Daniel Monterescu, <em>Jaffa shared and shattered: Contrived coexistence in Israel/Palestine</em>, Bloomington-Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2015, pp. 362
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2916
Recensione di Daniel Monterescu, Jaffa shared and shattered: Contrived coexistence in Israel/Palestine, Bloomington-Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2015, pp. 362.
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Alexander Koensler
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Daniel Monterescu, <em>Jaffa shared and shattered: Contrived coexistence in Israel/Palestine</em>, Bloomington-Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2015, pp. 362
Text.Serial.Journal
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Book reviews
2017-07-17
2017-06-06
2017-07-17
2017-07-17
337-340
1
Alexander Koensler
2017/07/17
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2916
337
Queen's University, Belfast, United Kingdom
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340
Daniel Monterescu, <em>Jaffa shared and shattered: Contrived coexistence in Israel/Palestine</em>, Bloomington-Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2015, pp. 362
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/anuac/article/download/2916/2612
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                                         2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 1, GIUGNO 2017: 337-340




                                                                        RECENSIONI
Daniel MONTERESCU ⎸Jaffa Shared and Shattered: Contrived Coexistence in
Israel/Palestine, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press,
2015, pp. 362.


   Jaffa, where you can dance until dawn along with Israelis and Palestinians;
where you meet all, straight and gay, green and red. Jaffa, where ugly,
monotone housing blocks hide an eclectic mix of people, cafes, garages and
garbage; places and people that you would expect only on opposing
frontlines. Jaffa, where several boundaries blow up at once. Jaffa, where high-
rise buildings spring up among the dusty, neglected streets. Where no one
seems to pick up the garbage, where roof pools oversee corrugated iron,
slums and graffiti. Jaffa, beer, shisha, mint tea, plastic seats, – and smoky
kebabs on a sidewalk. Jaffa, the old proud Arabic sea port. Jaffa, a neglected
periphery on the forgotten outskirts of booming high-tech Tel Aviv. Jaffa,
where you can buy and sell all kinds of outdated Ottoman kitsch.
   In Jaffa it is not difficult to find contradictions, frictions, connections.
Daniel Monterescu claims to be «obsessed» (Monterescu 2015: XI) with the
political history of his native town. And I can understand why. Now Associate
Professor at the liberal, open-minded European Central University Budapest
threatened by the Hungarian government to close, he wrote a deeply
fascinating anthropological portrait of this «mixed city». Note, he says
«mixed» city, not «divided», neither «dual», neither «colonial». And with the
portrait of the city, he wrote a much needed and highly unique portrait of
social relations in Israel/Palestine. He aims to provide a Bourdieuan
«relational reframing» of the Israeli-Palestinian space, of Arab-Jewish
coexistence and shattered ethnonational aspirations. He focuses on intricate,
complex aspects of the conflict, issues that likely to upset and provoke
criticism from both sides of the conflict, from those who draw their power
from acting as representatives or spokespersons of one or the other ethnic or

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Alexander Koensler
2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 1, GIUGNO 2017: 337-340.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-2916
338                                          DANIEL MONTERESCU ⎸JAFFA SHARED AND SHATTERED


national «community». For instance, his meetings in Jaffa’s Ajami quarters
with Arab Jews in search of Palestinian-Israeli hybrid spaces that can’t exist
elsewhere. Or his account about frictions of joint forms of protest during
Israel’s «Arab Spring». These accounts are neither romanticizing coexistence
providing the illusion of horizontal or postmodern fluid encounters, nor are
part of the mainstream literature on the conflict, made of narratives of
collision, partition, static separation. This is an account that brings forward
what Yaakov Garb labels the «softer side» of collision and Gil Hochberg’s
exploration of the limits of the separatist imagination.
   This is a book that points out the intricate complexity in everyday life in
Israel/Palestine of which Jaffa is a particular emblematic case. An aspect that
is often overlooked and overseen in front of more monolithic, one-sided and
linear accounts of one of the most studied conflicts in the world. Reading the
dense ethnographies of the author’s meetings with Jaffa residents, my own
(fieldwork) memories obfuscated with the author accounts of intersections,
transgressions, interfusion’s. Of how I went with an Arab-Palestinian
Bedouin friend to meet a potential future wife of him and a shooting
between gangs interrupted our coffee conversations. Of how we pilgrimed
from the dusty south of Israel’s desert to the lightly city in search of life,
culture, light. And, in search of ice-cream. Of how constantly the
interpretative categories of what is «Palestinian», of what is «Israeli», of what
is «Jewish» or «Arab», of what is «new» and «old» and whether this matters –
all seems blown up in everyday practices, of how these spaces and
boundaries are constantly evolving overturned, remade, subverted. I had
been always wondering why nobody has been written a serious book on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict from such a perspective. I mean a really
ethnographic one, which pays attention to life as it emerges in concrete and
relational practices.

