Staging Particular Difference: Politics of Space in the Palestinian Alternative Music Scene

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© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI 10.1163/18739865-00603004

Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 6 (2013) 308–328

Staging Particular Difference: Politics of Space in the Palestinian

Alternative Music Scene

Nadeem Karkabi*SOAS, University of London, UK

Email: [email protected]

AbstractIn recent years, an alternative popular music scene has emerged among young Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. Musicians and their audiences produce a politicized counterculture that innovatively fuses local and international musical expressions as a form of protest that aims to challenge external and internal impositions of structural oppression and othering. This scene constitutes the struggle of young Palestinians against civil marginalization in Israel and military occupation in the occupied territories, as well as against social and religious controls within their own communities. Drawing on Foucault’s work on Heterotopia, this article analyzes the cultural and political significance of Palestinian festive spaces by tracing the networks and conditions under which partygoers either fail or must compromise the staging of festive resistance, or conversely, succeed in appropriating places for their purposes despite spatial and social constraints.

Keywordscounterculture, defiance, heterotopia, music, Palestine/Israel, subjectivities

It was dusk when we were speeding along the empty road in a car full of friends, camping equipment and beer in order to arrive at our destination before the beginning of Yom Kippur (Jewish Day of Atonement). Our desti-nation was a rave that had been organized by young Palestinians in a private olive grove in the Upper Galilee, Israel. The participants knew that

* I would like to express my deep gratitude to all the musicians, event organizers and associates that are part of this research. My work is the product of our extended conversa-tions, their trust, support and interest. Special thanks must go here to Jowan Safadi, Ayed Fadel, Bruno Sabbagh and Hasan Nakhleh. I thank the members of this special collective editorial initiative, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, for their valuable comments and suggestions on my previous drafts. My appreciation also goes to Parvathi Raman and Laleh Khalili for supporting my research.

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they would not be able to leave until sunset the next day, in 24 hours, because strict social sanctions are applied to cars that disturb those fasting on their religious holiday.1 The organizers succeeded in recruiting all the Palestinian DJs who play Psy, Goa and Tribal trance to voluntarily fill the long program ahead. One of the DJs came all the way from Bethlehem, along with other cars from the West Bank, in which a few Palestinians and two Jordanians were smuggled into Israel without travel permits.2 The rest of the 150 Arab partygoers came from all over ‘48 Territories,3 some from as far as the Golan Heights.

This was a long night of socializing, dancing and just wandering around the isolated location. The colorful atmosphere of the party became visible at sunrise. More people joined the dance floor, as the most popular DJs were reserved for the upcoming hours. The prevailing dress code was ‘hip’; bright vests, shawls and sunglasses. However, the event brought together not only electroheads but also punk, metal and hip-hop fans. Members of the local queer community and a few Europeans, visiting from abroad or working at local NGOs, were also present on the dance floor. A Palestinian flag hanging on one of the tents broadcast a defiant statement, in a country where such political expression was forbidden during the childhood years of most of the rave participants—now in their mid-20s to mid-30s. This piece of land, declared autonomous, became an intimate temporary home, uniting a ‘little tribe’ that was ‘aiming to change the world’ (as stated at the event page on Facebook) or at least, aiming to create a liberated space where difference could be celebrated under the rubric of Palestinian unity.

In light of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, space is contested as a national ground of dispute (Portugali 1992; Yiftachel 2002, 2006). Military occupation, land confiscation, restriction of movement through check-points and other physical barriers are only a few reminders of the grounded territoriality of the conflict in everyday life (Ophir et al. 2009). Public and formal spaces in Israel are discursively saturated with expressions that

1 Throwing stones on passing cars leads occasionally to clashes between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians.

2 Whereas the movement of Palestinians who live inside Israel and hold Israeli citizen-ship is less regulated when traveling to the West Bank, West Bankers are strictly prohibited from entering Israel without a permit. Such permits are issued in exceptional cases; day-time entrance for employment, medical treatment of a family member or by special invitation.

3 In order to escape the Israeli discourse that divides the land between Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories (i.e., the West Bank and Gaza Strip), Palestinians refer to Israel as ‘48 Palestine and to the West Bank and Gaza as ‘67 Palestine; thus distinguishing different temporal markers of occupation.

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reinstate the exclusion of Palestinians (Kook 2002). However, space also plays a further internal role of othering within Palestinian society. Segregation, limitation and supervision are practiced on the basis of gen-der, sexuality, class, familial, regional, sectarian and legal-political catego-ries (Bisharat 1997; Monterescu 2006; Ritchie 2010; Yahia-Younis 2006).

This reality contextualizes the alternative popular musical scene that has emerged in recent years among young Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. Musicians and their audience produce a politicized counter-culture that innovatively fuses local and international musical expressions as a form of protest that aims to challenge external and internal imposi-tions of structural oppression and othering. Affiliated with the ‘stand tall generation’ (Rabinowitz and Abu-Baker 2005) of Palestinian citizens of Israel and their counterparts in the West Bank, they struggle against Israeli civil marginalization and military occupation by emphasizing a committed affiliation to a national Palestinian agenda and regional Arab culture, as well as international subaltern groups. At the same time, they revolt against social and religious controls within their own communities, promoting sexual diversity, gender equality, individual liberties, secularity and a bohe-mian lifestyle.

