The Palestinian-Israeli market: ‘feels like somewhere else’

ABSTRACT

This article explores the relations between Israel’s Mizrahi Jews (Middle East and North African countries’ descendants) and Palestinian citizens as manifested in the popular open-air market of Kafr Qasim, a Palestinian town in central Israel. The town’s market is a unique space where Jews and Palestinians work, shop, and hang out side by side. This article argues that visitors, vendors, and market owners perceive the market as a space offering an alternative social and political order for various groups suffering from oppression within Israeli society. Specifically considering settler colonialism implications and the status of Mizrahi Jews in Israeli society. Following findings from an ethnography conducted in Kafr Qasim between 2016–2019, it is argued that the town’s market carries elements such as perceptions of shared cultural space and elsewhereness that allow both Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian citizens to feel more comfortable than in other public places in Israel.

KEYWORDS:

• Israel/Palestinian
• Mizrahi Jews
• market
• ethnographic research
• urban food spaces

Introduction

Every Saturday, they meet at the ‘parliament’ in the Kafr Qasim market to discuss the latest burning issues. In the ‘parliament’, as they refer to themselves, there are three to five long-time friends sitting around a table next to a stall selling thin Labane-filled pitas, other local baked goods, and coffee. Two members sit on upholstered wooden chairs that indicate seniority and status, while others sit on white plastic chairs. Occasionally, familiar by-passers are invited to join the conversation. Among the group’s regular members are both Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel. One Jewish member in his fifties explained the uncommon sight, ‘We are a generation that has a lot in common. I grew up in the city of Lod. How do you think we spent our time? We hung out in the streets and picked Sabres fruits (prickly pears). Both Arabs and Jews, we all grew up the same way’. The ‘parliament’ members invariably express the widespread local perception that ethno-national tensions do not exist in the market. In doing so, they perceive the space as offering an alternative socio-political order. ‘It feels like somewhere else, not like other places in Israel’, concluded one of the group members, and the rest nodded in agreement.

This article offers an interpretation of the relations between Jewish and Palestinian citizens in the context of settler colonialism as manifested in Israel’s Palestinian market. It will focus on Mizrahi Jews – Middle East and North African countries’ descendants who are a considerable number of Jewish visitors to the market. Given that the Palestinian citizens of Israel are a national minority suffering from material and cultural inequality (Jamal 2011) and that Mizrahi Jews historically and socially signified lower-status sites (Abutbul-Selinger 2020), it is argued that the market’s visitors, vendors, and owners perceive the market as offering a space for an alternative social and political order. To the least, they think of it as a somewhat de-politicized space where ethno-national tensions are less noticeable. Although Israel’s urban spaces are influenced by settler colonialism implications and the status of Mizrahi Jews in Israeli society, the Kafr Qasim market carries elements such as perceptions of shared cultural space and elsewhereness – feeling somewhere else – that allow both Jewish and Palestinian citizens to feel more comfortable than in other public places in Israel.

In addition to its empirical contribution to the literature on Jewish and Palestinian citizens’ relations in Israel, this article suggests a theoretical contribution to understanding intergroup encounters in public spaces. Given that many open-air markets worldwide present tense relationships between diverse populations such as immigrants and old-time residents, tourists and locals, rich and poor, and so on. This article aims to emphasize the inclusive and moderating features of such spaces.

The Kafr Qasim market

The Kafr Qasim open-air market is a unique space where Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel work, shop, and hang out side by side. The market is located in the industrial area of the Palestinian town Kafr Qasim in central Israel and attracts thousands of people from the nearby cities every Saturday. The compound is privately owned by Halil Kadir (here and after, all names are pseudonyms), a kinsman of one of the largest and most well-known families in town, who established the market in 1998 next to his thriving marble factory. He quickly cast a concrete floor, built a tarpaulin roof over it, and started to rent vending spaces for more than a hundred vendors every Saturday. Most vendors are townspeople – Palestinian citizens of Israel, some others are Israeli Jews, and a few are Palestinians living in the Palestinian Authority.

The market is also known as the ‘Bird Market’ due to its avenue of stalls selling animals, mainly various species of pigeons, parrots, and other poultry. While the uniqueness of the bird’s avenue may attract some visitors, others criticize the unacceptable and unsatisfactory conditions in which the birds are held. Besides poultry, the market also features dozens of stalls with similar commodities as those found in many open-air markets worldwide, such as cheap houseware, clothes, toys, fresh fruits and vegetables, pickled vegetables, spices, sweets, and more. Most products are available in other places in Israel. However, the market’s location in a Palestinian town invites unique products rarely found in Jewish cities, for example, vintage stone flour grinders and kitchen utensils to prepare traditional local Palestinian dishes. The same goes for unique local ingredients, such as Arab-style cheeses, locally pressed olive oil, and traditionally pickled vegetables. Jewish visitors are also attracted to the seasonal herbs and fresh vegetables commonly found in Palestinian cuisine. Ingredients such as Facus (Arabic cucumber), Kara (white squash), Green Chickpeas, Hubeiza, fresh Vine leaves, Sorrel, Za’atar, and Lisan Al-Thor leaves (‘bull’s tongue’), to name a few.

