"Multiethnic cities--where the political "other" is also a neighbor--play a pivotal role in situations of long-term conflict, and few places have been more marked by the tension between intimate proximity and visceral hostility than Jaffa, one of the "mixed towns" of Israel/Palestine. Daniel Monterescu argues that such places challenge our assumptions about national identity and challenge the Israeli state's goal of maintaining homogeneous, segregated, and ethnically stable spaces. In this nuanced ethnographic and historical study, he analyzes everyday interactions, life histories, and uses of space, describing the politics of gentrification and the circumstantial coalitions that define the city. Drawing on key theorists in anthropology, sociology, urban studies, and political science he outlines a relational theory of sociality and spatiality"-- Provided by publisher.

Introduction: Contrived coexistence: relational histories of urban mix in Israel/Palestine -- Part I. Beyond methodological nationalism: communal formations and ambivalent belonging -- 1. Spatial relationality: theorizing space and sociality in Jewish-Arab "mixed towns" -- 2. The bridled "bride of Palestine": urban Orientalism and the Zionist quest for place -- 3. The "mother of the stranger": Palestinian presence and the ambivalence of Sumud -- Part II. Sharing place or consuming space: the neoliberal city -- 4. Inner space and high ceilings: agents and ideologies of ethnogentrification -- 5. To buy or not to be: trespassing the gated community -- Part III. Being and belonging in the binational city: a phenomenology of the urban -- 6. Escaping the mythscape: tales of intimacy and violence -- 7. Situational radicalism and creative marginality: the "Arab spring" and Jaffa's counterculture -- Conclusion: The city of the forking paths: imagining the futures of binational urbanism.