, in Umm alshariya, this method doesn’t have the same efficacy. While I was hoping – perhaps naively, perhaps generalizing too much from my previous research – that even in ‘migrant neighbourhoods’ some reasonably durable social ties would exist, this doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, the people I have talked to celebrate the fact that they are free from social ties and obligations. They embrace – to a certain extent – a more anonymous lifestyle where one doesn’t interfere with ones neighbours, and they treat you in a similar way.

Simply put, the sampling method I have chosen is inappropriate for the social practices and spaces that I wish to study. In this situation, I have had to rely on my own ability to ‘make relations’, which is harder and takes longer. Thankfully my ‘presencing’ is paying some dividends in this regard, and thus revealing the value of those early weeks where it seems like nothing much is happening.

Imagin(in)g Palestinian urban futures

Haaretz reports that the building boom in Ramallah symbolizes growth in the West Bank. While I would argue that Ramallah's growth is happening largely in lieu of growth elsewhere in the West Bank, it is interesting to examine some of these development projects such as Al Reehan, Al Ghadeer, and perhaps the most talked about, Rawabi.

Rawabi is a new town, currently being built a few miles north of Ramallah. It's really interesting to unpack the ways in which Palestinian space, urban life, family, economic activity and ultimately futures are being imagined by those responsible for this project (and its website). While a friend is currently researching this project in detail, I thought I'd post this picture to give a flavour of the new urban subjects being co-produced for/by/with this space. 

Notes from S’s visit.

S. has now left. Here are a few retrospective thoughts from the two weeks she was here:

• On the first night S. was here, we went to see Boney M play the Ramallah Cultural Palace (an awesome gig btw). A couple of days later we went to see a reggae concert at a local bar, and the next evening we had dinner at a popular local restaurant. By this point, it seemed like we knew or recognized half the people in the restaurant. This definitely gave me the sense that Ramallah is starting to resemble Amman: a limited social scene where an elite few constantly search for and inhabit the ‘next’ restaurant/bar/event, speaking to see and seeing more or less the same people.
• Travelling around the West Bank, the extensiveness of Israeli colonialisation is (still) staggering. Bantustanization (the division and fragmentation of Palestinian space) is a ‘permanent solution’, regardless of which variety of state – if any – emerges in the next few years. [I don’t conceive of ‘permanency’ in this context as either static or eternal, rather obdurate and enduring].
• Birzeit Old City has been extensively renovated since my last visit in 2007. I should have an opportunity to write more about this later in the month.
• We visited Al-Khalil [Hebron], which has changed a great deal since my previous visit in 2005. It’s much less tense. Businesses have opened in the Old City again. The colonies built on top of Palestinian houses in the heart of the city remain, as does the military presence protecting them. This situation will not endure.
• Also in Al-Khalil, Jawwal – the Palestinian mobile phone company – has built a series of fountains in the middle of roundabouts. Their billboards and posters are all over the West Bank. They sponsor festivals and community projects. We are witnessing the Jawwalisation of public space in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank.
• Frequently when people met us (i.e. as a couple), they would ask if we had any children. When we said no, the common response – inshallah (God willing) – could be interpreted as part invocation, part blessing. One young woman told S. that when she returns to Palestine, she should return with a child. One old woman told me I looked too young to have children.

The Morning After…in Ramallah

Update: One week later we returned to the first pharmacist we had visited in Umm al-Shariya - this time to get throat lozenges. He immediately recognized us and asked if we were able to get the pill, before showing us three boxes of Postinor that he had ordered. We wondered if he got them as a result of our request or if he had known what we needed but was not able to provide for us that day. 

Warning: while this is ostensibly a post about the politics of sexual reproduction in contemporary Ramallah, the observations derive from a very personal experience that – for some readers – will be Too Much Information. While this is hardly sensational stuff, if you simply don’t want to know me *that* well, don’t read this post.

This Friday, the contraceptive S and I were using broke, and we only realized this after the fact. So after the inevitable brief and mild panic, we went in search of a pharmacy. While most shops are shut on Fridays, we were actually lucky enough to find quite a few pharmacies open.

The first pharmacy we went to – just down the road in Umm al-Shariya – didn’t know what emergency contraception was. They showed us the monthly birth control pill.

