Despite the extensive focus on Jerusalem in Palestinian history, very little attention has been given to Arab Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967, during Jordan’s rule of the West Bank. The majority of work on Jerusalem after 1948 focuses on the loss of its western neighbourhoods, known as the “New City.” This seminar discusses how Palestinians in Arab Jerusalem continued to reproduce their material worlds, discourses and meanings in the aftermath of 1948. Drawing on the records of the Arab Jerusalem Municipality and accounts from the Palestinian press, this presentation navigates the space and time of Arab Jerusalem as both were experienced by several social groups and institutions. It embarks on a journey into what became the city-center of Arab Jerusalem, starting from Damascus Gate, the main gate of the Old City, through the main street leading to Herod’s Gate and Salah al-Din street. The talk also examines ways in which Palestinians in Arab Jerusalem thought of, imagined, produced, or were deprived of a future, alongside their perceptions on the past. It highlights the material and conceptual (re)making of Arab Jerusalem after the Nakba, as constitutive to a Palestinian world- and identity-making in localities that were not destroyed in 1948, yet lived under the conditions of national loss.
Haneen Naamneh holds a PhD in Sociology from LSE (2020), an LLM from the School of Oriental and African Studies, and an LLB from Haifa University. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Sociology Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and a former fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart in 2020. In the past, she worked as a lawyer and later as a researcher with LSE Middle East Centre. She contributed to a number of Arab newspapers and cultural media platforms, including Assafir al-Arabi and Jadaliyya. Her essay titled “A Municipality Seeking Refuge – Jerusalem Municipality in 1948”, published in the Jerusalem Quarterly journal, won the 2019 Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Outstanding Essay on Jerusalem. In the academic year 2021/22, she is a EUME Fellow.
The seminar takes place virtually via Zoom. Please register in advance via to receive the login details.
Depending on approval by the speakers, the Berliner Seminar will be recorded. All audio recordings of the Berliner Seminar are available via Soundcloud.