Life after Ruin
The Struggles over Israel's Depopulated Arab Spaces

Noam Leshem examines the radical transformation of Arab landscapes seized by Israel in the 1948 war.

Noam Leshem (Author)

9781107149472, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 October 2016

252 pages, 12 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.52 kg

'Life after Ruin provides a critical reading against any dichotomous view of spatial transformation in Palestine/Israel since 1948. It shows lucidly and in great detail the complexity and heterogeneity of spatial transformation in Palestine/Israel, revealing the power relations that shape this evolution on various levels. This narrative would be of interest to any student of Palestine/Israel.' Manar Makhoul, Die Welt des Islams

Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the landscape of Israel-Palestine was radically transformed. Breaking from conventional focus on explicit sites of violence and devastation, Noam Leshem turns critical attention to 'ordinary' spaces and places where the intricate and often intimate engagements between Jews and myriad Arab spaces takes place to this day. Leshem builds on interdisciplinary studies of space, memory, architecture and history, and exposes a rich archive of ideology, culture, political projects of state-building and identity formation. The result is a fresh look at the conflicted history of Israel-Palestine: a spatial history in which the Arab past isn't in fact separate, but inextricably linked to the Israeli present.

Introduction: tracing ruination
1. Toward a spatial history in Israel
2. Repopulating the emptiness: the spatiality and materiality of the overlooked
3. Fences and defences: spaces of emergency
4. On the road: from Salama to Kfar Shalem and back
5. Housing complex: between Arab houses and public tenaments
6. Sacred: the making and unmaking of a holy place
Conclusion: histories of the rough and charmless.

Subject Areas: Human geography [RGC], Politics & government [JP], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]