The Politics of Suffering. Nell Gabiam

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СКАЧАТЬ and the Syrian government, a major participant in the Neirab Rehabilitation Project. Understanding Syro–Palestinian relations requires an examination of Syria’s Ottoman past, the European colonization of the Middle East, and the pan-Arabism that characterized the Middle East from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. I show how this larger historical context came to inform the rhetoric of Syrian government representatives, who were themselves Palestinians, to justify Syrian participation in the Neirab Rehabilitation Project and to galvanize refugee support for it.

      In chapter 2, I examine UNRWA and the role it has played over the past six decades in Palestinian refugee communities in Middle Eastern host countries. I analyze the contradictions and tensions that characterize UNRWA’s overall relationship with Palestinian refugees living in camps which stem from the fact that UNRWA is a humanitarian organization that has become the primary means of addressing an essentially political problem. I show that the key to understanding the ambivalent relationship between UNRWA and the refugees is recognizing that the agency is not monolithic or neatly bounded. It is a hybrid resulting from the overlap of the Western-dominated political order that oversaw its creation and the very Palestinian refugees it was created to assist.

      In chapter 3, I analyze conflicting interpretations of the Neirab Rehabilitation Project. UNRWA framed development through a neoliberal narrative that focused on overcoming material hardship and emphasized self-reliance and individual empowerment through capacity building. Such a framing elided empowerment understood as the result of a collective political struggle focused on the right of return, which has traction in Palestinian refugee camps. While some refugees in Neirab and Ein el Tal resisted UNRWA’s neoliberal narrative, others embraced it, albeit as a process whose end point was political–that is, one that could actually facilitate return. According to this narrative, poverty is debilitating and needs to be overcome so that Palestinian refugees can focus more on their political goals. Another argument put forth by this narrative is that the acquisition of globally recognized and marketable skills will facilitate successful resettlement in the Palestinian homeland once return becomes a possibility.

      Chapter 4 examines the significance of the built environment to Palestinian refugee identity. Virtually all of those involved in the Neirab Rehabilitation Project agreed that something had to be done about Neirab’s crumbling World War II–era barracks, which had initially served as shelter for allied troops and their horses. At the same time, a significant number of the camp’s inhabitants saw the barracks as a “witness” to their traumatic experience of forced displacement and dispossession and thus as an ally in seeking redress. I show that, while these contradictory feelings were never really resolved, what was ultimately important for the inhabitants of Neirab was not that the landscape of the camp remain unchanged but that the camp continue to exist as a space of difference that emphasizes its inhabitants’ specific Palestinian identity, history, and political claims.

      In chapter 5, I focus on Yarmouk, which before the war in Syria had been touted by some as an example of successful refugee integration into a host country. Despite this integration, Yarmouk did not lose its identity as a Palestinian refugee camp. Using it as an example, I reflect on what was at stake in Neirab’s and Ein el Tal’s continued existence as camps despite the changes effected by development. I argue that the Palestinian refugee camp is not just a physical architectural space but a mental, affective, and embodied one as well.

      In the conclusion, I focus on expressions of Palestinian refugee identity that transcend the tension between the politics of suffering and the politics of citizenship. These examples force us to rethink the role of the camp as a space of particular relevance to Palestinian refugee identity and rights as well as some of the dominant assumptions that underlie the concept of citizenship.

      By the time Syria descended into full-fledged war in July 2012, the Neirab Rehabilitation Project was close to completion. In the epilogue, I discuss how the war has affected Palestinian refugees. I focus more specifically on the repercussions that it has had on the three camps that are the focus of this book: Ein el Tal, Neirab, and Yarmouk.

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