The production and circulation of this original musical material has been gaining popularity on the accessible deterritorialized space of the Internet, mainly through social media networks. On the ground, however, organizing live performances and dance parties has been more difficult. Restrictions of Palestinian expressions of nationalism in Israeli spaces come alongside limitations on staging social difference amidst cultural norms and class distinctions in their own societies. In striving to produce liberated enclaves for the celebration of social difference through pleasure and aesthetic content, organizers, musicians and audiences must act amidst the social and political climate against which they rebel. The orga-nization of such events thus becomes a political act of restructuring space to simultaneously assert Palestinian particularity and maintain multiple subjectivities of subalternity.

Hegemonic power, according to Foucault (1982), implies simultaneous and contradictory meanings of subjection. The first is subject to power, a form that implies submission. The second is subject as a self-aware indi-vidual or a group that may struggle for subjectivity and against subjectiviza-tion to someone else. This is one of the main principles around which Foucault speaks of ‘heterotopias’ (1986), as spaces of subjective othering and a space of subjective otherness. Unlike utopias, heterotopias are both real and un-real spaces. They are counter-sites in the sense that they exist

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in reality, but they transcend or invert dichotomous divisions in real spaces (public/private, legal/illegal or formal/informal). They ‘presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable’ (Foucault 1986: 26). Furthermore, time plays an important role, whether in heterotopias of infinite accumulation of time (museums or libraries) or at those where time is in its most fleeting, transitory, precarious aspect, like in the festival. Since defying authority is usually sanctioned, heterotopias that enable the empowerment of subjective otherness are likely to be tempo-rary or change function and meaning over time, in contrast to fixed or marked places that adhere to their limited scope of definitions.

In this article I examine the politics of space at alternative parties held by young Palestinians as they stage subjectivities of defiant social differ-ence. Drawing on fieldwork data gathered during 2011–2012, I describe events and locations in which the alternative scene takes place while mov-ing between the terrains of socially marked spaces across Israel and the West Bank. Starting with Israel, I demonstrate the politics of difference and power relations in these music parties, in both national Israeli and internal Palestinian interwoven contexts. By contrast, similar events held in the West Bank are presented, underlining the class hierarchy and institutional authority that replace the divisive role of nationality. I analyze the qualities of Palestinian festive heterotopias by tracing the networks and conditions under which organizers, musicians and audiences fail or must compromise the staging of festive resistance, or conversely, succeed in appropriating places in which they are not subject to the confining circumstances.

The geographical flexibility of these heterotopian ‘gray spaces’ (Yiftachel 2009), or rather, colorful spaces, and the fluid temporality of events in the alternative scene facilitate the powerful reconstruction and reclaiming of space without having to abide by the social, political or legal responsibili-ties enacted upon institutionalized activities. These young Palestinians embrace the marginal location of this scene, which hence permits a sub-ject-centered space open to difference and otherness. I conclude with a note on the importance of both Palestinian nationalism and the mainte-nance of tolerance to social difference of the counter-hegemonic context of these alternative music events.

Village Cities and Mixed Cities: Marked Spaces in Israel

Following several successful nights of The Vegetarian Thursdays—the first series of dance parties for Palestinian youth at a downtown club in

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Haifa—Jazar Crew (carrots or roots in Arabic) decided to organize a special production. They invited a group of international musicians, who were on tour in refugee camps in the West Bank under the title ‘Existence is Resistance’, to give a one-time live show of revolutionary hip-hop and soul music in support of Palestinian citizens of Israel. By then these exceptional music gatherings had established a solid base of fans who came from across the country to enjoy local DJs playing hip-hop, reggae, dub-step, drum ‘n’ bass, house and techno music in both Arabic and English. Even with an anticipated base of fans, the size of the crowd waiting at the doors to see the guests from abroad shocked the Israeli venue owners. That evening the club was completely full. People were squeezed in front of the stage impa-tiently waiting with their sweat soaked kufiyyas for the show to start. Unfamiliar with local political codes, the performers shook the stage for two hours with direct anti-occupation lyrics in English. Some wore scarves in the colors of the Palestinian flag. The entire crowd was ecstatic about the demonstration of solidarity coming live from overseas. The Jewish owners and staff, largely outnumbered by the Palestinian mass, were either shak-ing their heads in disapproval or whispering to each other, clearly ill at ease. The breaking point came when a London band featuring local rappers sang together with the crowd: ‘Free, Free, Palestine’. The bartender felt so provoked that he left the hall in anger.

After the live show was over, the evening continued with a dance party, dissipating the political tension. The two young female Israeli owners, who had established personal relations with the event organizers, restrained themselves from interrupting the party. However, the next day they called the young production crew for an urgent meeting. ‘[Due to the phenomenal success of these parties], I thought they wanted to sell us the place’, one of the producers said jokingly, ‘[instead] they told us that it can’t go on like this. We had to apologize and swear that we didn’t know what the show is going to be like’. The owners, who seemed unaware or less bothered by similar content performed in the past in Arabic, ended up requesting them not to mix politics with parties. Moreover, they reduced the availabil-ity of the venue for The Vegetarian Thursdays to only once a month, forcing Jazar Crew to look for substitute venues to keep up with the emerging competition.