The second pharmacy we found – now in Ramallah itself – did know what emergency contraception was. However, the pharmacist told us that we would have to go to a doctor to get a prescription. When asked if he could recommend a doctor, he said there were plenty, but didn’t recommend one in particular. For the record, I have bought plenty of prescription drugs, without a prescription, in Ramallah. Pharmacists simply sell you what you need. While we can’t prove it, I’m inclined to agree with S. that this guy was making a moral judgment.

The third pharmacist knew about emergency contraception, and even knew the name of the brand (although this only became clear later). However, he didn’t have any in stock. He wrote the name of the brand down on a piece of paper – incorrectly as it turns out. Since the incorrect version of the brand was ‘powster’, which he pronounced ‘poster’, we thought he was talking about an advert he’d seen. He recommended going to another pharmacy to see if they had it in stock.

The fourth pharmacist we found had not heard of emergency contraception. She said that she had many friends who had been in similar situations and become pregnant. I think she was suggesting that they would have benefited from such a pill. She said she didn’t think we would find such a pill in Ramallah.

After this we returned to the third pharmacist. He called another pharmacy, and then we established that he could order the emergency contraception and it would arrive the next day. Somewhat disconcertingly, after we asked him to do this and confirm that it would arrive, he replied ‘inshallah’ (God willing, or hopefully). Anyway, God must have willed it, because we were able to pick up the emergency contraception – called Postinor – the following day.

In the interviews I have been doing as part of my research, a number of people have expressed a desire to only have one or two children – ‘a small family’. Given that this suggests changing reproductive desires in this city (c.f. the average number of children per couple remains just above 6 in the Occupied Palestinian Territories), it is interesting to refract these desires through the lens of contraceptive availability, and the practices of health care professionals. Our small and very unscientific survey of pharmacists suggests that there is quite a lot of ignorance about emergency contraception in Ramallah. None of the pharmacists kept this form of contraception in stock. The different ways the medical professionals responded to us (in turn: confused, judgmental, helpful, sympathetic), also demonstrated a wide range of attitudes towards couples that wish to drastically reduce the risk of conception in an emergency.  

More broadly, the experience also underscores the need to always have/pursue multiple options when trying to achieve anything here.

[For anyone who arrived here after googling ‘morning after pill’ and ‘Ramallah’, try the Old Town Pharmacy located across from the Arab Bank in Ramallah Takhta.]

The life of W., continued

Yesterday I ran into W., subject of this post 3 years ago, so I thought a quick update was in order. He is now working in the kitchen of a new (and currently quite trendy) Ramallah bar. He is still living in Birzeit, albeit in a new house. He now has two children, a daughter aged 2 ½ and a son aged 1 ½. He said he hasn’t seen them for five days. Given that the place he works at doesn’t close until the early hours, I presume he sleeps there, rather than take the 40 shekel taxi back to Birzeit each night. He also told me that he was shot in the leg by the Israeli Army at the Atara checkpoint about two years ago. He lost 5 centimeters from the aforementioned leg, and now has restricted movement in it and a pronounced limp.

“Waiting:” Impressions of an Israeli checkpoint - 2010

S. is visiting for a couple of weeks. This is her first time in Palestine and the Middle East. A couple of days ago we went to Jerusalem, and so S. had her first experience of Israeli checkpoints (you don’t get checked coming from Jerusalem to Ramallah). After a comment at the Kalandia checkpoint, I invited her to guest blog. So here are some reflections from a fresh set of eyes so to speak:

