Publication |
2012.
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Summary/Abstract |
This article circulates between three levels of inquiry and their interweaving - the personal, the local and the national. It draws on several historical dimensions - military, legal, political, sociological, architectural and cultural. In different ways, all these interlinked fields of human action are reflected in the private history of one particular house, built in the 1930s by Khalil Sakakini in Qatamon, Jerusalem. By examining both discursive and material aspects of the house and neighbourhood, the various mechanisms through which Arab property was brought, in the aftermath of the 1948 war, under Israeli control are revealed, some state-orchestrated and preconceived, others more spontaneous and based on individual and collective tendencies and preferences.
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