Author's note: We wish to thank the participants of the international workshop “Ethnically Mixed Towns in Israel/Palestine,” which took place first in 2002 at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting and in 2003 at the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute: Deborah Bernstein, Glenn Bowman, David De Vries, Elizabeth Faier, Hagith Gor-Ziv, Ghazi Falah, Tamir Goren, Jasmin Habib, Laurie King-Irani, Mark LeVine, Hanna Herzog, Amalia Sa˓ar, Salim Tamari, Rebecca Torstrick, Anton Shammas, Haim Yacobi, and Ra˒ef Zreik. Daniel Monterescu acknowledges with thanks the support of the University of Chicago and Central European University, the Palestinian–American Research Center, the Lady Davis Fellowship Trust at the Hebrew University, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, Centre de Recherche Français de Jérusalem, the Dan David Prize at Tel-Aviv University, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the Josephine de Kármán Foundation. We are grateful to architect Roy Fabian for designing the maps and illustrations. Final thanks are due to IJMES anonymous reviewers for their insightful remarks.

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³⁵ “The War of the Southern Neighborhoods over the Annexation to Tel-Aviv,” Yedioth Tel-Aviv-Yafo 22 (1953): 28.

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³⁷ Examples of such projects include the nongovernmental organization Shatil's “Mixed Cities Project—Equal Access to Housing Rights” and various initiatives by the Arab Center for Alternative Planning. Recent reports in Hebrew and Arabic by Shatil have addressed the predicament of the Palestinian communities in cities like Jaffa, Lydda, and Ramle. See Yusef Jabarin, The Arab Citizens in Mixed Towns (Jerusalem: Shatil, 2002), or Daniel Monterescu, The Palestinian Community in Jaffa: A Social Planning Report (Jerusalem: Shatil, 2007).

³⁸ Nir, Ori, and Lili Galili, “Mahanot ha-Plitim shel ha-˓Arim ha-˓Israeliyot” (“The Refugee Camps of Israeli Towns”), Ha˒aretz (12 December 2000).

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⁴¹ This term was used a number of times by Palestinian speakers in public meetings and at an academic conference in 2002–2003. The alteration between “targeted city” and “shared city” is often strategic. For example, during a meeting with potential Palestinian donors from Jordan, the term “targeted” would be employed, to underline the Israeli majority and the state as a shared enemy of those seeking assistance and the potential donor. In contexts in which cooperation with Jews and Israeli institutions is the goal, “shared town” would more likely be used.

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⁴⁴ Portugali, Implicate Relations.

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⁴⁶ Millet is the Ottoman term for an autonomous self-governing religious minority legally protected under Ottoman law. The literal meaning of the term refers to the separate legal courts under which minorities ruled their own, with little interference from the Ottoman government. The prominent millets were Jewish and Christian (mainly Greek, Armenian, and Catholic)—groups that were spread across the empire with significant minorities in many major cities. The autonomy of such groups could not have been premised on a territorial principle without challenging Ottoman sovereignty. Each millet was under the supervision of a leader, most often a religious patriarch, who reported directly to the Ottoman sultan. Each community was responsible to the central government for administrative obligations, such as taxes and internal security, and had authority to supervise functions not provided by the state. Beginning in 1856, the secular legal reforms known as the Tanzimat (reorganization) eroded much of the religiously based administrative autonomy of the millets, which was further altered by the increasing influence of European powers in the Middle East.

⁴⁷ The Armenian quarter of Jerusalem and segments of Middle Eastern cities still recognized as the “Jewish quarter” (harat al-Yahud) are relics of this regulated urban pattern.

⁴⁸ A similarly relatively stable structure of affiliations was also known in premodern Europe. See Meinecke, Friedrich, Cosmopolitanism and the National State (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond.”

⁴⁹ Ruth Kark, Jaffa—Growth of a City, 1799–1917 (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Tzvi, 1984), 160.

⁵⁰ Owen, Studies in the Economic and Social History of Palestine.

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⁵² Jerusalem, with its many religious sects and administrative offices, was the only truly urban center in the mountains. For a comparison between the coast and the inland mountain region of Palestine before 1948, see Salim Tamari, The Mountain against the Sea: Studies in Palestinian Urban Culture and Social History (Ramallah: Muwatin, 2005).