The unpaved roads, the rickety roof, and the presence of donkey-drawn carts emphasize the distinction between the Kafr Qasim market and other markets in Jewish cities in Israel. This distinction is further validated by Susan Weingarten’s (2014) observations of the changes that markets have gone through in Israel. For example, she described her first visit, in the 1970s, to the Rosh HaAyin market, a Jewish city near Kafr Qasim which looked very similar to the Kafr Qasim market nowadays. Besides the poor infrastructure, she portrays the archaic image of selling living sheep and poultry for home slaughtering, an unusual custom that still partly exists in Kafr Qasim. Interlocutors have repeatedly mentioned these yesteryear features as attractions that distinguish the Kafr Qasim market from other markets in Israel. Most visitors, Jews and Palestinians alike, perceive visiting the market as a pastime. Whether coming with family, friends, or on their own, they spend two to three hours walking around, shopping, checking out what is new, meeting acquaintances, eating, and drinking coffee.

Methodology

This article is based on more than forty documented observations on the Kafr Qasim market between 2016 and 2019. As part of my fieldwork, I observed countless social interactions and dozens of discussions between visitors and vendors. Most observations were conducted around the few food stalls, offering some chairs for customers to eat, drink, and rest, following Sophie Watson’s (2009) notion that food stalls are focal points in markets where interactions between customers and vendors occur.

Over the years, market people got to know me better and got used to my sometimes intrusive questions. Market vendors’ inherent fear of people asking questions has decreased over time. Not all; some kept their distance, thinking I may be a tax or health authorities’ officer. These are the places where participant observation is most needed, keeping the ability to watch closely with minimal intervention with people’s daily routines. Also, I became more familiar with long-time visitors who gladly shared their observations about the market. As time passed, I often got invited to join groups of friends that gathered at the market regularly. These ‘parliaments’, as they refer to themselves, supplied rich bystanders’ knowledge of the market’s mechanisms. In addition to these observations, I have often turned to the market owner, Halil Kadir, to get his interpretation of the social interactions occurring on his land and the meaning he attributes to the relations between Jewish and Palestinian citizens from his worldview.

This article will first review the theoretical background for discussing public spaces in Israel in the context of settler colonialism, focusing on power relations between Jews and Palestinians in Israel and the positioning of Mizrahi Jews’ lower status in Israeli society. Later, it will focus on the unique characteristics of open-air markets and their suitability for examining inter-group relations. Then, it will present how the market’s visitors and vendors perceive the space and how it constructs the relations between Jewish and Palestinian citizens. Finally, it will discuss whether the Kafr Qasim market may function as a space for an alternative socio-political order in Israel.

The production of urban public space in Israel

To understand the mechanism of open-air markets, one needs to examine the bottom-up influences, similar to the way Henri Lefebvre (1991) suggested analysing the social relations between the various actors in a space to understand how it is produced and operated. According to Leonie Sandercock (2000), the regime uses the urban planning system to control the inhabitants’ cultural diversity. Sandercock argued that urban planning attempts to manage the fear of disorder and diverse populations in the city with the separation, exclusion, and removal of certain groups from specific areas. Urban public spaces in Israel present complex power relations characterized by social and spatial separation between Jews and Palestinians. According to Haim Yacobi (2009), these power relations in Israeli urban spaces are affected by the processes of territorial Judaization of lands in Israel. Evidently, the spatial and geographic dispersal of citizens in Israel is influenced by the mechanism of settler colonialism, not only as the result of historical events but as an ongoing process of the Zionist regime (Sabbagh-Khoury 2022).

According to Porter and Yiftachel (2019), the process and materiality of urbanization continue to be a primary mechanism for operationalizing the spatial and economic dispossession of colonized peoples. It is inseparable from the social and political power relations between different categories of citizens in Israel. For example, the ways Palestinian citizens are treated whenever moving to Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem (Yacobi and Pullan 2014). Tovi Fenster (2009) also identified traces of the Zionist ideology in Israeli urban planning, especially regarding spaces related to Palestinians. According to Fenster, the Palestinians’ discrimination by the planning and development authorities causes a backlash and opposition from below. As a private initiative on private land, the Kafr Qasim market is one example of this phenomenon.

