From a Divided to a Neo-Apartheid City: Notes on Jerusalem’s urban geopolitics

Abstract

Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people, a city reunified so as never again to be divided… Our people’s unparalleled affinity to Jerusalem has spanned thousands of years, and is the basis of our national renaissance. It has united our people, secular and religious alike.

The above citation, by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, is common knowledge among Israelis, who see “united Jerusalem” as a fixed urban space, a given subject of Israeli sovereignty and ethno-national aspirations. However, the city of Jerusalem is manufactured by geopolitical practices including not just military occupation but also planning policy, demographic engineering and the production of imagined geographies.

In this presentation, I will critically analyse the role of planning in the making of colonial Jerusalem and discuss the transformation of the city since 1967, arguing that the current urban dynamics of the city of Jerusalem, which I will define as a neo-apartheid regime, represent a paradigm shift in the way we understand apartheid in general, and its localised urban manifestations more specifically.