Making Place: The Shifting Green Line and the Development of “Greater” Metropolitan Jerusalem

Abstract

This paper is about place making in Jerusalem, an important city at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It examines how place making in Jerusalem has had the consequence of shifting what is known as the Green Line. The Green Line represents the armistice or ceasefire boundaries following the end of the 1948 ArabIsraeli War. Development of different parts of captured territories after the 1967 War has shifted and rendered unstable perceptions of the Green Line and has wreaked havoc with prevailing conceptions over what constitutes Jerusalem. Symbolic and social boundary reconstruction is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a powerfully organized mechanism that tilts power to Israel with the use of bulldozers, bricks, and cranes as well as tanks and weapons. The shifting Green Line represents a battle line of an idea war over Israel's ability to claim legitimacy over a new Jerusalem. This paper examines the dynamic processes of how boundaries are being shifted through narratives of various actors involved in these processes.

Making a Place for Space: Spatial Thinking in Social Science

“…These are meaningful and often contested. In an extreme example of a divided city, Shlay and Rosen (2010) describe the clash of alternative narratives that support or reject Israel’s effort to shift the Green Line between Jewish and Palestinian zones of Jerusalem. In more typical cases, Suttles (1972, p. 4) argues that residents tend to construct simplified images of the city in which differences between neighborhoods, and hence their boundaries, are magnified.…”

Whose Right toJerusalem?

“…It was a dead‐end, leading to predominantly Orthodox (traditional) and ultra‐Orthodox (religious‐fundamentalist) neighborhoods located at the city's frontier (where Israel ended and Jordan began) . After the annexation of West Bank land to Jerusalem and its extensive suburban development in the 1970s and 1980s, it experienced population growth (Shlay and Rosen, ). Neighborhoods around it became overwhelmingly ultra‐Orthodox.…”

“…Jerusalem is mired in spatially manifested conflict (Friedland and Hecht, ; Klein, ; Gazit, ; Shlay and Rosen, ). It is dually claimed as the capital of the state of Israel and as the future capital of a would‐be Palestinian state.…”

“…It is dually claimed as the capital of the state of Israel and as the future capital of a would‐be Palestinian state. Jerusalem is a battleground for those who live within it and for many others around the world who contest its boundaries (Hasson, ; Shlay and Rosen, ). It is consumed by spatial conflicts over landownership, resource distribution and neighborhood identity.…”

An oasis in Jerusalem: Cultural richness and the positive side effects of exposure to expressive art therapy in The French Hospital

“…The building is located on a physical, cultural and historical seam (Shlay and Rosen 2010) that echoes the complex cultural and historical richness and diversity that thrive inside. The patients, social workers, psychologists, doctors, nurses, care givers, volunteers, cooks, secretaries, administrators, cleaners, janitors, therapists and families are richly diverse in culture, ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, race, socio-economic standing, age and education.…”