Claiming the state: the everyday lives of Palestinian refugee youth in East Jerusalem

An understudied yet central aspect of the failure of the Oslo Peace Process is the lived impact of this failure on the lives of young Palestinians who have grown up in its wake. By examining the everyday lives of youth in the Shu’fat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, this thesis explores the changing production and enactment of politics among third generation refugee youth. While the Palestinian political elite continue to strive for a two-state solution that many in reality know is impossible, this study offers an account of the ways that young refugees continue moving forward with their own lives in spite of political stagnation. Drawing on fieldwork conducted over an 18-month period, it explores how and why young refugees begin to make stronger political claims on the Israeli State. Young people in Shu’fat camp hold both refugee documents and permanent residency status, enabling them a partial access to the Israeli State. Planning regimes and discriminatory bureacractic processes in Jerusalem are incrementally excluding the population of Shu’fat camp and its surrounding neighborhoods from the demographic of the city. While the state operates against them, these young refugee, permanent residents are making strategically pragmatic claims on the state. It asks questions of what remains of nationalism for third generation refugees in Palestine, and specifically, what forms Palestinian nationalism takes when Israeli citizenship, however conditional, becomes a viable alternative. By exploring the ways Palestinian refugee youth in East Jerusalem experience, navigate, subvert and ultimately make claims on the Israeli State, this research hopes to further our understanding of youth aspiration and agency in a context of protracted violence and displacement. In so doing, it hopes to contribute to the rich discussion about the changing content and form of politics in Palestine, painting a nuanced picture of what oppression and freedom look like to third generation refugee youth.