⁵³ Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinians.

⁵⁴ Secondary and vocational schools established and operated by European missionary orders were as open to Muslim and Jewish children as they were to Christian pupils. This notwithstanding, the main impact in terms of class was on the ascent of Christian Palestinians, who later took center stage in the growth of Arab nationalism. See Orit Ichilov and André Elias Mazawi, Between State and Church: Life-History of a French-Catholic School in Jaffa (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 1996).

⁵⁵ Prior to 1820 Jaffa had a small, unstable, and largely insignificant Jewish population of some 200 people. Kark, Jaffa, 134. Likewise, a Jewish presence in Acre had been in existence since 1744. See Yehoshua Luria, Acre, City of Walls: Jews amongst Arabs, Arabs amongst Jews (Tel-Aviv: Y. Golan, 2000), 173.

⁵⁶ Jerusalem had Yemin Moshe built in the 1869s, the German colony in 1873, Abu Tor in the 1870s, and Musrara in 1875. Jaffa had the Jewish neighborhoods of Neve Tzedek and Neve Shalom, established in 1887 and 1885, respectively.

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⁶³ In his preface to Aricha's book on Jaffa, Mayor Haim Levanon refers to the conquest of Jaffa as the forced normalization of a mother–child relationship. See Yosef Aricha, ed., Yafo: Miqra˓a Historit-Sifrotit (Jaffa: Historical-Literary Reader) (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv Municipality Press, 1957), 7. Quoting from the Bible, he writes, “Against its will, Jaffa exemplifies the verse ‘he will turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers’ (Malachi 3:23–24); the heart of the mother Jaffa—Ancient-new Hebrew Jaffa—turned to its daughter Tel-Aviv. And they became one, the city of Tel-Aviv-Jaffa, subject to one municipal authority.”

⁶⁴ According to Golan, Tel-Aviv grew into a small-sized town of 15,000 in 1921 and 46,000 in 1931. See Arnon Golan, “Zionism, Urbanism, and the 1948 Wartime Transformation of the Arab Urban System in Palestine,” Historical Geography 27 (1999). Urban growth accelerated in the 1930s with the growing numbers of Jews who fled Europe. In 1934 Tel-Aviv, at that point the largest city of Palestine, became formally independent from Jaffa, and in 1939 its population numbered about 130,000, rising to 166,000 in 1944. In parallel, Jaffa developed at a rapid but relatively slower pace. Numbering 50,000 (including 10,000 Jews) in 1913, its population decreased almost by half during World War I and numbered 32,000 (including 5,000 Jews) in 1922. In the next decade, Jaffa's population doubled, from 51,000 (including 7,000 Jews) in 1931 to 94,000 in 1944 (including 28,000 Jews). The significant increase in the number of Jews in Jaffa after the 1921 violent events resulted from the development of separate new neighborhoods (Florentin and Shapira) bordering on Tel-Aviv's south side.

⁶⁵ LeVine, Overthrowing Geography.

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⁶⁹ In the 1920s Acre's Jewish population grew to more than 800—15 percent of the town's 6,000 inhabitants. This was mainly due to the influx of European immigrants who joined the small Sephardi community, who had resided in the town since 1744. In the wake of the 1929 hostilities, most Jews left Acre and settled in Haifa and the vicinity. See Luria, Acre, City of Walls, 411.

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⁷³ For an insightful analysis of the Palestinian urban middle class in the 1940s and the effect of the nakba, see Sherene Seikaly, Meatless Days: Consumption and Capitalism in Wartime Palestine 1939–1948 (PhD diss., New York University, 2007).

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⁷⁶ Moshe Arenwald, “The Military Campaign in Jerusalem in the War of Independence,” in ibid., 342.

⁷⁷ Goren, War on the Mixed Towns in the North, 195.

