Jerusalem Quarterly Issue 88

Various other topics are tackled in JQ 88. In “The Politics of Power around Qalandiya Checkpoint,” Palestinian bodies at checkpoints are “humiliated, subjected, regulated, trained, made obedient in order to serve the colonial plan that turns them into occupied subjects. These are all justified as responses to immediate “security” necessities, and thus temporary. The experience of the indefinite temporary is reflected on in “Mu‘askar and Shu‘fat: Retracing the Histories of Two Palestinian Refugee Camps in Jerusalem.” Palestinian refugee camps, especially those in Lebanon, have been the sites of research for anthropologists, geographers, and architects; “But historians have largely stayed out of the camps … The refugee camp is a blind spot of historians – invisible to or invisibilized by them!” Their supposed temporary nature has perhaps given the impression that they exist in the present, with no important past or future. This piece  traces the 1966 removal of Palestinian refugees from Mu‘askar camp in the Old City of Jerusalem to Shu‘fat refugee camp, which was planned by UNRWA in the 1960s with hopes to avoid some of the problems of crowding and physical deterioration that characterized camps established in the immediate wake of the Nakba. It shows how UNRWA officials abandoned these plans, ultimately building Shu‘fat camp to low standards and predicting, “that it, too, would soon deteriorate into an urban slum.” Two additional pieces in this issue of JQ 88 offer reflections on the relationship between memory, individual experiences, and history in Palestine. One piece reflects on the relationship between memory, trauma, and oral history in “The Palestinian Nakba and Jerusalem.” Given the continuity of Palestinian trauma – the ongoing Nakba, or al-nakba al-mustamirra – the author asks what impact this might have on Palestinian memories and, by extension, Palestinian oral histories. Ultimately, the piece points to a number of successful collaborative oral history projects and rejects insinuations that oral history is more problematic than other historical sources. “