The Disruption of Identification in East Jerusalem post-Oslo Peace Accords 1993

Ruished, Adel and Mabon, Simon and Lacy, Mark (2023) The Disruption of Identification in East Jerusalem post-Oslo Peace Accords 1993. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

Abstract This study starts from the assumption that the Oslo Peace Accords that was signed between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1993 effected spatial transformation of the City of East Jerusalem, exhausted Palestinian Jerusalemites daily lives and violated the independent governance of their institutions. Until concluding these accords, East Jerusalem, daily lives of Palestinian Jerusalemites and governance of their institutions were a target to a single exclusionary system, whereupon the Israeli government strove to entrench control in the city after its occupation in 1967. Having excluded the city from the peace accords, the Israeli government and the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA) government entered in control contest to entrench rule and buttress the legitimacy of their authority in East Jerusalem. Contrary to their initial commitments, both Israeli and Palestinian governments contested to control the city, regulate daily lives of Palestinian Jerusalemites and their institutions. From health to education and identity issues, passing through religious, cultural, housing, economic, commercial, and infrastructural issues, the Israeli government disrupted the national, religious and functional identifications of Palestinian Jerusalemite institutions identification. Such disruption transformed the city into an Israeli and Jewish space, excluded the Palestinian Jerusalemites and paralyzed the independent organization of their institutions. Likewise, the PA government disrupted the identification of the city and showed reluctance to support Palestinian Jerusalemites and their institutions without direct intervention. Drawing on the academic literature of Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, this study argues that the City of East Jerusalem, Palestinian Jerusalemites and their institutions has been subjected in a double state of exception in the aftermath of Oslo Peace Accords of 1993.