Nevertheless, not only Palestinian citizens are affected by this settler colonialism mechanism. Oren Yiftachel (1998) conceptualized the Jewish state as an ‘Ethnocracy’ and argued that aside from creating national unity against the Palestinians, the settler-colonialism policy enhanced fragmentation and disparities between Jews because of the uneven division of space. The Ashkenazi Jews, originating from European countries, who held power positions, sent the Mizrahi Jews to live in the peripheral frontiers of the new state while establishing and deepening the inequalities. Therefore, the social and economic disparities of the Mizrahi Jews can be explained by their position as immigrant groups located between the founding settlers and indigenous people. An example of that can be seen in the racial hierarchy inherent to settler colonialism reflected in the displacements of first Palestinians and later Mizrahi Jews in some central areas of Israel, such as in the case of the Giv’at-Amal neighbourhood in Tel Aviv (Milner 2020). The Mizrahi Jews’ liminal situation stems from supporting the Zionist system on the one hand but questioning the state’s internal power asymmetries on the other (Daniele 2020).

While Israel’s urban planning is indeed the main force determining development patterns in accordance with its ethno-national ideology, in recent years, urban planning has become more decentralized and influenced by neo-liberal trends. These changes provide the urban framework with opportunities to create spaces that challenge the social order in Israel, both in housing (Braier and Yacobi 2017) and consumption spaces (Shtern and Bollens 2021). The ethnography illustrates the ways visitors and vendors perceive the market as offering an alternative to the ethno-national forces allegedly designing the space. Also, how the market is offering a shared cultural space for Palestinian citizens and Mizrahi Jews, both marginalized by Israeli Ashkenazi hegemony.

Intergroup encounters in public spaces

The issue of intercultural and intergroup encounters in public spaces has been a central discussion in recent years in the sociology and anthropology of urban spaces. At the heart of the debate is whether encounters in public spaces may reduce prejudice and anxiety between different social groups (Wessel 2009). This discussion is primarily based on the classic study of the social psychologist Gordon Allport (1954), who developed the Contact Theory, claiming that intercultural encounters may dispel prejudices and reduce hostility between two populations that share a common space. According to Allport, this result may occur under the following conditions: equality between the groups within the situation, a common goal, intergroup cooperation, and institutional support.

Allport’s argument has been challenged many times by scholars showing that people do not change their attitudes towards others based on a positive personal encounter. Group members always prefer to defend their stereotypes before changing their positions (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006). Another example is Gill Valentine’s claims (2008) that positive encounter results from basic courtesy and that prejudices do not change. However, a more recent study led by Piekut and Valentine (2017) revealed that in semi-public spaces, such as consumption spaces, there is a potential to contribute to the attitude change towards ‘others’. Another supportive finding was presented by Susan Wessendorf (2013), who conducted a study in London’s Hackney district, which is characterized by ethnic diversity. She found that intercultural encounters in public spaces are essential in shaping people’s perceptions for the better.

The studies mentioned above are mainly about ethnic, national, and religious tensions between long-time residents and immigrants, often under a majority-minority situation. In the Israeli context discussed in this article, the main emphasis is on the ethno-national tension between Jewish and Palestinian citizens. However, according to Ella Shohat, Eurocentric Zionism neglected Arab-Jewish history as part of the formation of Israel. She argued that the term Mizrahim distanced the ‘Arabness’ from Jews from North African and Middle East countries, aiming to create a unified Jewish identity separate from the Islamic world (Shohat 1999). As it will be shown later, ‘Arabness’ serves as an ultimate ‘other’ in the Zionist context and, simultaneously, as a shared cultural background that bridges the ethno-national tensions between Palestinian and Mizrahi Jews.

In Israel, relations between Jewish and Palestinian citizens are characterized by mutual alienation between the two populations. Survey findings from 2015 showed that a third of Palestinian citizens of Israel feel uncomfortable visiting shopping malls where Jews are also present; similar responses were obtained among Jews regarding the presence of Palestinians (Smooha 2017, 15). However, recent studies present the power of consumption spaces in creating fruitful intercultural encounters. One such example is Marik Shtern’s (2016) claim that Jewish and Palestinian relations in Jerusalem are challenged and reshaped by encounters in neoliberal spaces, such as malls, and that these encounters are based more on class affiliation than on ethno-national affiliation. Said Suliman (2016) presented similar results and found that malls in northern Israel play an essential role in allowing a two-way transformation of social and cultural knowledge of the ‘other’. Following these findings, this article argues that intercultural encounters in the Kafr Qasim market have positive outcomes due to the perception by all actors that the market offers an alternative socio-political order to the one that exists in other public spaces in Israel.

