Identity politics in mixed towns: the case of Jaffa (1948-2007)

This article analyzes the characteristic features of urban space and identity politics in Israel's ethnically mixed towns which have shaped their evolution from Israel's establishment to the present. Mixed towns are a bi-national borderland of Arabs and Jews living together. They focus attention on the paradox of Palestinian citizens living in a fundamentally Jewish state which prevents both Arab and Jewish residents from defining their urban status in nationalist terms. Analyzing Jaffa ethnographically and historically, the article posits that mixed towns represent a political and theoretical challenge to the guiding hegemonic ethno-nationalist principles of the Israeli state which has not established homogeneous, segregated, and ethnically-stable spaces. It argues that this has led to the parallel existence of heteronomous spaces in mixed towns revealing multiple and often contradictory logics of space, class, and nation. Analyzed relationally, these spaces display fragmentary patterns of communal identity politics between Palestinians and Israelis and counter-hegemonic local identities challenging Palestinian and Jewish nationalisms alike.