The sun is hot, but thankfully we are under the shade of the roof that covers the vast waiting area of the checkpoint. We’ve arrived and a crowd has already formed, spilling out from where people are lined up to go through a life-sized, heavily barred turn-style. Before one reaches the turn-style, people are queued in what reminds me of what cattle and sheep go through to reach their pen – a corridor with metal bars on both sides. As I am waiting, I look at the people around me, Palestinians old and young, men and women, girls and boys, families, and foreigners. It is a Friday and many are crossing to go to midday prayers held at the mosque, Haram Al-Sharif, in the old city of Jerusalem. It is also the beginning of the weekend. There are men smoking and laughing, women talking amongst each other, and many more standing in silence and waiting in the summer heat. In front of me, there is a boy, around 8 or 9 years old, dressed in a dark blue t-shirt, shorts and sandals. He has dark black hair and big brown eyes. I look down and in his hands he clutches a clear plastic bag that contains water with an orange goldfish. This is all that he carries. He sees me looking at him and his fish, and we smile at each other. I put my hands lightly on his shoulders and bend down in delight to comment on his fish. I ask if it has a name and he says ‘no’, that it’s for his aquarium. The crowd begins to move and we file through the turn-style where we wait again. This time it is the waiting area just before you go through to show your passport to the Israeli officials. As we wait, there is a sense of commune amongst those around us. I feel a part of it somehow, a part of this waiting with them. Some get tired of waiting and move forward to slip in front of others who have also been waiting. Some of the older women comment on this, others stand in silence and wait. I look behind me and a boy stands quietly. He looks up at me with a slightly cross look on his face; I can see that he is tired of waiting. I share his frustration and wonder if the young because of this experience become politicized early in life or if checkpoints have become so part of their everyday that it is merely in the background of daily life. Up ahead a sister and brother, no older than 8 and 10 have come back through the gate. They have been turned away because of their identification. We discern later when their mother shows up that their other siblings got through with their aunt and are waiting on the other side. When the girl sees her mother, she begins to cry, we hear that it’s her birthday. The mother moves them in to another line to wait. We also move into a different line, as we find out that we were in the wrong queue. We also wait. This time the line is faster as it’s the line for people with official passports. We are finally at the front of the line, where they let people in 3 persons at a time. I walk through. An older woman, who walks through before me, turns and smiles broadly. She does not need to say anything; her waiting is over. I walk through the security gate and then to a window where I am asked to show my visa. I show the Israeli guard my passport and he sees that it is Canadian. The guard says, “You’re from Canada, cool.” The soldier is probably no older than 20 years old, closely cut hair, army green uniform, sitting nonchalantly with his legs wide open. He lets me through and I walk out to the other side where I wait for C. As C comes out, the sister and brother with their mother do also. They are reunited with their family so that they can go and celebrate her birthday. There is a sense of relief as we make our way to the buses that will take us to Jerusalem.  

The title of this blog entry also comes from the film “Waiting” by Rashid Mashrawi (a Palestinian director) that we saw at the Franco-German Cultural Centre.  This film depicts the experience of constant determent, particularly for Palestinian refugees, and the waiting involved during this time of deferment.

My very brief experience of waiting does not even come close to the wait that Palestinians have had to endure.

S.

The frustrations of doing research

Quite a considerable amount of my research process involves waiting, getting bored, getting frustrated, trying things that fail or lead nowhere. In the last 24 hours I have had the following experiences:

• Got bored while waiting for an interview to be arranged. Expected it to happen on Thursday. It eventually happened on Saturday.
• Visiting someone, who then doesn't want to conduct an interview.
• Ringing someone, to find they are not in the office for most of this week.
• Going to the municipality on a Sunday, only to find the door locked shut. Then remembering Ramallah is a Christian municipality, so even though the city starts its week on Sunday, the municipal workers don't come in until Monday.
• Tried to do all of the above with blocked sinus (allergies).

Despite the banal nature of these events - these are very much the everyday of conducting ethnographic field research - I still get frustrated/bored/disappointed, and feel like things aren't going well. When I feel this way I remind myself that I must manufacture some optimism as a kind of energy to fuel further endeavours. This isn't always easy.

At least my sinuses are better this morning, and S. arrives for a visit soon

Governing marriage

As Lisa Taraki’s description of Umm al-Shariya notes, the area is full of wedding halls – places where urban Palestinians go to celebrate their nuptials. (Marriage itself is a legal process, and takes place in a Sharia court). I’ve noticed that these halls are not only busy on weekends, but also during the week. This surprised me a little, although when I mentioned this to a friend, he said it was because Ramadan begins in August this year. Since you can’t get married in that month, everyone who wants a summer wedding, which is most people, have to do so before then.