The market as a space for examining social relations

Markets are long-standing institutions for exchanging goods and ideas. Some markets were replaced by supermarkets, retail chains, and malls in the global North and West, starting in the first half of the 20th century. Bell and Valentine (1997) argued that markets survived thanks to unique features that modern alternatives have failed to provide, including low prices, specialist stalls, local artisans, and unique products that are not easy to find elsewhere. Most of all, for locals, the market offers a warm and personal relationship between vendors and customers, social gatherings, and a space where one can keep up with community news (ibid.:139). The market experience offers characteristics that sometimes seem abstract and intangible, making it difficult for entrepreneurs to copy and paste to create artificial commercial spaces, such as food chains and fast-food courts in malls. Ethnographic studies have portrayed intangible characteristics, such as the magic of the market (Watson 2009) and the satisfying feeling of successful bargaining and purchasing in the market (Buie 1996). Negative feelings are sometimes attributed to the market’s characteristics, such as non-unified product qualities and prices, which often cause customers to distrust vendors (Fanselow 1990). Nevertheless, markets have become tourist attractions worldwide for both domestic and international tourists (Richards 2012). Similar to the global trend, markets in Israel, including in Palestinian towns, have become hotspots in recent years (Maimon 2015).

An open-air market is a space of consumption that operates according to economic logic. However, according to Theodore Bestor (2001, 9227), the social and cultural perspectives see markets as ‘arenas for cultural activity and political expression, nodes inflows of information, landmarks of historical and ritual significance, and centres of civic participation where diverse social, economic, ethnic, and cultural groups combine, collide, cooperate, collude, compete, and clash’. Clifford Geertz (1978), in his study of the market of Sefrou, Morocco, proposed two prominent and opposing approaches to examining a local market. First, he stated that a local market is a purest and simplest form of supply-demand capitalism. Second, he claimed that the market space is immersed in the local socio-cultural context, making it difficult to analyse it according to modern economic patterns. Nir Avieli, who conducted a comparative study on markets in Israel, has developed Geertz’s argument that the local market is a microcosm of the local society. Avieli claimed that because markets mainly attract weakened socio-economic groups in Israel (Mizrahi Jews, immigrants, Palestinians, the elderly, and poor people), not only the sociocultural structure is reflected but also the central tensions of Israeli society (Avieli 2017, Personal Communication). This article argues that the case of the Kafr Qasim market presents a different model in which the space may contribute to the reduction of Israeli society’s ethno-national tensions.

Given that the market is an applicable space for examining social relations and assuming that public spaces in Israel are affected by the tense relations between Jews and Palestinians, in the next section, I will present the unique characteristics of the Kafr Qasim market, from which I conclude that people perceive the market as a space of alternative socio-political order. A perception that stems from the sense of a shared cultural space for Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian citizens, as well as the market’s sense of elsewhereness – feeling like they are somewhere else.

A space for shared culture: Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian citizens at the market

In the aforementioned ‘parliament’ sessions, the discussions hardly concerned the ethno-national tensions in Israel. Most conversations revolve around civic issues, such as the cost of living (‘unbearable to live here’), the disappointment of politicians (‘everyone is corrupted, no matter which political side’), the arbitrariness of the law (‘what is the point of fining drunk rider on a small electric scooter? He can only hurt himself’). Whenever I asked about the ethno-national tensions in Israel, everyone unanimously claimed they were irrelevant. ‘What difference does it make? Here everybody is Amcha Israel’, said one Palestinian, using the biblical phrase whose contemporary meaning is the simple people from the lower classes. When I once insisted on speaking directly about the tense relations, one of the members immediately dismissed my remarks while waving his hand, ‘Let it go; it’s not interesting’. The avoidance of the disruptive issue was often channelled towards conversations about the similarities in their life experiences, preferably customs, lifestyle, food, and music.

Many believe that the space highlights the cultural resemblance between most of the market’s people, vendors, and visitors, whether Jewish or Palestinian. As one ‘parliament’ member said, ‘We are all Arabs here’. He meant that besides the Arab-Palestinian citizens, most of the market’s Jewish visitors are Mizrahi Jews. Indeed, many Jewish visitors testified that they are attracted to the market’s Arabness, an element they believe is deliberately missing in other public spaces in Israel. According to Guy Abutbul-Selinger (2020), the Mizrahiness was historically and socially shaped by locating Mizrahi Jews in lower-status sites, such as peripheral neighbourhoods, vocational high schools, and non-combat army units. It was made possible due to the “traditionalization” and “orientalization” of the Mizrahi subject. In this process, musical genres, occupations, and behaviours shaped in lower-class sites were signified as Mizrahi (ibid.:217). According to Pnina Motzafi-Haller (2001), the same process also determines patterns of inequality and affects access to power and privilege. Gil Eyal (2006) suggested the diminishing term “Arab village” in Israel was used to build the identity of the Palestinians as a minority and institutionalize control over them. Given their different backgrounds, Israelis’ hegemonic identity was constructed as modern, Western, and progressive. At the same time, the ‘Arab village’ intentionally represented the traditional and irrational characteristics later attributed to the Mizrahi Jews.

Studies have indicated the growing presence of Mizrahi culture in Israel and its influence in shaping Israeli cultures, such as music (Regev and Seroussi 2004) and food (Avieli, 2018). However, many still see the market as an alternative to other public spaces lacking this feature. For example, one Jewish visitor explained the joy he gets from listening to Arab music at the market and finding partners for discussing that music, ‘Where else can I hear Umm Kulthum songs? Whom will I talk to about Dalida?’ Another Jewish visitor confirmed that the Arabic music played at the market evokes nostalgic feelings.

