Waiting for Palestine

Refracted citizenship and latent sovereignty in Gaza

Bibliographic Data

ID4525552
AuthorsIlana Feldman (0000-0002-3347-411X, George Washington University, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume12
Issue5
Pages447-463
Publication date2008-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCitizenship Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1362-1025 • E-ISSN: 1469-3593
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13621020802337816
OpenAlexW2047733287
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited38

This article explores the dynamics of citizenship under conditions of statelessness and in territories with uncertain sovereignty. The Gaza Strip under Egyptian Administration (1948–1967) – a nearly indefinable entity that was under Egyptian authority but no one's sovereignty – offers an especially good site for this exploration. In this period, both the government and the population were invested in some notion of Palestinian citizenship, but there was no Palestinian state to codify that concept. The Palestinian loss of formal citizenship with the end of the British Mandate in 1948, and the continued absence of this legal category, has shaped Palestinian life and political identification in profound ways. Even under these conditions, though, both conceptions about, and the social practice of, citizenship have also been crucially important for Palestinian community. Conditions in Gaza under Egyptian Administration illuminate a ‘refracted citizenship’ that articulated a relationship to both a future state and an existing government. Considering both the earlier dynamics of citizenship and sovereignty under the contested circumstances of the Mandate and the details of Egyptian governing practices in Gaza, the article argues that refracted citizenship provided a mechanism for people to make claims of the existing government and offered a means for that government to better manage the place and people of Gaza. Refracted citizenship also enabled people to build new community relations within Gaza – to develop a sense of specifically Gazan community – without feeling that they were jeopardizing their claims to Palestinian citizenship

Citizenship · Government (linguistics) · Mandate · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · State (computer science) · Statelessness · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East Politics and Society · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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