A “Shared Society Community” in an Israeli Mixed City: Reimagining Urban Space in the midst of Colonial Conflict

Abstract (English)

In the 1950s and 1960s, the new state of Israel created a network of twenty-seven “development towns” with two state targets: on the one hand, they were supposed to absorb the new waves of migration arriving in the country; on the other hand, they were meant to disperse the Jewish population and serve as strategic security ramparts in the country’s periphery.
Nof HaGalil, a city founded in 1957 in the Galilee region where I conducted my doctoral research in urban anthropology, is one of these former development towns. Although in 2022 32.3% of its inhabitants were Palestinian, the city keeps being presented as exclusively “Jewish” by the municipality and other government bodies. This label is accompanied by discriminatory policies towards the city's Palestinian minority; even in the Israeli press, Nof HaGalil is presented as “a mixed city in denial”.
My objective is to demonstrate that while the demographic diversity of the city is a major socio-political challenge, it also represents a horizon rich in potential. As part of my research, I have been studying a “shared society community” based in Nof HaGalil since 2017: this community is made up of about fifty Jewish and Palestinian families whose children are enrolled in the same public school.
The aim of this mixed community, whose political resistance has crystallized in the implementation of socio-educational and cultural projects at the local level, is to give the opportunity to all inhabitants to participate in the creation and transformation of urban space. This community shows that spaces are never truly finished and stabilized, but are engaged in a never-ending process of regeneration, constantly being performed, reimagined and renegotiated. Today more than ever, it is fundamental to examine the rise of alternative forms of production and belonging to the city, especially in the context of colonial conflict.