The following story exemplifies that Mizrahi culture is still fighting for its place in Israeli culture – and that Jews find this place in Kafr Qasim. On one of the Saturdays, a well-known Mizrahi musician stood near the market’s entrance to sell CDs. Most visitors could not ignore the iconic figure standing before them; some asked him for a picture, to which he happily agreed with the condition of not capturing the homemade CDs he sells for ten Israeli Shekels. Later that week, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Israeli Ministry of Culture for his tremendous contribution to Israeli music. Although he finally received the state recognition he deserved, he returned to the market the following week, where his music was valued both culturally and economically. He needed the appreciation of the market visitors as well as their money. His return reveals his sense of belonging to the rare Jewish-Arab shared cultural space at the market.

A slightly different example is a sixty-year-old Jewish visitor who bought a cylindrical-shaped metal ornament from the Islamic accessories stand. He held up the piece and excitedly explained that a similar ornament was hanging at his mother’s house. He said, ‘She brought it all the way from Iraq, and it was lost after she passed away. I saw it, and it took me back to my childhood memories – I had to buy it’. This visitor proudly wears a Star of David necklace on his chest, a Jewish symbol. Still, the item that reminds him of his mother was found among other Islamic religious accessories. Another case showing that people at the market enjoy the resemblance of Arab material culture was seen when a Moroccan Jewish woman in her fifties came with her three sisters to find unique cookware, ‘as our mother had’. She insisted it was difficult to find such a piece at Jewish markets and shops, but traditional Palestinian cooks still use it.

The intertwined connection between Mizrahi Jews and Arab culture is well illustrated in the work of Yehuda Shenhav (2006), who defined this group as Arab-Jews. According to Shenhav, the state of Israel, since its inception, has tried to alienate the Arab component of Mizrahi Jew identity in various ways. They were ultimately required to alienate themselves from the language, music, and lifestyle central to their identity and culture. Menachem Klein (2014) used the exact definition referring to a different group of people. He argued that in Mandatory Palestine, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a local-native identity had developed for Jews living among Arabs. According to Klein, the intercultural encounter created a consciousness of belonging to the geographically shared land and culture. Jews and Arabs shared this consciousness. He further argued that local identity was not an abstract idea but a reality of daily life.

Many interlocutors, Jewish and Palestinian alike, pointed out the absence of the Arabic language in public spaces in Israel. One example is Yosef, a Jewish visitor in his seventies, assisted by a wheelchair, who spoke lengthily in Arabic with Aysha, a baking goods stall-holder. She listened to him intently as she continued filling and folding the dough for pastries. They conversed in Hebrew and Arabic alternately, ‘It’s nice to furbish my language. Unfortunately, my children don’t speak Arabic’. He has a Jewish-Iraqi community next to his home, but the market became a worthy alternative since he stopped going to the synagogue on Saturdays. Similar was a conversation in Arabic held between a Jewish customer and a Palestinian vendor, which led to loud rolling laughs. The former told the latter about his daughter’s upcoming wedding. The vendor jokingly asked if they needed weapons for the wedding (referring to Palestinian weddings’ controversial custom of shooting towards the sky). This ice-breaker led to a more extended conversation in Arabic regarding the hardships of being suppressed in Israel as Arabic speakers. The Palestinian vendor mentioned his daily struggles with Hebrew-only governmental websites. And the Jewish customer shared the traumatic story of his immigration from Morocco when he was ten. ‘We are all the same here. At the market, you cannot even tell who is Arab and who is Jewish’. He jokingly suggested, ‘You can only tell if you are greeted with “Ya’atik al-Afiya” (يعطيك العافية - wishing for health in local Arabic). No Moroccan Jew will greet you that way because “Afiya” means “fire” rather than “health” in the Moroccan dialect’. They both smiled in agreement.

Many Mizrahi Jews, primarily adults, feel comfortable talking in Arabic on Arab issues that interest them and their Palestinian acquaintances. For example, I heard numerous conversations about childhood memories, family histories, hardships of migration, music, and food, as well as complaints about Ashkenazi hegemony pushing aside their cultural assets. Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian citizens share the feeling that even 70 years after the formation of the Israeli state, their language, lifestyle, and appearance have not yet been accepted. It was made evident by the 2018 Nation-State Law that downplayed the Arabic language from Israel’s second official language to a language of special status. The law, intended to strengthen Jewish identity and exclude non-Jews from its national scheme (Zeedan 2020), simultaneously harmed Arabic-speaking Jews who grasped the language as part of their culture and identity. In response, intellectuals filed a petition to the High Court of Justice, calling for the cancellation of the legislation for offending both Jewish and Palestinian heritage and culture (Noy 2019).