⁷⁸ Arnon Golan, Shinuy Merhavi, Totza˒at Milhama: Ha-Shetahim ha-˓Arviyim Leshe˓avar bi-Medinat Yisrael, 1948–1950 (Wartime Spatial Changes: Former Arab Territories Within the State of Israel, 1948–1950) (Be˒er Sheva, Israel: Ben Gurion University Press, 2001), 12; Goren, Tamir, ed., From Dependence to Integration: Israeli Rule and the Arabs of Haifa, 1948–1950—A Historical and Geohraphical Analysis (Haifa, Israel: University of Haifa, 1996).Google Scholar

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⁸⁴ Arnon Golan, Wartime Spatial Changes, 41.

⁸⁵ Ibid, 164.

⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ Ibid, 94.

⁸⁸ Martial law was lifted from these urban neighborhoods in June 1949. The rest of Israel's Palestinian community, however, remained under military governorate until 1966.

⁸⁹ Arnon Golan, Wartime Spatial Changes.

⁹⁰ Salim Tamari, Jerusalem 1948.

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⁹³ Madrikh Yafo (The Jaffa Guide) 1949, 41 (our translation, emphasis added).

⁹⁴ Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory.

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¹⁰⁴ Rabinowitz, Overlooking Nazareth.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., 8, 52–71.

¹⁰⁶ Nir Ori and Lili Galili, “One Morning the Mayor of Natzerat Illit Woke Up to Discover that he is the Mayor of a Mixed Town,” Ha˒aretz (23 December 2001).

¹⁰⁷ Prior to 1948 Safad had some 10,000 Palestinian residents and some 1,500 Jews. Beer-Sheva was exclusively Arab (Palestinians, Bedouins, and Egyptians) prior to the war.

¹⁰⁸ Hanna Herzog, “Mixed Towns as Places of Choice: Residential Preferences of Palestinian Women” in Mixed Towns, Trapped Communities.

¹⁰⁹ Erik Cohen was one of the first writers to focus on the ways in which religious codes and formal civil law complicate the civil status of Jewish–Arab mixed-marriage offspring. The religion of a child born to a mixed couple, he writes, is often indeterminate, contested, and subject to passionate family disagreements. See Cohen, Erik, “Mixed Marriage in an Israeli Town,” Jewish Journal of Sociology 11 (1969): 41–50.Google Scholar

Sivan Schneider and Nasser Abadi, in their works on mixed marriages in Jaffa and Israel, respectively, generally show that although there are structural similarities between mixed marriages in Israel and exogamic marriage patterns in other countries, some characteristics are unique to the Israeli context. Most cases of Jewish–Arab mixed marriage in Israel consist of an Arab-Palestinian man and a Jewish woman, who are often ostracized by their own social environment. See Nasser Abadi, Mixed Marriage Between Arabs and Jews in Israel (master's thesis, Tel Aviv University, 1991); Sivan Schneider, Trapped Self: Self-Concepts and Identity of Arab–Jewish Mixed Families and Dual-Religion Children (master's thesis, University of Chicago, 2003).

Schneider and Abadi concur that most Jewish–Arab mixed couples choose to settle in Arab communities and that the majority of Jewish women end up converting to Islam. However, as Schneider shows, this “integration” process is often disharmonious, and increasing numbers of mixed couples are pushed to mixed towns, where they are at greater liberty to express their trapped identity.

Although no official statistics are available, a rather alarmist report prepared by the right-wing Jewish Lev L˒Achim Association claims that since 1948 more than 3,000 Jewish women have converted to Islam and married Arab men in Muslim courts. See Ze˒ev Shtigletz, “When Israeli Women Marry Arab Men,” http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/72865 (accessed 15 June 2007). The report asserts that some 2,000–3,000 women are married to Arab counterparts by common-law marriage and that another 10,000–20,000 Jewish women are dating Arabs at any given time. These estimates, unfounded as they are, are best read as extreme markers of Jewish-Israeli xenophobia.

¹¹⁰ Daniel Monterescu, “Inner Space and High Ceilings: Agents and Ideologies of Jewish Gentrification,” Spatial Relationality, chap. 4.

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¹¹³ Yitachel, Oren and Yacobi, Haim, “Urban Ethnocracy: Ethnicization and the Production of Space in an Israeli ‘Mixed City,’” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 21 (2003): 673–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In this article, which focuses on Lydda/Lod, Yiftachel and Yacobi argue that ethnonationalism, the capitalist logic, and modern governance conflate to become three engines of the same sociopolitical order. They define urban ethnocracy as a setting “where a dominant group appropriates the city apparatus to buttress its domination and expansion,” ibid.