I grew up as a Palestinian in Israel in the 1990s, a time when it was com-mon knowledge that ‘Arabs’ were not let into Israeli nightclubs. No matter how hard one tried to master Hebrew without an accent or disguise one’s identity with the latest fashion style, the requirement to provide an identi-fication card at the entrance would spoil one’s effort and keep certain

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spaces strictly inaccessible. During my early university years, I had the chance to visit some Israeli entertainment venues. I was among the ‘lucky’ ones accepted into these spaces, because I have blond hair (inherited from my Ukrainian mother) and could ‘pass’, but often, a feeling of displacement would overshadow the excitement, especially when Israeli music was played, or simply because everyone around spoke in Hebrew. Even more confounding was the unexpressed requirement to pass as a ‘good Arab’, which pushed many of my generation into an identity crisis, as one could never be Israeli enough or cease to pose a ‘threat’ as a Palestinian.

It took some time until conditions became ripe for Palestinians to orga-nize their own events. Following almost a decade of university student par-ties held two to three times a year during the term holidays, a crowd was created. Over the past two years, numerous parties for the young Palestinian crowd have been organized in different Israeli clubs and dance-bars, mainly in Haifa. Soon, several groups of party organizers began competing to fulfill the increasing demand, eventually leading to an unprecedented frequency of these events. They would lease a club for a night and organize a party, often combining DJs with live performance, according to their taste in music and their specific crowd. At first occupying less demanded timeslots, these parties became profitable enough to compete with Israeli events over prime weekend evenings. In the beginning, as long as the rent was fully paid and the bar brought a good income, the club owners usually found it a legitimate business opportunity. Soon, however, many of these clubs became hesitant to host ‘Arab’ events, especially if political content was to be performed. In order not to spoil this useful option, which still offered a fully equipped and large space for the Palestinian alternative music community to meet, expressions of nationalism had to be muted, obscured or at the very least, combined with Jewish-Israeli performers.

The assertion of a Palestinian modern, secular and liberal, national iden-tity has been perceived as threatening by Israeli liberals (Khalidi 1997; Massad 2006), who would rather denationalize the Palestinians in Israel under the rubric ‘Arabs of Israel’ (Rabinowitz 1993; Zureik 1979). Under-represented or censored, the case of arts and cultural production has not been an exception in this regard (Gertz and Khleifi 2010; McDonald 2009; Slyomovics 1991). ‘Arab’ music was categorized as an ethnic fragment of a greater diverse Israeli culture for many decades (Regev 1995). Since the Oslo period, ‘Jewish-Arab’ music partnerships or ‘Israeli-Palestinian’ per-formances of coexistence have been highly encouraged and promoted (Al-Taee 2002; Brinner 2009). Peace ensembles of ‘Arabs’ and ‘Jews’, such as Bustan Abraham, were regular guests at official diplomatic events. Usually

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presented as interfaith—’Muslims, Christians and Jewish’—or interethnic partnerships, consisting of ‘Arabs’ along with ‘Jewish-Arabs’ (better known as Mizrahi-Jews, originally from Arab or Islamic countries), this discourse encapsulates the entangled terminology of liberal Israeli agendas seeking to avoid the recognition of Palestinian national identity as equal and par-ticular.4 Performing Palestinian political content in Israel usually results in immediate sanctions. For example, recently, at a municipality organized festival in Haifa, Palestinian musicians Jowan Safadi and Walaa Sbeit were taken offstage and accused of incitement to terrorism.5 Hence the struggle has not been simply to claim space on the stage for ‘Arabs’ but to do so politically, as Palestinians.

Following the Oslo Peace initiatives Palestinian nationalism was recog-nized by Israel but it was conferred on Palestinians in the ‘67 territories (West Bank and Gaza) only, and paired with Israeli representations of a dubious equality that seemingly exists between two uneven sides. In so doing, a division between Palestinians living on the two sides of the Green Line was emphasized. Furthermore, in the international arena, Israeli has-bara (literally explanation, read propaganda) set to brand Israel as a liberal country that protects cultural ‘minorities’ and social diversity. This has often served to contrast Israeli society with homogeneity and low tolerance of difference within Palestinian society at large, and the ‘67 territories in particular. Such politics of representation received great attention in rela-tion to the ‘pinkwashing’ of Israeli troublesome policies against Palestinians and amidst attempts to co-opt the Palestinian LGBT community to the Israeli liberal camp (Elia 2012; Puar 2011).

A Palestinian independent cultural alternative in Israel—both national-istic yet tolerant to difference—was not easy to establish amidst an Israeli geography of marginalization and self-protecting Palestinian traditional-ism. ‘We lack a true Palestinian urban metropolis’, a blogger from Jaffa told me, ‘We either have mixed cities or big village-like cities’. My interlocutor was pointing to ‘mixed Jewish-Arab’ towns, such as Acre, Lydda and Ramleh, which are usually urban peripheries, suffering from underinvestment by the state and high unemployment (Yacobi 2004, 2009). Struggling for day to day survival, these Palestinian populations find little interest in organizing

4 For more on the politics of ‘Arab-Jews’ identity (Lavie 2011; Shenhav 2006) and specifi-cally in relation to music (Horowitz 2010; Saada-Ophir 2006).