Reducing the ethno-national dimension at the market

Highlighting the shared cultural resemblance of suppressed groups in Israeli society reduces the ethno-national dimension of the market’s vendors and visitors. Since the ethno-national dimension is the central tension in Jewish-Palestinian relations in Israel (Mizrachi and Herzog 2012), I argue that its reduction, to some extent, allows for a re-examination of power relations in the market space. Kadir, the market owner, explains his efforts to leave the ethno-national dimension outside, ‘There is no discrimination here, all vendors and customers know I set the rules at the market, and everyone obeys, whether Arab or Jew. I have a Yeke security manager [a nickname for German descendants known to be incorrigible]; he has no sentiments. That is it. That’s the business’.

The market owner emphasized his attempt to balance power relations on his private land. While saying so, he criticized other commercial spaces in Jewish cities for not making the same efforts. He also mentioned some Jewish visitors seeking to bring their symbolic superiority into the market. One example is that of a young Jewish visitor who argued with one of the gatekeepers, who spotted a gun tacked in the visitor’s Jeans. The old and pale gatekeeper asked him to present a weapon licence in an almost apologetic voice. The visitor, who was already a few metres within the compound, replied loudly from afar that he held a licence. The gatekeeper tried once more, ‘Okay, sir, but I must see it to allow you in’. He only then reluctantly returned and waved his plastic licence in front of his face, saying, ‘I’m Jewish. I’m the last person you need to worry about around here’, right before slowly fading into the market’s crowd.

This case illustrated the Jewish visitor’s ‘insult’ due to the requirement to present his weapon licence. Although he will be required to do the same in most places in Israel, the request seemed unnecessary in a Palestinian town. In his eyes, he does not pose a threat; he is threatened. This example illustrates the blurring of power relations in a Palestinian-owned public place in Israel, where Jews are only guests. Another expression of power relations examination occurs when Jewish customers ask for service from stall-holders using the common epithet ‘Balbait’, – a distortion of the Hebrew words Ba’al (owner) and Bait (home), often used to devalue one’s status. Often, the stall-holders use the same epithet to refer back to customers, maybe to emphasize the situation in which it is unclear who the real boss of this space is. According to Andreas Wimmer (2008), the act of blurring symbolic and cultural boundaries between different ethnic groups is a strategy for undermining ethno-national categories. Similar practices were adopted by various minority groups in Israel (Mizrachi and Herzog 2012). Tamir Sorek (2008), who researched in Kafr Qasim, found that townspeople tend to highlight the civic component of their identity at the expense of the ethno-national element. It helps them deal with the built-in confrontation with Israeliness. It is posited that different actors within the Kafr Qasim market are acting to reduce the ethno-national dimension by highlighting the cultural dimensions of their identity.

The cultural resemblance allows Palestinian and Jewish visitors to feel more comfortable and act more naturally. Some explained that in many other public places in Israel, they have to behave differently, fake or artificial. For example, a visitor who came with his family from the nearby Palestinian town of Jaljulia explained that the market suits his lifestyle and norms, ‘Here, I can talk loudly and smoke freely, and no one tells me anything’. The Palestinian market provides a friendly space to those whose appearance leads to their labelling as Arabs or Arsim – a derogatory term attributed to Mizrahi men and labelling them uncultured and rude. One Jewish visitor from the nearby town of Rosh HaAyin elucidated, ‘One of the things I like the most is that everyone keeps it simple, no boastfulness. I come here with a sweatshirt and a training suit; the market merely says come as you are’.

Evidently, as a Palestinian space, many Palestinians visiting the market describe their sense of comfort as opposed to the feelings of uneasiness they get in other public consumption spaces, specifically in malls and shopping centres in Jewish cities. An example of this is a case in which a young Palestinian woman residing in Kafr Qasim describes the different treatment she receives at the market compared to other places. ‘Here, I can behave naturally, not being stared at suspiciously’, she points to her head covering. ‘When riding a bus or entering a mall, I am very aware of my movements. I make sure not to make any sudden moves, so Jews will not think I am a terrorist or something like that. Here, I can act normally’. Her words echo the political aspects of women’s clothing choices in the public sphere in Israel, especially for Palestinian women (Greenberg Raanan and Avni 2020).

‘Their ease is our ease’, declared one Jewish food-stall customer who shared a table with a friend and a random young Palestinian woman. She added, ‘in here, we are all alike; look how easy it is to enjoy a meal together’, she laughed, covering her mouth humbly. The Jewish couple agreed. One clarified that ‘In Tel Aviv, you would not see such a sight’. The second explained, ‘You can look at them [the Palestinians] at eye level and overlook the Israeli-Arab conflict. You can sit here and not feel committed to the commercial world, with no sparkling, shiny plastic tables. I do not need the prestigious decor. I need the homely feeling’. In his view, when a similar socio-economic status plays a role in defining intercultural relations, the ethno-national differences are less significant.