The reason I was having this conversation with my friend was because he was going to a wedding party that evening in his village, which is in the Ramallah district. This led me to wonder, in villages where traditionally everyone is invited to celebrate weddings (thus preventing more than one wedding each night), how do people decide which couple gets the prime Thursday night spot, and who draws the short straw and has to settle for Monday? The answer, at least in my friend’s village, is that the village council maintain a diary, and decide who gets which date. The village council in question have also taken other steps to regulate marriage. They decreed that people should not invite the entire village to the celebration, only friends from other villages and extended family (although this can still leave you with a massive guest list). Otherwise, as my friend suggests, you can spend 10,000 shekels on the meat alone. The village has also set the price of a dowry at US$ 1000. No haggling any more. While these ordinances governing particular economic aspects of social reproduction are confined to this locality, they are apparently based on similar measures that other villages nearby have taken.

Ramallah – fairest of them all?

Research is keeping me busy, and at the same time I seem to be suffering from either a summer cold or allergies. Nonetheless, I will try to persist with blogging.

A couple of days ago, I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the exhibition ‘Ramallah – fairest of them all?’ curated by Vera Tamari & Yazid Anani at the Ethnographic & Art Museum, Birzeit University. From the catalogue:

‘Ramallah – the fairest of them all?’ is a self-reflection on Ramallah’s struggle for the title as the fairest of them all? It is an inquisition about the conflict between past and present, about change and coming to terms with new realities through two complimentary, yet separate exhibitions on social history and the contemporaneity of Ramallah. ‘Ramallah – the fairest of them all?’ is an interplay between the duality of exhibition space and urban space, social activism and archeology of social history, public intervention and display.

The gallery exhibition – Ramallah in the past – is a wonderful archive of different civic pasts. This includes a ‘salon’ installation (the living room kept ‘nice’ for guests), a display of sepia wedding photographs, and a large collection of photographs of Ramallah ‘life’ 50-60 year ago. This last collection includes couples socializing in mixed gendered environments; the women wearing skirts above the knee and sleeveless dresses, the men wearing well-cut suits. While at first blush the public morality governing these ways of dressing seems very different from today’s Ramallah (see next paragraph), it is of course possible that these people might well have been more affluent, and perhaps in that sense there is a line of continuity between now and then (which is to say, it is possible to go to certain parts of contemporary Ramallah, and take very similar photographs).

The urban exhibition – Ramallah today – is a set of installations located around Ramallah city centre. There are three different works, two of which are currently present absences. Al Riyadh, a billboard size satire of current neoliberal urban development in the city that is governed by the ideas and dictates of large transnational businesses rather than local architectural vernaculars and communal needs, and Projection, a poster (advertising the film Abi Fawk Al Shajarah) depicting a couple about to engage in a passionate kiss, were both censored (i.e. removed) by the municipality. The only way they are now ‘presenced’ in the city is through small postcards – available at the Ethnographic & Art Museum - that were intended to guide audiences to their locations. They billboards and posters are now displayed around the Birzeit University campus. Only the final piece ‘What’s wrong about having a normal life in Ramallah’ by the dynamic Ramallah Syndrome collective, remains in the city itself. The work poses a series of questions on canvas about what it means to live in Ramallah currently amid the changes that have occurred over the recent two decades. These are being displayed in a number of coffee shops. Other coffee shops refused.

What struck me about the exhibition as a whole was its introverted nature. By this I mean that it staged a conversation that was very much for local people (local here defined primarily as Ramallah, but also Palestinians from other parts of the West Bank). This contrasts quite markedly with most contemporary Palestinians discourses (whether artistic or otherwise), that engage with a whole range of external others (often by necessity). Hence, in this context, what I’ve referred to as introversion is an achievement. It is a crafting or establishment of a more enclosed space, where an ‘internal’ discussion can occur that otherwise wouldn’t. And thus (and this may seem like something of a paradox) it also establishes a space that goes beyond (‘outside’) the familiar.

Well worth a visit if you’re in town!

Shorts and T’s

Things I’ve noticed in Ramallah that I didn’t see on previous visits:

Men wearing shorts. Not many, but still, a few.

Couples holding hands. Again, just a few.

People with US college t-shirts (the ones with the university name printed in large block capitals).  I’ve seen Illini (Illinois), Berkeley (UC Berkeley) and Golden Eagles (Marquette if I’m not mistaken). I wonder if these t-shirts are markers of distinction?

