הגיונות סותרים בירושלים המזרחית: מרחבים ציבוריים ומרחבים משותפים בשכונת א-ת'ורי

This article adopts the “Conflicting Rationalities” perspective )Watson,2003(, which focuses on dialogue, contradictions and gaps between the state and its excluded communities, in the process of shaping space.We use this perspective, to point at the ways in which the city space in East Jerusalem is formed through an interaction between “conflicting rationalities”: on the one hand, the northwestern modernist logic that forms the basis for institutional urban planning and governmental decision-making processes; on the other hand, the principles that guides spatial arrangements in the middle-eastern Islamic-Arab city, which form one kind of southeastern rationality; and the reaction of the local community to both rationales. The article examines the interaction between the conflicting rationalities by focusing on the public space of Abu-Tor neighborhood,also known by its Palestinian residents as Al-Thuri.Through a series of spatial mappings and interviews with the neighborhood’s residents, we analyze the gaps between the planning rationality, based on a rigid dichotomy that sharply separates the “private” 215from the “public,” and the Arab-Islamic rationality that moves in between the private and the public. In response to the gaps and restrictions imposed by these rationalities, the local community creates a hierarchy of intermediate states through separation spaces and partnership spaces.These intermediate spaces constitute a special foundation for daily life in the neighborhood, which we call “a partition network” and which is based on partition and distribution – spatial partnership along with separation,and meet the residents’ needs, albeit partially. This examination through both spatial rationalities adds a new dimension to the accepted view that analyzes the socio-spatial occurrences in East Jerusalem mainly in terms of control versus resistance. This understanding, as well as the analysis of gaps and conflicts between them, constitute, in our view, a basis for the advancement of a more fertile dialogue and a more rational and accepted development of space in Eastern Jerusalem. Moreover, the study findings, which demonstrate the consistency of traditional spatial organization patterns, are surprising considering the social structure of the neighborhood, which is not based on distribution according to the extended family principle, in view of the accelerated urbanization processes and despite the continued struggle against Jewish sovereignty in the city.