With its broad scope and theoretical and methodological flexibility, the field of mobility studies provides an apt framework for approaching displacement and the production of space/place in Palestine. Mobility can be a lens through which we explore power, inequality and, in this case, occupation. Mobility is key to the elaboration and affirmation of spaces as sites of particular configurations of power, identity, and meaning. For Palestinians, the organization of, and access to, space and mobility devolve from social and legal categories of difference.

Julie Peteet is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Louisville and a Fulbright Research Scholar in Turkey (2017-18) at METU. Her research has focused on Palestinian displacement, refugee camps, space and identity, and more recently mobilities and the policy of closure in the West Bank. She has authored three books: Space and Mobility in Palestine, Landscape of Hope and Despair. Palestinian Refugee Camps and Gender in Crisis.