5 Beni Izra’el, ‘Haifa: A festival for bringing together turned into a demonstration of incitement’ (Hebrew) (NRG, 10.7.2010): http://www.nrg.co.il/online/54/ART2/128/267.html ?hp=54&cat=872.

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or attending cultural activities. On the other hand, in what is officially rec-ognized by the state as ‘Arab cities’, like Shefa’amr, Taybeh, Sakhnin or even a population center like Nazareth, kinship structures and religious sanctions are still very prominent in a similar way to that in Palestinian vil-lages. In such conservative environments, social difference is usually con-strained by the communities that reside there themselves.

To escape this climate of social control, ‘mixed’ university cities such as Haifa, Tel Aviv or Jerusalem offer young Palestinians individual freedom along with the possibility to pursue higher education and find employ-ment. Alienated by the Jewish-Israeli society and state, these young adults were the leading force in forming civil institutions among Palestinian urban communities. Of all the university cities, Haifa was most successful in cre-ating a Palestinian independent cultural urban center inside Israel and became a stronghold for the alternative music scene, largely due to internal changes in center-periphery relations in Israel. Unlike Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, the decline of Haifa’s heavy industry contributed to the loss of its centrality in the Jewish-Israeli context and allowed more space for Palestinian civil self-empowerment. This comes along with Haifa’s proximity to large Palestinian populations in the Galilee and the Triangle areas that could freely relocate to the city (Leibovitz 2007).6

During the past two decades, several cultural institutions and enter-tainment venues have been independently established by Palestinian communities inside Israel. Popular events staging live music are occasion-ally organized by theaters, music schools, community centers and NGOs. Although these institutions have been active in promoting Palestinian cul-tural activities (Jamal 2008), they mainly offer ‘high-culture’ concerts for families. These venues were rarely considered suitable for a ‘proper party’, where a young public can be free to dance, drink and smoke till late night hours. None of these institutions would allow such permissive behavior on their premises, mainly to avoid risking their reputation among the wider conservative circles of the Arab community.

In tandem with this development, trendy bars and cafes owned by Palestinians mushroomed, ironically, on Ben-Gurion Street in Haifa (Natour and Giladi 2011), slowly expanding to other towns. Some of these soon became informal spaces for art exhibitions and cultural evenings of poetry and literature. Able to accommodate only a limited crowd indoors, such

6 In contrast to Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Be’er Sheva (Bir is-Sabe’) that have smaller Palestinian populations nearby or isolated Jerusalem to which West Bank populations are restricted from moving to.

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nationally (re)claimed public spaces could at most offer the pavements in front of their businesses for larger live shows. This required a permit from the municipality, which often led to bureaucratic barriers or a confronta-tion with the police. It took several attempts to understand that for both the musicians and the participants this option was less desirable. Without selling tickets, in open spaces, bands were likely to make little profit. Moreover, these spaces were too public to maintain intimacy and keep away unwelcome outsiders. At one such situation, during a performance of the band Ministry of Dub-Key at a bar in Nazareth, a furious Muslim shaykh appeared with a rifle and a gang of thugs to stop the blasphemous display of music and consumption of alcohol during Ramadan.

In the absence of nightclubs in Israel owned by Palestinians, one of the greatest challenges of the Palestinian alternative scene was to locate spaces to stage its music and collectively practice its politicized culture. It has not been a simple task to find a property big enough to host large gatherings, where tickets can be sold, alcohol can be consumed and strategic isolation can be maintained. This situation urged event organizers to consider unconventional options in unlicensed spaces, away from law abiding insti-tutions or politically and socially marked places.

Unconventional Spaces inside Israel

After the organizers revealed the party location on Facebook at around 20:00 that evening, my friend Sara and I continued bar-hopping at Haifa’s bohemian Masada Street, before proceeding to our main course. Living in the UK for the past five years, but originally from the Galilee, Sara keeps up-to-date about the latest music developments in town only through social media. Excited but skeptical, this was her first time to attend an event of the local alternative scene while visiting the country.

The location was a multi-level glass building on the historical borderline separating the Jewish Hadar and Arab Wadi in-Nisnas neighborhoods in Haifa. The parking lot at the rear led us to the underground level. Past ‘secu-rity’—two young local thugs—a dark corridor led us to a table, lit only by a flashlight, where we were confirmed to be on the guest list (created via the Facebook event-page) and could then buy our tickets. In a few more steps we reached a glass door painted black and entered the party hall. The windowless space was large. A young female DJ was opening the night with broken rhythms and industrial sounds. Familiar faces were scattered around, chatting in Arabic over a drink from the improvised bar. People had

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arrived from all over the country, including the West Bank. Along with a few Hebrew and English speakers, some over-styled ‘Aravivim came to follow up on the latest in ‘provincial’ Haifa. The derogatory nickname ‘Aravivim, com-bining the two Hebrew words ‘Aravim (Arabs) and Tel-Avivim (people of Tel Aviv), is used by Palestinians from the alternative scene in Haifa to assert cultural authenticity over their counterparts in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, based on the lesser influence of commercial Israeli culture. The dissociation of alterna-tive Palestinians from Israeli culture here reflects not only national asser-tions but also class and center-periphery distinctions.