Wein a’Ramallah

After yesterday’s rather conceptual effort, a return to less abstract affair: the weeklong Wein a’Ramallah festival is currently being held. It’s an annual event, and part of the Ramallah Centennial Project (1908-2008). On Thursday evening – the beginning of the weekend here – we went to see the opening night performance, a concert by a group from Acre called Zaman (meaning ‘along time ago’, or in this context perhaps better translated as ‘heritage’). The event, held in an open space (maybe car park) opposite the Ramallah municipality, began late. In this context, this is not a real surprise except this event was being filmed for Palestinian television. I thought television scheduling was more ‘reliable’, but I don’t watch enough to know.

After the host, a young women in traditional Palestinian dress, welcomed us, the national anthem started to blare over the speakers and everyone stood up. This anthem is quite a recent creation, and didn’t inspire the assembled crowds in the ways we saw at the football world cup, or even later in the evening when the ‘national’ songs started. After this, the speeches began. The Mayor of Ramallah, the national Minister of Culture, and the Governor all outlined why culture and art was important for the city/the Palestinian people/the Arab world, and then thanked the sponsors. I noted two things in relation to this part of the event. 1) All the speeches were long and boring. Apparently the Minister for Culture has appalling grammar. 2) All of these dignitaries were women. The Governor – the final speaker – even joked that because they waited for so long to take the reins of power, they had a lot to say, and we had to listen. Everyone laughed at the joke, before being bored for the third and final time.

Then, finally, it was time for Zaman to start playing. They began by playing rhythm while the three guitars were tuned and some feedback issues were sorted out (there was even a roadie with a mullet!).  (The rest of the group consisted of a bassist, a drummer and a guy playing tom toms/tambla). Playing a style I would rather inadequately describe as something like a mix of pop and folk, they covered a series of famous songs. During one number - Rozana – a rotund elderly man took the hand of the mayor and they began to dance in the area in front of the stage. It didn’t take any time at all for about 6 or 7 more senior ladies to jump up to and, much to everyone’s enjoyment, show the assembled masses that they can still move. One of these ladies was particularly spry.  The band seized on the momentum and launched straight into Wein a’Ramallah (Where is Ramallah), the popular song from which the festival takes its name that had everyone clapping and singing along. After a romantic number, a few more popular numbers that got a handful of shabab (young men) on the ‘floor’ doing the almost obligatory and always awkward dubka, and a couple more songs where people started to lose interest, Zaman rounded things off with some ‘national’ songs (described by one friend as ‘about fighting occupation, violence, etc’) and another rendition of Wein a’Ramallah. The quite considerable crowd, which had thinned out a little during the 2 hour concert, left happy and humming.

State Phobia?

I recently read a very thought-provoking essay written by a colleague about the relationship between structures of feeling and power. This description is a simplification, but since the essay is currently under review I don’t want to divulge any of the broader arguments. One of the more specific points the author makes, extending the work of French theorist Michel Foucault, is that one (among many) of the ways in which neo-liberalism can be characterized is through a particular structure of feeling (‘atmosphere’) called state phobia. This is a general concern about the excessive nature of the state, particularly as it governs (regulates) markets.

This idea really fascinates me, working in a context where there is no clearly discernible state – at least according to the standards and measures of liberal democracy. Instead there is an (Israeli) occupying power, which crudely speaking, seeks to govern (secure) as much territory as possible with as few political subjects therein, and a (Palestinian) ‘Authority’, which partially governs subjects but controls little territory, or hardly any of the territory it aspires to govern, regardless of whether these aspirations relate to pre ’48 or ’67 lands. (I wonder if in its current state, the Palestinian Authority might be better thought of as a management firm). The question therefore, is if state phobia is characteristic of neo-liberalism in liberal-democratic societies as my colleague argues, what happens to this relationship (between state phobia and neoliberalism) in the absence of the liberal democratic state/space?

From where I write, my initial thoughts are that there is a range of sometimes complimentary, sometimes contradictory structures of feeling in relation to the state, some of which are developing through current economic practices that might be considered neoliberal.

1. A long-standing desire for a Palestinian nation-state (that stretches back into the British mandatory period at least).
2. A more recent longing - at least among some Palestinians, particularly in Ramallah, for a good life, defined as economic advancement. This longing has sidelined/superseded the previous desire for a political state, in part due to the length of time such a hope has gone unrealized. This second structure of feeling resonates with…
3. A (even more?) recent dream of economic nationalism as a precursor to political nationalism (Fayyadism, although it remains to be seen how widely this dream is shared, although Fayyad does command the infrastructure of the PA). This politics shares a not so secret affinity with…
4. A dream of economic nationalism in place of political nationalism (Netanyahu’s economic peace). Something that is akin to a contemporary refiguring of...
5. Zionist practices of erasure in relation to Palestine/Palestinians, which in some ways could be narrated as an Israeli phobia of a Palestinian state.
6. A Palestinian phobia of the Israeli state, as it is manifest through colonialism.

