Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Power, Resistance and the Struggle for Space

At the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a dispute over territory. Yet, the Palestinian predicament is about more than the loss of land. The contest to maintain and reclaim space is firmly tied to the identity and culture of a displaced population. Palestinian Citizens of Israel is a study of Palestinian communities living inside the Jewish state and their attempts to disrupt and reshape the physical and abstract boundaries that contain them. Through extensive fieldwork and numerous interviews, Sharri Plonski conducts a comparative analysis of resistance movements anchored in three key sites of the Palestinian experience: the defence of housing rights in Jaffa; the protest against settlement in the Galilee region; and the campaign for Bedouin land rights in the Naqab desert. Her research investigates the dialectical relationship between power and resistance as it relates to socio-spatial segregation and the struggle for national recognition. Plonski’s examination of Palestinian activism and transgression offers valuable insight into the structures and reaches of power from within the Israeli state. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of both Middle East Studies and Palestinian-Israeli politics.