The ambiance at the venue was surreal. Red neon lamps softly lit posters in the dark space, revealing obscured soft pornography, refashioned images of the Egyptian ‘golden age’ of Tarab and a popular conspiracy theory symbol of the all seeing eye topping a pyramid. All this was intensified by the heat and humidity of a closed space on a mid-August night on the Mediterranean coast—where the public was offered little relief by the few hanging ventilators. As soon as the space got crowded, the drum ‘n’ bass band, Abu Rabus (sleep paralyses), went on stage. They were accompanied by two young singers, contributing Qur’anic Mu’azin and traditional Mawwal vocal improvisations in Arabic. With about 200 people cheering and softly moving their bodies to the beat, the air felt very dense. The ines-capable heat led a few guys to take off their shirts and wipe the makeup off sweating female faces. A drag queen with a natural moustache and blond wig was jumping on high heels, encouraging everyone to join the carnivalesque atmosphere.

After the performance, loud dub-step beats and glitches pierced through the smoke of cigarettes and smell of hashish. Cheap beer from cans was consumed extensively to cope with the natural loss of fluids. Those who were physically defeated by the harsh spatial conditions left more room on the dance floor for ‘the hardcore survivors’. Water and ice cubes had to be distributed from the bar to the dancers, who joyfully splashed it on each other while being carried away by the music. At 4 am, only two dozen remained. At this point, some of the young women had stripped down to their bras, still rhythmically moving. I went outside to breathe some fresh air and enjoy the sunrise, and to confirm that this was indeed happening in ‘sleepy Haifa’, where I grew up.

‘An Epic Night’ and ‘Rave-olution’ were among the comments posted next day on the Facebook event-page. My friend Sara told me: ‘It was noth-ing like what I saw here before. For the first time at a party, no one stared or touched me in a harassing way. I felt safe.’ This echoed the organizers’ aim to ‘create a space for the Palestinian young community where everyone is

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welcome to enjoy freedom, have fun and be himself. You were in our last party. Did you see that chubby girl dancing all night near the DJ station? We want people not to be ashamed of who they are’ and this applies to physical difference as much as gender, sexuality, class, religion or regional affilia-tions of Palestinians. This unique disposition was greatly enjoyed by many who were not able to achieve such freedoms in their families, at their jobs or at nationally and culturally marked public spaces. Some people told me they went to parties even if they did not like the music played that night, just because they wanted to express their support. The commitment to attend these events, despite the accompanying discomforts (coping with weather, distance, late night hours or harsh physical conditions), far exceeds market oriented habits of cultural consumption. The gatherings are about the collective sharing of otherwise marginalized individual posi-tions through self-empowering acts of pleasure. ‘We want to show that Palestinians know how to have fun, just like everyone else, but also not for-get our political cause’, one of the event organizers explained.

The search for spaces of pleasure to assert Palestinian subjectivities of difference, away from politically restricting and socially restricted institu-tions, compels event organizers to look for colorful spaces in urban land-scapes. Such heterotopias could be constructed in spaces where structural contradictions, like Palestinian/Israeli, business/entertainment, private/public, open/closed and legal/illegal, simultaneously take place (Yiftachel 2009). This was often achieved through twilight partnerships that could offer spaces for such unsanctioned empowerment. The glass building where the event described above took place was built by Jewish investors in the 1980s on top of the ruins of a pre-’48 Palestinian villa. It was intended for commercial use for both Palestinian and Israeli clients. However, after commerce shifted to shopping malls at the outskirts of Haifa, office spaces at the eight levels were gradually abandoned. Reflecting demographic changes in the area, shops on the lower floors were eventually rented to Palestinians and to the Filipino community of labor migrants to run a con-gregation hall. Following the ‘Second Lebanon War’ in summer 2006, rental prices in Haifa sank, and Nimer rented the underground floor for a pittance on a long-term contract. For two years, he ran a brothel and a gambling club, until the police raided the place and fined him heavily. He then offered the space for storage, only to realize later that it was more profitable to rent it for parties and occasional events.

Nimer’s space is a good example of structural contradictions being used to create a heterotopia of empowered difference, as opposed to mar ked spaces that sanction difference based on socially divisive categories.

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However, for the event organizers, it was only one of several temporary solutions. The high rent and conditions of extreme heat were more important considerations in the search for alternatives—ironically more important than the risk of dealing with a local criminal. Similar spatial appropriations in Haifa were found via personal contacts and in Palestinian-associated spaces. These included a wedding hall; a former grocery shop owned by a partygoer’s father; a failed restaurant in the Carmel Forest that belonged to an affluent Palestinian family; a car garage in the suburban industrial zone, and an old Palestinian house at the historical neighbor-hood of Wadi is-Salib. In this last case, the space was bought by one of the musicians’ family relatives from the government-owned ‘amidar company, which was responsible for settling Jewish migrants in Palestinian properties confiscated in 1949, and which has recently been selling these properties on the private market. It was offered to Ministry of Dub-Key as an exceptional favor, since the property had no business permits. The band members worked around the clock for two days to prepare it for a party. They fixed the electricity and installed a bathroom. The event was called ‘Arab A-Dub Attack’, fashionably playing with the Arabic word adab (mean-ing manners or literature). That night the crowd ended up enjoying the band’s live performance of reggae fused with Palestinian zajal (traditional sung poetry), then whirling to the DJ tunes of dub, afro-beat and world music under a colorfully lit ‘aqed (arched vault) dating back to the Ottoman period.

