The “Right to the City” in East Jerusalem and Shu’faat Refugee Camp

In recent years, many academics drew attention on the negative impacts of various neoliberal restructuring processes on urban dwellers in cities. This thesis presents the concept of the “right to the city,” initially established by Henri Lefebvre in the 1960s, as an expression of the right to urban life, which is comprised of many rights and a new citizenship politics. Following that, social movements investigated various answers to social inequalities, defining them in Lefebvre's concept of the “right to the city” as a method of better empowering urban residents to shape their cities as they see appropriate. From this perspective, I use the concept of the “right to the city” as an analytical framework in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle to address the claims of Palestinian minorities within the setting of occupation and power relations over Jerusalem, which makes realization of the “right to the city” principles a distant possibility. This thesis aims to illustrate and understand the major factors that have impacted the social and urban rights for Palestinian neighborhoods highlighting the crucial role of Israeli planning policies in Jerusalem. I use the “right to the city” lens to look at the Palestinian experiences of hardship and displacement, focusing primarily on two case studies: East Jerusalem and Shu'faat refugee camp in Jerusalem. Based on a qualitative data approach of semi-structured online interviews and online informal conversations with various Palestinian and Israeli members, as well as employing on a variety of media, documental, archival, and reports analysis, I will show how the Palestinian minorities are denied their “right to the city” of Jerusalem. Since annexing East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has used its policies to dramatically change the city's political, demographic, and urban structure. I will illustrate how Israeli spatial and demographic policies are being used to the ‘Judaization’ of the city and lay claim to Jerusalem and declare it as Israel's capital. In 2002, Israel began construction of a barrier/separation concrete wall through Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem. I will address how the wall has inhumanely isolated and ethnically segregated Shu'faat, Jerusalem's lone Palestinian refugee camp, into marginalized areas, denying the rights of any kind of adequate life. The thesis concludes by stating that the “right to the city” holds significant promise for addressing urban, political, and ethnic issues for Palestinian Jerusalemites; however, this will require a considerable transition away from Israel's dominating planning policy and toward a decentralized planning.