‘The Arabs Just Left’: Othering and the Construction of Self amongst Jews in Haifa Before and After 1948¹

Hannerz’s argument on the nature of cities hinges on numbers and types of functions, role repertoires, and role relationships. Cities remain the strategic arena for the development of citizenship. With their concentrations of the non-local, the strange, the mixed and the public, cities engage most palpably the tumult of citizenship. This eloquent description of cities rich ferment of plurality, hybridity, and generative capacities social, intellectual, artistic, interpersonal, political and moral draws attention once again to the fact that Naasira and Natzerat Illit are nixed, that is, unmixed, towns. Natzerat Illit is less a city than it is a Jewish island in Palestinian sea of the Galilee. In Israel, boundary-fixated discourses and ideologies are codified in laws and institutionalized in planning maps and urban policies of various ministries. This chapter focuses on the cognitive maps guiding and charting everyday relationships, reflections, judgments, hopes, and fears embodied in Nasraawiyeen’s interactions with, and readings of, the built environment of the Naasira/Natzerat Illit conurbation.