Feeling ‘elsewhere’

Abed, a Palestinian visitor in his fifties, has been steadily coming to the market almost every Saturday since its opening. He works all week, and on Saturdays, he finally finds time to sit back and talk to his friends. ‘I really like coming here, seeing people, walking around, drinking coffee, and eating Za’atar pastry. The main motive for coming is the market’s people. Everyone is together, sitting and talking to each other. It’s a truly mixed place, unlike all the artificial encounters where Arabs and Jews meet for dialogue. It’s a place without politics, without quarrels, and without tensions. It feels like elsewhere’. Abed points out that the relationships between Jews and Palestinians at the market may be different because ‘it feels like elsewhere’. The perception of elsewhereness has come up time and again in the words of many people at the market trying to capture the essence of alternative space.

So, what do people mean when they refer to the market space as elsewhere? According to some, the marginality and otherness of the space make them feel like they are travelling abroad. It is common to hear comparisons to other faraway places. For example, ‘The Shawarma lies on its side over coals – exactly like in Turkey’. Or, ‘This pastry is just like Khachapuri in Tbilisi’. Once, I heard a young, loud teenager yelling to her father, ‘Wow, dad! It’s just like the market we visited in Thailand’, and shortly afterwards, they bought some colourful fabrics to use at the beach. Another case was the opening of a new stall of sugar cane juice. Many visitors were excited to encounter the beverage they tasted on their travels to exotic destinations. The owner of the stall explained, ‘I saved them the flight to Thailand. You can leap abroad for a few minutes for only ten Shekels’. Although the seller stressed that the sugar canes grow near his house in the Palestinian town of Taybeh, he insisted that ‘they taste the same as in Thailand’. In this matter, the market’s visitors enjoy imagining themselves in an exotic place, remote from Israel, where they are not required to deal with the tensions of Israeli society. Nir Avieli (2017) found a similar perception among diners in Italian restaurants in Israel, who sometimes imagine themselves in another, less conflicted, Mediterranean country – elsewhere.

Another interpretation of the elsewhereness relates to the notion that the market space is considered by many as politics-free. Therefore, they are often perceived as less affected by ethno-national tensions in Israel. Kadir, the market owner, suggests that the market is more resilient than other Palestinian businesses that are damaged both economically and socially whenever security relations between Jews and Palestinians decline. Usually, the political exploitation of security events accelerates the deterioration. For example, the chairman of the ‘Yisrael Beiteinu’ party, Avigdor Lieberman, a senior Minister in all governments of the last decade, called for the boycott of Palestinian-owned businesses on several occasions (Khoury 2017; Khoury and Lis 2014). According to Kadir, security events had a lesser effect on the Kafr Qasim market because ‘ordinary people are interested in business, not in politics’.

I witnessed the realization of this perception in June 2017, following violent clashes between Kafr Qasim residents and police forces. These clashes began after a protest against police incompetence in solving murders in town. They intensified after the tragic death of Muhammad Taha, a 27-year-old resident who was shot outside the police station by a civilian security guard of the compound. Later, the townspeople stormed and burned a police car and the local police station, which led to the town’s takeover by massive security and police forces. The clashes lasted for hours until dialogue between police chiefs and community leaders reduced the flames. Taha’s funeral, which took place a few days later, did not prevent the market from operating at almost the same capacity. The protest march that gathered thousands of people and took place on the following Saturday minimally affected the market’s activity.

On the following Saturdays, it was difficult to point out remnants of the tragic and turbulent events the town had gone through. The market’s visitors explained that they did not see the connection between the town’s violent events and visiting the market, unlike politicians, who link any Palestinian-related violent occasions to the ethno-national conflict in Israel. One Jewish visitor noted that ‘we are not really in the middle of Kafr Qasim; the market is in the industrial area’, highlighting the perception of the market as a consumerism space detached from the Palestinian town. Another one said, ‘Why blame the market’s vendors for the riots? Why hurt their income?’ Kadir, the market owner, believes that the market’s rapid recovery after every security incident stems from the perception that this space is politics-free and ethno-national issues are less relevant. It is a space where relations are based on economic, cultural, and interpersonal needs. In the same way, he also diminished the national significance of the town’s unexpected riots. He said, ‘It had nothing to do with the tension between Jews and Arabs – it was between the police and Israeli citizens’. Indeed, throughout the years of research, the market has proven its resilience in other security incidents, local and national.

Discussion: does the market present an alternative socio-political space?

