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Policy Lab

Mapping Palestine: Decolonizing Spatial Practices

by Zena Agha, Ahmad Barclay, Nur Arafeh on January 23, 2020

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"The practice of mapping in Palestine-Israel has long been an exercise in power, imperialism, and dispossession." So writes Zena Agha in her recent policy brief for Al-Shabaka. But how can maps be reclaimed as tools for resistance? And can they be utilized to help envision a different Palestinian future?

In our first policy lab of 2020, Zena Agha and Ahmad Barclay join host Nur Arafeh to discuss the ways in which maps and other visualization tools serve as sites to entrench power disparities as well as to empower communities to reimagine their colonized homelands.

Zena Agha

Zena Agha served as Al-Shabaka's US Policy Fellow from 2017 - 2019. Her areas of expertise include Israeli settlement-building in the occupied Palestinian territory with a special focus on Jerusalem, modern Middle Eastern history, and spatial practices. She has previously worked at the Economist, the Iraqi Embassy in Paris, and the Palestinian delegation at UNESCO. In addition to opinion pieces in The Independent, and The Nation, Zena’s media credits include the BBC World Service, BBC Arabic and El Pais. Zena was awarded the Kennedy Scholarship to study at Harvard University, completing her Master’s in Middle Eastern Studies.

Ahmad Barclay

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Ahmad Barclay is an architect and environmental designer presently based in Beirut. He is co-founder of arenaofspeculation.org, and also works on Visualizing Palestine and #3awda. Ahmad previously worked with DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency) on the “Laboratory of Returns” project, investigating architectural models for the return of Palestinian refugees. His academic research has focused on the potentials of architecture and planning as tools of 'spatial resistance' in the Palestinian struggle.

Nur Arafeh

Al-Shabaka Analyst Nur Arafeh served as Al-Shabaka's Palestine Policy Fellow from 2015 - 2017. Nur is currently doing her PhD in Economic Development at the University of Oxford. She previously worked as an Associate Researcher at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS), and as a Visiting Lecturer of Economics at Al-Quds Bard College. She has a dual BA degree in Political Science and Economics from the Paris Institute of Political Studies-Sciences Po and Columbia University, and holds an MPhil degree in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge.

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