Transforming Al-Quds into Urshalim: Erasure and Opposition in a Situation of Emergent Settler Colonialism

This article examines the status of Palestinians in al-Quds and the processes of the Judaification of East Jerusalem as a case of emergent settler colonialism. The research methodology combines two kinds of analysis: first, the analysis of demographic, legal, and symbolic colonial practices aimed at creating a hegemonic Jewish ethnic reality in East Jerusalem; and, second, a personal phenomenological description of the experience of the Judaification and the author’s own manner of coping with institutional persecution. The article examines the status of permanent residents in Palestinian Jerusalem – a status that imposes temporality and structural liminality, situating them between the status of accepted citizens and of rejected subjects. At the same time, the article describes how native Palestinians can, through their resistance, disrupt the colonial process of Judaification of the space. This approach is in contrast to theories that view the settler colonial project as a deterministic process.