Although musicians and organizers often complained about the difficul-ties of finding appropriate spaces in the ‘Palestinian cultural capital inside Israel’, their occasional mobility between different spaces in Haifa is likely also a positive choice to avoid the habitual restrictions of over familiarity, increased exposure or undesirable responsibilities and regulations. This constant movement at the margins allows the maintenance of multi-sited temporal centers of alternative Palestinian resistance culture. It also cre-ates ongoing movement of reclaiming and appropriating space away from the eye of authorities.

High-Class Sanctuaries and Rave Pockets in the West Bank

Class Boundaries to Being Alternative in ‘Palestine’

In contrast to the situation inside Israel, staging Palestinian nationalism in the West Bank, especially in the areas under the civil control of the

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Palestinian Authority (PA), is almost a trivial matter. In a city like Ramallah, alternative music mainly provokes social criticism when it questions reli-gion, gender relations, class and governmental authority, but not national affiliation. Unlike cities inside Israel, Ramallah offers several clubs and spacious bars that could easily host a live music performance or a party. In this context, however, the challenge to be ‘really alternative’ relates to the internal class politics that increasingly characterize the city.

Since the 1990s period of the Oslo Accords, Ramallah has transformed from a recreational summer town to become de facto the Palestinian politi-cal, financial and cultural capital—leaving behind Israeli-annexed Jerusalem to function only symbolically. With generous foreign aid programs, and the partial return of PLO associates and their families (commonly called al-’a’idin, the returnees), neo-liberal policies caught ground in Ramallah, causing a massive internal labor migration. In the process of state-building, class gaps have emerged, especially with the PA’s latest government of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad that came to power in 2005 following to the second intifada (Taraki 2008).

The emphasis on ‘alternative’ lifestyle takes on a different meaning among Ramallah’s high classes. Consisting of al-‘a’idin who had worldly experience and financial clout after living abroad, as well as among emerg-ing local elites who made their wealth thanks to ties with the PA (Hanafi and Tabar 2005), these affluent Palestinian populations developed western-ized consumption practices underlining their disassociation from religious and traditional conservatism. In these circles, consuming ‘alternative’ cul-ture primarily means endorsing secular and liberal habits, such as drinking alcohol and pursuing romantic relations prior to marriage. Clubs and bars became the main gated sanctuaries where this class could publically social-ize under strict selection at the door and dance to commercial music, be it Arab pop (of Rotana Records) or Western MTV. In tandem, Palestinian music was displayed at newly founded institutions that organized events and festivals to promote the performance of local folklore or original ‘high-culture’ productions. A relative exception is Beit Saleemeh, a bar whose young owners offered space for the latest names of the Arab alternative live music scene.

Holding Israeli citizenship, which enables them to travel freely across the Green Line, Jowan Safadi and the Fish Samak punk-rock band members were excited to perform in Ramallah. Their motivation to take the three hour journey from Haifa was both the promising fan base in the city, and the financial reward the venue was able to commit to. This highlighted an ironic situation in which, despite the much weaker economy of the West

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Bank, live music is consumed by the upper classes or heavily subsidized by foreign funds, making it lucrative for Palestinians from Israel to perform in the ‘67 territories. After setting up the stage at the spacious yard of Beit Saleemeh, electric guitars accompanied revolutionary lyrics about infidels, disobedience and broken love. The show, however, hardly broke ice with the crowd. A few rows of fans were dancing and cheering to the band, but the majority of the audience, largely consisting of upper-class Palestinians and foreign development staff, remained seated at the tables enjoying their snacks and beverages.

I was soon called to the door by a young musician from Ramallah to con-vince the security guards to let him and his male companions into the event that was declared ‘for couples only’. Behind the high wooden fence, other groups of frustrated young men were strictly kept away. Mostly from nearby refugee camps, their dated effort to look like they belonged—with inten-sively gelled hair—did not seem to help. They would probably never get to see the place, and contradict the rumor that Beit Saleemeh is a brothel. Nor would they find out that Saleemeh is not a procurer, but simply an old lady who formerly lived in that house and already passed away. To vent their frustration, they whistled desperately, trying their luck with passing young women.

Deliberately missing that evening was the alternative artist circle of Ramallah, who would rather avoid the venue because ‘it is fake and exclu-sive’ and its expensive menu only proves its ‘class orientation’. The owners, on the other hand, argued that it is the only way to sustain a business that can afford to pay for live performances. Many musicians (on both sides of the Green line) found it better than an Israeli venue, a seated crowd in a theater or nothing at all. Others accused the Ramallah high-class ‘alterna-tive’ scene of being complicit with hegemonic power. To make a statement about their affiliation to Palestinian popular traditions of the working-class, a member of Ministry of Dub-Key found his own way to confront class-based power: ‘I tease those dressed in Lacoste shirts and high heels when we make them dance dabke [an Arab folk dance] at our show’.

The limits of being alternative, in the sense of not just being different but also defiant to subjecting power, are most seriously tested when con-fronted with law enforcement authorities. Whereas it is a social norm to resist the Israeli military regime, dealing with the Palestinian civil police is rather more nuanced. In Ramallah, club owners often stop parties after midnight to avoid confrontation with the police. ‘Imagine switching the lights on or turning the electricity off at the climax [of a party]’, a DJ from Haifa, used to long night parties, expressed his disappointment with the

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alternative scene of Ramallah: ‘If the Ramallah organizers can’t deal with their own [Palestinian] police, then it’s not worth the effort [of a long drive through the checkpoints]’.