(N.B. This list doesn’t even begin to comprehend the atmospheres circulating among Palestinians living in spaces of refuge and diaspora).

At present then, I’m inclined to think that (a) state phobia in this context is related to colonialism as much as capitalism, and offers insight into the multiple ways in which colonialism and capitalism resonate together, which is to say that it is not simply that neoliberalism opportunistically fills (or maps onto) the state-free site of colonial subjugation (b) there are important and complex geographical dimensions to the problem of state phobia and neoliberalism (and this is perhaps where my bracketed references to diaspora and refugees needs to be taken into account to a much greater extent). 

Mobile Phones

I had to get a new SIM card for my phone yesterday, because Orange, the Israeli based company that I previously used, is now ‘mumnoor’ (forbidden) in Palestine. So I am now a Jawwal customer – a company owned by a very rich man from Nablus who lives outside Palestine (I can’t remember if he’s in a Gulf state or Lebanon). I thought it was interesting that the boycott of Israeli goods (a campaign designed to affect practices of occupation) can actually be an economic policy that stimulates domestic markets. I wonder if this was the intention?

Chauffeured Democracy

A couple of days ago I was sitting in one of the restaurants that cater to foreigners and more affluent, liberal Palestinians (key indicators of such spaces in addition to the clientele are the presence of a certain aesthetic, alcohol and certain foods. The owner (a larger than life character who declared that my accent was Australian and was adamant that he was right,) was trying a potential new addition to the menu – steak and onion pie – while we were paying the bill). On the table next to us sat Mustafa Barghouti with two young women, who may well have been his granddaughters. Barghouti is one of the most recognizable politicians in Palestine, primarily because he is a critic of Fatah and advocates the only non-violent political platform (he does support nonviolent resistance), and is therefore popular in the West. There is nothing particularly exceptional about seeing him in this space. However, when he left the restaurant my friend pointed to his car, a large 4x4. Sat in the front seat was a driver. In fact, the driver had been sat in the front seat the whole time Barghouti had been eating – at least an hour. This conspicuous display of wealth – it’s very unusual, even for the affluent middle classes, to have a chauffeur – was jarring for at least two reasons.

Firstly, as my friend noted, you simply wouldn’t see conspicuous displays of consumption like this even ten years ago. While during the second intifada (2000-2004/5) there were great efforts to keep life as normal as possible, some of the cultures of austerity that developed during the first intifada (1987-1992) still prevailed. More affluent members of society would on the whole be far more discrete. In 2005, I remember there were a group of guys who would come to a restaurant I would frequent in the nearby town of Birzeit, to drink alcohol away from watchful eyes in Ramallah. Examples of this discretion still exist: another restaurant in Ramallah I visited later the same day had a largely obscured upstairs section where people can eat and drink away from the (potential) public gaze. 

Secondly, for a self-styled man of the people and champion of democracy, he certainly seems to live a very different lifestyle from nearly all of his would be subjects. The chauffeured style of democratic politics that he embodies is perhaps both a good example of the consequences of, and a good metaphor for, the broader development of the economically liberalized non-state (or state affectation) that Israel and Fayad are currently pursuing. As an exemplar it clearly shows how new elites are emerging from conditions of increasing socio-economic polarization. As a metaphor: when someone is being driven around, they are never ultimately in control of the car or which direction it heads in.

Where I live...

"A new neighborhood with the unseemly name of Umm al-Sharayit is one of these areas: a sprawling settlement housing a hodgepodge of badly kept apartment buildings, public facilities such as PA ministries, commercial establishments, sha‘bi restaurants, automobile repair shops, and wedding halls"

Lisa Taraki (2008) Enclave Micropolis: The Paradoxical Case of Ramallah/Al-Beirah. Journal of Palestine Studies.

My apartment is not badly kept! (Everything else is accurate).

