Gaza: Indigenous Urbanism amidst Elimination Video

The Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, in partnership with the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, the African Studies Program, and Georgetown University Qatar, hosted a conversation with University of California Los Angeles Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian American Studies Dr. Nour Joudah on September 16 on the Georgetown University campus. In this talk, Dr. Joudah opens for conversation these eliminatory models to come as Palestinians in Gaza continue to live through a genocide.

Gaza forces us to ask questions that challenge our assumptions of not only what defines or qualifies a settler colonial city, but also the relationship of indigeneity to the urban. It provides us with an opening to place indigenous lives in an urban landscape born of indigenous history, not of colonial settlement. Gaza’s decades under siege highlight the unique forms that settler colonial elimination can take, herding and kettling – confining Palestinians – all the while witnessing them grow and build a city, despite ongoing domination of a settler colonial state. The genocide of this last year has propelled these lessons to new levels and created a model for future Israeli violence across the Palestinian landscape, both urban and rural. In this talk, Prof. Joudah opens for conversation these eliminatory models to come as Palestinians in Gaza continue to live through a genocide.