Furthermore, the double standards of the neoliberal agenda of the PA are strikingly evident in its enforcement of gendered and religious spatial restrictions. Whereas foreign women are encouraged to live and work in the West Bank to promote human rights, including individual and women’s rights, local single women are forcefully sanctioned from living on their own. Several young Palestinian women who rent flats in Ramallah told me that not only are they questioned about their guests by some neighbors, but also by the Palestinian police. The period of Ramadan is another instance in which social privilege overshadows proclaimed individual liberties in the production of space. Those who violate the public order to fast during daytime risk arrest by the law-enforcing authority.7 However, the same authority also gives exceptional license to the ‘tourism business’ to sell alcohol during this period. Since permits are expensive to obtain, free alco-hol consumption becomes the privilege of the affluent, both locals and foreigners, within their gated sanctuaries of self-exclusion. In light of such ambiguous policies, criticism of the PA has been ever more strongly voiced among the middle-class alternative community. Although these are mostly confined to private jamming parties under the radar, since summer 2012, these youngsters have been taking part in the creation of festive temporary spaces for larger gatherings.

Dancing between Zones of Authority

We left our meeting point in Beit Jala around 21:00, a long convoy of about 30 private cars and several coaches. We drove through a few villages, avoid-ing checkpoints within the Separation Wall, to reach an Israeli-only high-way. Illegally crossing the West Bank on this road toward the south, we then turned onto a side road, which led us past two fenced Israeli settlements toward a dirt track that revealed scattered Bedouin houses made from exposed cement blocks. After another half an hour’s drive into the desert,

7 This new regulation in the West Bank (starting in 2007) is arguably enforced by the PA in order to assert sympathy for the Muslim majority in the area after Hamas took over con-trol in Gaza and as an answer to criticism against the liberal policies of the PA. See Eric Westervelt, Police Enforce Ramadan Fasting Rules in West Bank (NPR 11.10.2007): http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15178892 and Elhanan Miller, Palestinians Arrested for Eating on Ramadan (Times of Israel 2.8.2012): http://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinians-arrested-for-eating-on-ramadan/.

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we finally reached our destination, a steep and barren hill full of small stones and sand. According to the GPS, we were somewhere between Hebron and the Dead Sea. On this isolated stretch of land, which belonged to a Bedouin family, a nature rave was going to take place. This was the sec-ond such event in the West Bank organized by a crew from Bethlehem to bring together Palestinians hafeereh (diggers, meaning ravers) from both sides of the Green Line.

On top of the hill, the DJ station was set on a parked truck near a bar that offered cheap alcohol and hot dogs. With experience at Israeli raves, the Haifa delegation set its marks at the most strategic location, far enough from the music but facing the view to the east. By the time I greeted every-one and set up my tent in the neighborhood, the music became more rhythmic and the dance floor filled up. People were moving in ecstatic abandonment, while waving the distributed colorful light-sticks. For many, especially from the West Bank, it was their first nature rave. A few folks were wearing buttoned shirts, a source of amusement for the experienced ravers. Dancers were carried on their friends’ shoulders, just like the groom and the bride are in local weddings, a syncretic display of the rave’s syn-thetic sound with deeply rooted Palestinian cultural traditions.

A few hours later, ‘the Haifa neighborhood’ was still indifferently chill-ing, away from the excited crowd. Some were recovering from a party the night before, others were just lying down, waiting for their turn to play music toward the morning. Most of them, however, were whispering between themselves about the ‘lousy club music’ that was featured. This continued until around 3 am, when a Bethlehem DJ started with Goa Trance. By then some of the West Bankers had already left with the buses. For the Haifan northerners the rave had only just begun. As the music changed so did the drugs, the companionship of alcohol abandoned for other substances. With the first rays of light, Haifa DJs with their guest from Berlin were in control of the space. The sun was soon high enough to reveal the dust blowing from the feet digging in the desert-sand.

The event reached its end as the shadows of the colorful human figures dancing became shorter. Most of those who had stayed were now having a walk in the area or enjoying the view. In visual appreciation of the sur-roundings, someone remarked: ‘bless the nature parties that makes us travel to such beautiful corners of our country that would otherwise not be found on the map’. A small core refused to leave the dance floor after the party was declared over and continued dancing to music played from one of the parked cars. The Bedouin land owners observed curiously from the side. Finally the last dancers were exhausted by the heat and took refuge at

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the shade of the Bedouin open tent before heading home in different directions.

The following week in Haifa, I met some of those who attended the Desert Rave. The ‘clubby music’ at the beginning was excused, as the orga-nizers were inexperienced. Everyone seemed glad to have made it for the first time to a West Bank rave. Someone compared his experience at an Israeli rave when he had a film ‘atel (a negative psychedelic trip), imagining that all the Jewish people around were dressed in military uniforms and were carrying weapons and intending to hurt him. As a conclusion he added, ‘There is nothing like hearing Arabic in a party and dancing on a land that you know is yours’. A moment of agreement followed the state-ment, until another raver interrupted the silence: ‘ya man [oh man, using the English word], bala habal [stop the nonsense]. There is no difference between a Palestinian rave in the West Bank and here in Haifa. Both lands are occupied and are equally ours’.

