Archaeo-politics in the making of a Palestinian National Spatial Plan

Abstract

This thesis examines the making of a Palestinian National Spatial Plan (PNSP) and how multiple agendas have influenced the shaping of space, landscape, and place. The thesis explores the dynamic relationship between place and space, and how they are transformed cyclically by archaeo-politics. It highlights the process of de-historicizing a place, re-appropriating a space, and rediscovering it as 'our place' through the deterministic approach to technology chosen by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to assert and defend its nation-state-building efforts.

The thesis challenges the deterministic and delusional premises of the PNA, which sidesteps physical sovereignty and monopolistic control of the territory for a 'state of the art' technology, and its neo-liberal promises of prosperity and development of landscape, archaeological, and cultural heritage in exchange for political 'stability' and external international validation and acceptance. It aims to expose the NSP as the admission ticket to consider Palestine as almost already achieved and normalized internally and, therefore, ready to be accepted as normal externally.

On the other hand, the Israeli colonialist process is equally manifest and powerful with its implicit agenda of annexation and segregation. As a result of these adversarial and collaborative forces, the PNSP has been and remains obstructed. In this regard, the thesis deconstructs how Israeli and Western archaeological agencies, such as the Associates for Biblical Research (ABR), excavate, reimagine, rediscover, represent, and requisition the findings of the ancient Israelites' conquest of Canaan. It highlights the cooperation between several Israeli settlers' groups and these agencies in de-placing areas of Palestine, turning them into space, empty of continuous and lived human presence, and 'returning' them as a rightful place of perennial Hebrew presence.

Thesis is embargoed until 31 December 2025.

Date of Award	Dec 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Sponsors	Corrymeela & The Palestinian American Research Center (PARC)
Supervisor	Audrey Horning (Supervisor) & Michael Bourne (Supervisor)