On the economy and the occupation

I asked a good friend of mine what he thought had changed since my previous visit in 2007. He told me that 'Ramallah doesn't fight wars anymore. It is only concerned with making a good economy'. Although I didn't think about this much before I came, this relationship between (neoliberal) economic development and the current phase of the Israeli Occupation will be one of the key questions that animates my research.

In a previous post I alluded to a potential parallel between a historical event (the first Palestinian intifada (uprising) which began in 1987) and a potential future (an anticipated third intifada). I have also been struck by another parallel. When Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, many of their initial policies with regards to the newly colonized Palestinian populations under their control promoted economic development. As detailed by Neve Gordon in his book Israel's Occupation, these policies were designed to benefit the Israeli economy, but also to discourage the formation of any national political consciousness. As history teaches us, these attempts to discipline the occupied population failed.

In the present day, Netanyahu's is waging an economic peace campaign, ably assisted by former International Monetary Fund employee and Palestinian Prime Minister Salem Fayyed. International activism against the Israeli Occupation has also recently taken on an explicitly economic dimension in the form of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign. Current attempts by the Israeli government to pass legislation that would ban the promotion of such boycotts, and punish both Israeli and foreign internationals found guilty of doing so, are perhaps the most significant indicator that the BDS movement is effective.

Faced with such parallels, perhaps the most appealing question to ask is what kind of future will be manifest by this current turn to economism. While it is tempting to think that the promotion of economic 'good' in the place of political agency will lead to history repeating itself, present day conditions are very different from the 1970s, not least because of the historical legacy. Massive tracts of land have now been colonised by Israeli settler-colonists. While I don't know enough about the geographies of the Occupation in the 1970s, present day events both take place amidst, and create, uneven geographical development within West Bank, and between the West Bank and Gaza. Perhaps the more pertinent question to ask is therefore how can we understand the emerging relationship between colonialism and neoliberalism? My sense is that what we are facing is not some kind of hybrid colonial-economic form, but rather two distinct assemblages of practices, discourses and ethos that have found (new) ways of resonating with each other, in a way that is similar to the American style Capitalism and Christianity that Bill Connolly analyses. While religion might also play a role in the Palestinian context, this has been commented upon rather more extensively.

This relationship is something I hope to discuss with people who live and work here in forthcoming weeks. So consider the musings in this post preliminary thoughts that will develop this summer (hopefully).

Moving in

A brief follow up on my previous post. After one night in a hotel, I moved into what will be my home for the next two months. The apartment is very nice. It was built for the owner himself to live in, so the furniture and fittings are very nice. However, after settling in, the apartment reminds me of something Edward Said notes in the book After the Last Sky. Examining photographs of ‘Palestinian interiors’ taken by Jean Mohr, Said suggests that there is always something a little bit off about these spaces. They are always a little too cluttered, and juxtapose elements that don’t go together well, something he traces back to the experience of exile.

In my apartment, things are also a little bit off, but in a slightly different way. The owner has gone to great lengths to furnish the place beautifully, and for the most part the aesthetic works. But – and perhaps this simply says something about the landlord himself  - some smaller details have seemingly been overlooked. There are knives and spoons but no forks in the cutlery draw. There is a lemon juicer but no plates or bowls. A handle is missing from one of the wardrobe doors, even though the wardrobe appears to be brand new. An apparently new sink has a rusted drain cover. There are three bathrooms, two televisions with satellite connections, a sitting room to receive guests, a traditional Arab sitting room (a rug and cushions on the floor) and a balcony, but no dinning table. It almost feels like someone’s idea of a house, without the sense of a house that has actually been lived in… and as I understand it, this is the case. 

Finding an apartment

My first task when I arrived was to find an apartment. Prior to my arrival I had already contacted two friends to ask if they knew about any places. They in turn asked ‘estate agents’ to find a suitable place for me. An estate agent in Ramallah is not a full time job, or at least it wasn’t the main form of income for the two gentlemen who showed me apartments. One is a taxi driver, the other works as an accountant for the local office of a transnational corporation. The taxi driver suggested that driving a car was his secondary profession, while the accountant was adamant that being an estate agent was a way to earn additional income.

