Jaffa’s times: Temporalities of dispossession and the advent of natives’ reclaimed time

Abstract

The present article addresses the changes of temporalities within a prolonged displacement process, which has been taking place in the Palestinian city of Jaffa while under Israeli rule. Various temporal perspectives have been imposed by the Israeli authorities on the emptied historical Palestinian neighborhoods, such as terra sine tempore and “ahistorical” narratives. In Al-’Ajami neighborhood, where the Palestinians who evaded expulsion during the 1948 War—the Nakba—were concentered, “freezing” planning policies were imposed until the 1990s, when “privatization” of the refugees’ houses and neoliberal urban renewal began. Following Rifkin’s (2017) notion of “temporal orientation,” this article explores the various temporal experiences of the Palestinians in Al-’Ajami, including waiting, uncertainty, rushing, and a sense of being left out of time. To grasp the multitude of forces acting upon the community, I conducted interviews with six long-standing Palestinian grassroots activists. Analysis of the narratives reveals the various temporalities and rhythms created by the intersectionality and accumulation of oppression and dispossession, including settler–colonial policies and neoliberalism, and illuminates how Jaffa’s Palestinians have coped with—and resisted—them throughout the period under discussion.