¹¹⁴ The main case study for Yiftachel and Yacobi's analysis, Lydda/Lod is indeed the paradigmatic case of urban ethnocracy, with high segregation rates and a radically disempowered Palestinian community subject to concerted attempts of Judaization. Jaffa, however, has only one third of its 20,000-strong Arab population living in a predominantly Palestinian quarter (˓ajamī), and another third lives in the mixed area of Jerusalem Boulevard. The rest is scattered in the eastern part of the city (Tel-Aviv Municipality Statistical Bureau, 2006). Finally, Haifa, which entertains a predominantly well-off Christian population, became the home for an emerging urban middle class of liberal Palestinians who settle in previously Jewish-dominated neighborhoods and thus displays a third residential pattern. See Falah, GhaziHoy, Michael, and Sarker, Rakhal, “Co-existence in Selected Mixed Arab-Jewish Cities in Israel: By Choice or by Default?” Urban Studies 37 (2000): 775–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹⁵ Geographer Fred Boal devised a classification system for the study of ethnically mixed cites, which he designated the “Scenarios Approach,” in which a scenario is defined as an imagined set of ethnic circumstances in a particular city. A quick indicative categorization would subsume U.S. cities of the early 20th century under the label of “assimilation,” late 20^th-century Toronto under “pluralism,” contemporary U.S. black ghettos under “segmentation,” places like Jerusalem and Belfast under “polarization,” and Sarajevo in the early 1990s under “cleansing.” Within this simplified classification, Palestinian–Israeli mixed towns would probably range between polarization (Lydda, Ramle), segmentation (Jaffa, Acre), and pluralism (Haifa). See Boal, Fred, “From Undivided Cities to Undivided Cities: Assimilation to Ethnic Cleansing,” Housing Studies 14 (1999): 585–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹¹⁸ Lockman, Comrades and Enemies, 12.

¹¹⁹ Beck, Ulrich, “Toward a New Critical Theory with a Cosmopolitan Intent,” Constellations 10 (2003): 453–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Daniel Monterescu, “Heteronomy: The Cultural Logic of Urban Space and Sociality in Jaffa,” in Mixed Towns, Trapped Communities, 160.

¹²⁰ Ouzgane, Lahoucine and Coleman, Daniel, “Introduction,” Jouvert: Journal of Postcolonial Studies 1 (1998): 1–10.Google Scholar

¹²¹ Memmi, Portrait du Colonisé.

¹²² We follow here Bodnár's excellent analysis of the theoretical relations between these key metaphors. See Judit Bodnár, “Metaphors We Live In: Dual Cities, Uneven Development and the Splitting of Unitary Frames,” in manuscript; see also Low, The Anthropology of Cities.

¹²³ This is best exemplified in Fanon's own words: “The settlers’ town is strongly built, all made of stone and steel. It is a brightly-lit town; the streets are covered with asphalt, and the garbage-cans swallow all the leavings, unseen, unknown and hardly thought about . . . The town belonging to the colonized people, or at least the native town, the Negro village, the medina, the reservation, is a place of ill-fame, peopled by men of evil repute. They are born there, it matters little where and how they die there; it matters not where, nor how. It is a world without spaciousness; men there live on top of each other . . . The native town is a crouching village, a town on its knees, a town wallowing in the mire. It is a town of niggers and dirty Arabs.” Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 30.

¹²⁴ Rabinow, Paul, Reflections of Fieldwork in Morocco (Berkeley, Calif.: University of Caliornia Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Mitchell, Colonising Egypt.

¹²⁵ Abu-Lughod, Janet, “A Tale of Two Cities: The Origins of Modern Cairo,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 7 (1965): 429–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹²⁶ Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 29.

¹²⁷ Ibid.

¹²⁸ Levine, Overthrowing Geography.

¹²⁹ Rabinowitz, The Concept of the Trapped Minority.

¹³⁰ Zureik, Elie, The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979).Google Scholar

¹³¹ Rabinowitz and Abu Baker, Coffins on Our Shoulders; on the October 2000 events in Jaffa, see Monterescu, “Heteronomy” in Mixed Towns, Trapped Communities. See also Baruch Kimmerling, The End of Ashkenazi Hegemony (Jerusalem: Keter, 2001).