It seems that in order to be a good estate agent in Ramallah, one must know the city well. This means developing extensive social networks so that you can become attuned to any emerging opportunities. However, access to information is not enough. You must also know how and when to use it. And even this attunement is speculative. There will be times when the information you have cannot be used, or cannot be used well (i.e. profitably). Perhaps this is why being an estate agent is a part time job for the two gentlemen I met.

An estate agent only makes money if the person seeking to rent a flat actually agrees to rent the flat. The estate agent then gets something equivalent to a one-time finders fee – between US$ 150-200 – for his services. In my case, I saw two flats. The first was on the 5^th floor of a building without a lift; about 15 minutes walk from the city centre. The second was a little bit further away, but brand-new. The owner intended to move in when he got married, but when his marriage fell through, he was left with an almost fully furnished flat and no one to share it with. I took the second flat. The estate agent who found this owner (and in a sense found me, and paired us together) received his $150 fee. The other estate agent received nothing, although the services he provided were identical. And I received an additional benefit through the first estate agent's participation in the process, because the second estate agent encouraged (and secured) a cheaper rent on the apartment I ended up renting to match the price of the first apartment that I didn’t take.

While this practice is something I would like to investigate further, at first blush it provides a good illustration of how Ramallah itself is an opportunity; a place where things happen; a site for experiment and speculation. The outcomes cannot be known in advance, but there is always the promise of success/reward. Even my own performance in the above drama can be scripted as the ability to plug into certain, fleeting networks at an opportune moment to derive an outcome that benefits me.

While these stories could conceivably be told in any city, the geographical specificity of them should not be taken for granted. On Thursday night I was talking to another friend who now lives in Khalil (Hebron), but was visiting Ramallah for the weekend (as he does every weekend). He moved to Khalil for work, and one of the stories he told me was how hard it was to find a place to live there. Due to the ‘conservative’ nature of the local society (his words), people were unwilling to rent to a single man. A single man, so the story goes, plays cards, makes too much noise and is generally unpleasant. Even when my friend did eventually find a place, a neighbour subsequently accused him – falsely - of bringing women back to his apartment.

Perhaps the two stories are not strictly comparable. I am a foreigner, while my friend is from a different part of Palestine, although this doesn’t necessarily make him less of an outsider, just a different type of outsider. However, I think the difference experiences do illustrate a broader difference between the cities, and the ways in which urban life functions in each respective context. In Ramallah, the circulation of knowledge and people attends to external flows (knowledge and people coming from outside the city) in different ways from Khalil. While Ramallah welcomes such externalities (perhaps we might say the city embodies a enthusiastically hospitable ethos), Khalil displays a far more constrained ethos of hospitality. Although at the moment I would only say this about housing and house hunting. 

Ramallah 2010

I've just returned to Ramallah. It's been 2 1/2 years since my previous visit. Although it sounds trite and predictable, some things have changed, while other things have stayed the same.

The bus service from Jerusalem to Ramallah is now 1 1/2 shekels more expensive. Beit Tounia, a town you pass through when travelling from Jerusalem to Ramallah, is full of construction sites and new buildings. Tirah, another outlying district on the other side of Ramallah, has also grown rapidly. Ramallah itself now houses some new, very large and very shiny buildings, including the Movenpick - 10 years in the making apparently. I haven't yet been asked for my opinion about life in Palestine (a previously common refrain), but a number of people have already discussed moving abroad and how hard it is to get a visa.

However, many of the same shops remain much the same. I sat in one coffee shop with a friend last night and everything seemed very familiar: the card games, the tea, the arguilla (water pipes). I even remembered the owner, who lived in San Francisco for 10 years. He didn't recall me. The weather in June is still hot, but there's still a breeze that cools you down in the shade.

My first impression is that things are quiet... or at least certainly a lot quieter than during previous visits. The Kalandia checkpoint has a massive car park in front of it now, and you can't see the actual checkpoint - a cattle gate like system - from the road. I wonder if this is a microcosm of Ramallah's occupation. Covered over, hidden away but still working silently. And perhaps this is more deadly in its own way, since it's harder to deal with problems and issues that can't be seen. Some journalists have recently predicted the coming of the third intifada. If this is true, it will be like the first intifada - a surprise; something people didn't see coming. But perhaps this is just the case for Ramallah. Or perhaps it's not even the case for Ramallah, but simply my initial impression. To end with another trite cliche, first impressions are usually deceptive.