Categories
Critical Speculation

Re:LIFTA, Within the Right to Plan is the Right to Imagine Return

By Mahdi Sabbagh Lifta digital art exhibition poster (Collective MIP) A picturesque ascent overlooking Wadi el-Shami greets every car driving from Ben Gurion Airport to Jerusalem. The valley is dotted with trees and shrubbery, adorned with a family of stone houses. Those familiar with Palestine’s history instantly recognize the ghostly presence of the deserted village […]

Categories
Critical Speculation

This Place They Dried From The Sea: An Interview with Kamal Aljafari

By Nasrin Himada This interview originally appeared on Montreal Serai. It is re-published on arenaofspeculation.org with kind permission. For those based in the UK, the film Port of Memory will be screened in London later this month — including a Q&A with director Kamal Aljafari — as part of the London Palestine Film Festival. Opening […]

Categories
Advocacy Spatial Analysis

From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record, 1947-50

Throughout this month the Mosaic Rooms in London plays host to the exhibition “From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction & State Formation 1947-50”. The timing of the exhibition, curated by visual theorist Ariella Azoulay, coincides with the release of an English translation of her accompanying book, and is complemented by a series […]

Categories
Advocacy Critical Speculation

Palestine: Between Spatial Realities and Engaging the Imagination

by Ahmad Barclay and Dena Qaddumi This article was originally published on Jadaliyya as a part of the recent roundtable in response to ‘Occupation Law and the One State Reality’ by Darryl Li, which was featured on this site last month. You can read the full roundtable on the Jadaliyya site, including contributions from Noura […]

Categories
Advocacy Critical Speculation

Why not Return? Towards Return of Palestinian Refugees

by Eitan Bronstein This Thursday, 15th September, a remarkable exhibition will open in Tel-Aviv, seeking to engage head-on with the legacy of the Palestinian Nakba. Curated by Zochrot and entitled ‘Towards return of Palestinian refugees’, the exhibition brings together a collection of projects that engage in concrete and propositive ways with the challenges of realising […]

Categories
Advocacy Physical Intervention

Tent 1948: Challenging Conceptions of ‘Social Justice’ in Israel

by Abir Kopty The following article was originally published on Mondoweiss. It is re-published on arenaofspeculation.org with kind permission from the author. Abir Kopty is a media analyst and consultant and political activist, she is a former city council member in Nazareth & former spokeswoman for Mossawa, the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel. […]

Categories
Advocacy Critical Speculation

Counter-Mapping Return: Towards Transforming Imagined Geographies into Reality

Following the events of May 15th, grassroots activists and community organisations have chosen June 5th – Naksa Day, the anniversary commemorating the displacement of thousands of Palestinians during the 1967 War – as an occasion for further mobilisation towards actively asserting the Palestinan right to return. In the context of our recent feature, we wanted […]

Categories
Critical Speculation Physical Intervention

Planning Al-Awda: Re-Imagining the Spatial Contours of Israel-Palestine

This past weekend the world watched as Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank marched on the recognised and unrecognised borders of Israel to mark Nakba Day. This by no means represents the first attempt by Palestinians to return to their homeland. In fact, against the odds, many thousands risked their lives […]

Categories
Advocacy

Saving Lifta: Stepping up the Campaign

This week, the Coalition to Save Lifta announced that, following a petition submitted on 6 March, an Israeli court had ordered a temporary freeze on plans to build a new luxury Jewish neighbourhood on the remains of the Palestinian village of Lifta.