“Transliteration and transformation”
   Now we have such a book. We can get one indication of the complexities
from his «Note on Transliteration and Translation», a note that would be
worth quoting at lengths. « (…) For Hebrew I largely follow the Library of
Congress transliteration system, with some modifications for the sake of
clarity and consistency with the transliterated Arab» (ibidem: XVII) reads one
emblematic sentence. If it is not the content of the book that might convince
you, this note demonstrate the author’s scrupulous diligence. First note
words like «largely» and «with some modifications», than think about the


2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 1, GIUGNO 2017: 337-340
DANIEL MONTERESCU ⎸JAFFA SHARED AND SHATTERED                                         339


reference to the dominant Anglo-Saxon Library of Congress and we can get a
first flavor of shifting boundaries and the repercussions of a long colonial
history. If you know look at other books on Israel/Palestine you will wonder
why most other accounts on the Israeli-Palestinian space can be so linear,
one-sided. Do they obfuscate all elements that disturb one or another
macro-political imagination? Monterescu offers a sophisticated look beyond
the separatist imagination. The introduction, for instance, provides a
«checkered history» (ibidem: 13) of the concept «mixed towns». The author
uncovers the roots of the concept in publications dating back to the Peel
Commission in 1937 who worked on the partition plan and struggled with
those cities that could not clearly separated into Arabic or Jewish locations.
The theme of cohabitation intermingles here with dynamics of gentrification
and becomes evident in «everyday spatialized practices». The following first
chapters ground his research in anthropological and studies of political
geography of so-called «mixed town» and spaces of Arab-Jewish and Israeli-
Palestinian intersections, a key theme in Israeli anthropology and political
geography. But beyond debates that are specific to Israel’s political
geography as the works of Dan Rabinowitz or Oren Yiftachel, Monterescu
situates his work in broader theoretical fames of dominant Anglo-Saxon
theories revealing his doctorate from Chicago.

“Sad oranges, happy cement”
   Jaffa, «the city of the sad orange that will smile again» (ibidem: 97), quotes
Monterescu a fading graffiti on a crumbling wall, somewhere. The expression
seems a reference to a Palestinian book that idealizes the city’s past as an
Arab-Palestinian orchard and its tragic transformation under Jewish-Israeli
statehood as a seemingly inviable periphery of Tel Aviv. «Jaffa is the Jewish
city» states another graffiti described by the author, as an exclusive
aspiration, reflecting more Jewish-Israeli anxieties than realities (ibidem: 5).
Based on substantives and essentialist conceptions of space and time,
fantasies of «Judaizing» and «Palestinianization» have remained just such.
Exclusive narratives of past and space are fragile in light of the hybrid, mixed
and heterogeneous forces of the shared and shattered spaces of the city. The
second part explores the shifting socio-political life of the city in light of
neoliberal dynamics of gentrification, going beyond the dominant concepts
of ethno-national studies as the city’s shaping forces. Spatial politics of
neoliberal happy cement cover up, outdate and intermingle with ethno-
national politics of spatial differentiation. And again, against the risks of a


                                           2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 1, GIUGNO 2017: 337-340
340                                          DANIEL MONTERESCU ⎸JAFFA SHARED AND SHATTERED


reductive critique of postmodern neoliberalism, in the last chapters the
author refreshes the reader with his exploration of the emerging alternative
cultural life and its creativity.
   This is not an end of itself. Against the background of a collapse of the
various dreams of ethnic purification, the book sheds light on the
possibilities on coexistence as a continuous desire. Jaffa, a laboratory for
examining the forces of neoliberalism and ethnonationalism, is not an
oxymoron. Not divided and purified, but shared and shattered, that is a
message of hope.


                                                             Alexander Koensler
                                                         Queen’s University Belfast
                                                              alexanderiht@yahoo.de




2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 1, GIUGNO 2017: 337-340