This corresponds with the fact that the land where the Desert Rave was held is located in Area C, according to land divisions within the West Bank. Based on the Oslo Accords, this territory is under the control of the Israeli military, whereas the PA rules only in Area A, and Area B is under mixed governance. The rave was intentionally organized in Area C, which West-Bankers could reach to celebrate their defiance on ground and still be out of the legal reach of the Palestinian Police. In comparison, the Israeli army seemed to have not been provoked by a temporary incident on pri-vate barren land. To reclaim a space for unsanctioned collective pleasure for spatially restricted West Bankers, a breach was found in between different zones of authority, where freedom was territorially embodied for one night.

Being Particularly Different: Toward Palestinian Subjectivities of Festive Defiance

In the effort to create Palestinian festive heterotopias, two simultaneous strategies are applied. The assertion of internal diversity in the Palestinian context comes in tandem with insistence on Palestinian particularity and unity in relation to the Israeli position. This becomes a greater challenge amidst the Israeli embrace of depoliticized ‘Arab’ difference, either as a sub category of a larger Israeli component, or to present Israeli diversity in comparison to the Palestinian homogenized collective that fails to promote cultural difference. In contrast, the Palestinian alternative community

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faces difficulties enacting categorical multiplicity while at the same time maintaining Palestinian particular identity. It must thus look for pockets that challenge both the regime of conservative and traditional spaces as well as the conditional diversity of high-class enclaves, while simultane-ously defying the institutional authority that maintains such Palestinian order.

Amidst the danger of two-sided co-optation, the task of locating Palestinian heterotopias for the subjective empowerment of difference becomes harder spatially and more dangerous socially, yet it may generate greater flexibility in resisting power on various levels. In her call to turn sites of repression into sites of resistance, bell hooks has chosen the mar-gins as a space for radical openness to difference. In doing so, she asks: what else we can be while still being black? (hooks 1990). Turning this question to the Palestinian context, the alternative music scene seeks to redefine and expand Palestinian-ness, both internally and in relation to Israeli-ness. The staging of Palestinian counter-hegemonic subjectivities comes to legiti-mize and contextualize social difference within a Palestinian unity. It is about rejection of internal excluding oppression based on class, gender, sexuality, belief and cultural lifestyle, yet at the same time, rejection of Israeli fragmentation or co-optation.

The intersection, juxtaposition and diffusion of these social categories takes place within Palestinian heterotopias of empowered Otherness, where space is restructured and power is reclaimed at the margins. In The Art of Not Being Governed, James Scott writes:

All identities, without exception have been socially constructed. . . To the degree that identity is stigmatized by the larger state or society, it is likely to become for many a resistant and defiant identity. Here invented identities combine with self-making of a heroic kind, in which such identifications become a badge of honor’ (Scott 2009: xii–xiii).

Scott is referring to mobile hill communities in Southeast Asia seeking ref-uge from the authority of nation-states in high altitude terrains, to escape economic and modern political systems of control. While agricultural state-sponsored expansion causes such spaces to disappear under the grid of civilization, urban defiance to nation-statism, and other regimes of authority, emerges in changing or mobile temporally limited spaces. The TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone), as described by Hakim Bey (1985), becomes the horizontal answer to vertical regimes of authority. In the expansion of mapped and enclosed terrain, especially such as that of Palestine/Israel, the actual protective spaces are mobile and temporary, yet

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they expand in the imagination to be reinstalled from one event to another. Thus, the famous Palestinian resistant practice of sumud (steadfastness) becomes that of constant movement in space and time.

Strategies of radical Palestinian resistance through music face restric-tions at semi-open yet still marked spaces, such as Israeli clubs, civil society institutions or Palestinian bars in Israel and high-class ‘alternative’ enter-tainment in the West Bank. Although at times these spaces become successful sites of contestation asserting various modes of Palestinian opposition, they are forced to abide by the authority of law or social and political norms. In contrast, distant or obscure spaces that are still strongly associated with Palestinian spatial identity, such as Nimer’s place at the underground level at the glass building in Haifa, the old Palestinian house in Wadi is-Salib or the Bedouin private land in Area C, allow the temporary freedom of gatherings to celebrate a restructured order of Palestinian alter-native subjectivities away from hegemonic power.

I believe that creating such non-institutional heterotopias is important to redefine and expand spaces of struggle, in both physical and imaginary ways. Due to the attempts to delegitimize or ignore the Palestinian collective right for self-definition, it becomes imperative to assert a contextualized and politicized Palestinian national identity in this festive heteroto pian terrain. Under such conditions foreigners or even Israeli non-Zionists are present and welcome. These desirable ‘Others’ help creating a multiplicity of subal-tern alliances to defy hegemonic authorities that oppress them as well, yet also to make a stronger effect of Palestinian recognition on the ground. To be an alternative Palestinian and something else at the same time is to expand the Palestinian national struggle to other avenues of resistive alli-ance in order to gain both external international recognition and internal Palestinian legitimacy.

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Staging Particular Difference: Politics of Space in the Palestinian Alternative Music Scene

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