Lefebvre in Palestine Anti-colonial de-colonisation and the right to the city

In the British Mandate period, the control and management of land in Palestine was necessary for incorporating it in the Empire’s economy, as in other colonies. The capitalist production of the nation-state in Israel/Palestine has been analysed as an ‘ethnocratic’ regime: Ethno-national ideology articulated through an ethnic logic of capital, which produces a spatialised ethno-class system. In The Critique of Everyday Life, Henri Lefebvre warns that an abstract notion of class struggle that neglects historic modifications in capitalism would be blind to the particular contents of capitalist relations, and therefore futile. The ‘Arab City’ becomes essential in delineating a ‘Jewish state’; and challenging urban development – essential in the Palestinian struggle for liberation. Declaring the ‘Arab City’ a ‘special housing area’ shows how the state uses ostensible demands for right to the city, reformulated by neo-liberal elites as demands for increased homeownership, as grounds for urban development.