This article argues that people perceive the market as an inclusive space offering an alternative to the socio-political order in Israel. The market’s visitors and stall-holders oppose the separation of Jewish and Palestinian citizens in Israel and mourn the consequences of the cultural disconnection between Mizrahi Jews and Arab culture. Many of the market’s visitors and vendors feel they act against the Israeli hegemonic social-political order that oppresses them by simply being there. These practices of anti-colonial resistance are found in many areas of daily life and are building decolonizing solidarities (Osuri and Zia 2020). This sense of resistance, often perceived as ineffective, has a role in enabling weakened groups to get along with daily life hardships (Scott 1985). Although classification categories, such as ethnicity and nationality, still play a significant role as axes of power, the boundaries and content of these categories are constantly challenged to allow individuals to reposition themselves in the Israeli hierarchy (Sasson-Levy, Shavit, and Ben-Porat 2014). The suspension of ethno-national tensions in the market is temporal, and a cultural-political partnership between Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian citizens is far from the potential that arises from cultural similarity. In this sense, the people at the Kafr Qasim market continue to imagine how it could be but have little to do with the existing situation.

It is not always clear how these perspectives materialize outside the Kafr Qasim market. The findings suggest that the market’s people’s belief in alternative social-political space seems to help them get along with the ambivalence regarding Israel’s ethno-national tensions and their often clashing hyphenated identities, such as Arab-Jews and Israeli-Palestinians. I claim that it stems from the market’s people’s sense of shared cultural space and from experiencing the market as a somewhat ex-territorial space providing a sense of elsewhereness. The market’s sense of elsewhereness resonates with the ideas of Rob Shields (1992), claiming that malls and markets are consumption and entertainment spaces that function as liminal spaces that benefit from chaos and the temporary suspension of the existing social order. Therefore, I suggest that the market’s people dim elements of ethno-national tensions to highlight other components of their being. Although it seems like the socio-economic status of the market visitors should play a more central part in their own identification, the cultural dimensions were more prominent and significant for my interlocutors.

However, there are cases in which the socio-economic component was the basis of Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian cooperation. One example was during the 2011 widespread social protest led by mainly middle-class students demanding affordable housing. Additional to the main protesters’ encampments that drew most of the attention, peripheral encampments represented oppressed populations such as Palestinian citizens of Israel and Mizrahi Jews. In some cases, these groups of protesters hurt by the Ashkenazi Jews’ hegemony joined forces demanding reform of public housing policies and social-security system and acted together in solidarity against evictions and house demolitions (Leibner 2015).

These examples emphasize the potential of defined urban spaces to accelerate social and political movements. Misgav and Hartal (2019) also highlight the importance of understanding the interconnections of politics and spatial dimensions within the urban context, particularly among marginal communities. They suggested that queer movements in urban spaces exemplified the relations between the state and marginalized communities and that activists and people roaming these spaces use tactics to develop political identities and alternative imaginaries. For example, according to Hartal and Sasson-Levy (2021), Tel Aviv is a ‘bubble’ where neoliberalism and politics of gay tourism created a new space for a unique local gay Mizrahi culture. They also argue that simultaneously, these spatial politics maintained postcolonial politics of ‘homo-nationalism’ and ‘pinkwashing’ (a strategy of promoting LGBT rights aiming to distract from other forms of violence). In this sense, forces from above and below concentrated in a particular space allow the examination of hybrid and complex identities – similar to the case of Kafr Qasim market.

The market is rich in events and loaded with cultural and ethno-national symbols and meanings. However, at the same time, it is also perceived as a space where ethno-national identities fade and history is less relevant. More importantly, Kafr Qasim is a space where people perform a different socio-political order, only to reject the alienation between Jews and Palestinians. It is not unique to Israel; different case studies of Australia’s aboriginal cities show that the contours of politics and power relations in indigenous urban spaces sometimes hint at a future and sometimes reiterate the past. According to Jane M. Jacobs (2012), colonizers and indigenous people participate in an ongoing negotiation around material and symbolic assets.

The production of a place is a never-ending dynamic process. According to Doreen Massey (1995), there is a constant tension between the past of a place and certain elements in its present and future. While the past has a natural grip on how a place is perceived, people sometimes mistakenly think it remained without the ‘pollution’ of contemporary characteristics. She emphasized that a place is a product of multi-directional global and local forces. The same is the desire to keep a place untouched and free of external influences, which is charged with socio-political meanings, including concepts such as tradition, heritage, and nostalgia.

The Kafr Qasim market is not detached from the Israeli tensions and everyday struggles, nor presenting a truly meaningful effect outwards. But it is a place where people come to enjoy the feeling of being elsewhere while leaving some of the hardships outside. The Kafr Qasim market is constantly changing, and it is constructed and reproduced by the owner, stall-holders, and visitors by obscuring the past, highlighting the present, and imagining the future.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Nir Avieli and Pnina Motzafi-Haller for their insightful comments on the first drafts of this paper. I am very grateful to the devoted urban studies reading group, especially to Nufar Avni, Noga Keidar, Hila Zaban, Merav Kaddar, Nir Barak, and Yinnon Geva, who shared their thoughts and made this paper so much better. I also thank the editor and three anonymous readers for their constructive suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.