¹³² This notion is supported by Bayat's work on the limits on politicization of urban subalterity in the global South. See Bayat, Asef, “From ‘Dangerous Classes’ to ‘Quiet Rebels’: Politics of the Urban Subaltern in the Global South,” International Sociology 15 (2000): 533–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bayat suggests what he calls “quiet encroachment” as the prevailing strategy that enables marginalized groups “. . . to survive and better their lot” (553). Haim Yacobi's work on Lydda provides another instance of a similar microanalysis of resistance in an ethnically mixed town. See Yacobi, Haim, “From Urban Panopticism to Spatial Protest,” Surveillance and Society 2 (2003): 55–77.Google Scholar

¹³³ Low, Anthropology of Cities.

¹³⁴ Sorkin, Michael, ed. The Next Jerusalem: Sharing the Divided City (New York: Monacelli, 2002)Google Scholar; Benvenisti, Meron, Jerusalem, the Torn City (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1976).Google Scholar See human rights organization B˒Tselem's definition of permanent residency versus citizenship. “Permanent residency differs substantially from citizenship. The primary right granted to permanent residents is to live and work in Israel without the necessity of special permits. Permanent residents are also entitled to social benefits provided by the National Insurance Institute and to health insurance. Permanent residents have the right to vote in local elections, but not in elections to Knesset [Parliament]. Unlike citizenship, permanent residency is only passed on to the holder's children where the holder meets certain conditions. A permanent resident with a non-resident spouse must submit, on behalf of the spouse, a request for family unification. Only citizens are granted the right to return to Israel at any time.” See http://www.btselem.org/English/Jerusalem/Legal_Status.asp (accessed 30 March 2007).

¹³⁵ Judit Bodnár, Metaphors We Live In.

¹³⁶ Smith, Uneven Development.

¹³⁷ Engels, Friedrich, ed., The Condition of the Working Class in England, foreword by Victor Kiernan (New York: Penguin, 1987 [1845])Google Scholar; see also Massey, Doreen, For Space (London: Sage, 2005)Google Scholar and Spatial Divisions of Labor: Social Structures and the Geography of Production (New York: Routledge, 1995).

¹³⁸ Mollenkopf, John and Castells, Manuel, ed., Dual City: Restructuring New York (New York: Russell Sage, 1991).Google Scholar See also Marcuse, Peter, “Dual City: A Muddy Metaphor for a Quartered City,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies 13 (1989): 697–708.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³⁹ Bodnár, Metaphors We Live In, 5.

¹⁴⁰ Abu-Lughod, Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980).

¹⁴¹ Ibid., 220.

¹⁴² In his critical review of Rabat, Dale Eickelman points out that Abu-Lughod is making the all-too-easy assumption that French colonial urban policies in Morocco do not differ essentially from racist colonial policies elsewhere, in particular South Africa and the antebellum United States. Abu-Lughod thus ignores these specificities of the local context and “blinds the historian to the fact that French policy from the outset was based upon a close collaboration with elements of the urban and rural Moroccan elite, hardly the policy and practice of South Africa.” See Eickelman, Dale, “Review of Abu Lughod's Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 15 (1983): 395–96.Google Scholar Such problematic generalizations, we argue, stem from the powerful, yet often flawed, suggestive effect of the metaphor of urban duality.

¹⁴³ To mention just a few select works we have not mentioned: Rebecca L. Torstrick, The Limits of Coexistence: Identity Politics in Israel (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Jacobson, Abigail, “Alternative Voices in Late Ottoman Palestine: A Historical Note,” Jerusalem Quarterly 21 (2004): 41–49Google Scholar; André Mazawi and Makram Khuri-Makhul, “Spatial Policy in Jaffa: 1948–1990,” in City and Utopia, ed. Haim Lusky (Tel-Aviv: Israel Publishing Company, 1991); Sa˒ar, Amalia, “Carefully on the Margins: Christian-Palestinians in Haifa between Nation and State,” American Ethnologist 25 (1998): 214–239.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁴ See Monterescu, “Heteronomy,” in Mixed Towns, Trapped Communities.