Jerusalem: Leena Dallasheh

“So if you want to really learn what Jerusalem is and what happens here, come here and go to both sides. Come here and talk to Palestinians.”

— Leena Dallasheh

This is the sixth installment of a special miniseries responding to the U.S. President's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

For this episode, Unsettled producer Emily Bell interviewed Leena Dallasheh, assistant professor of history at Humboldt State University. They spoke about what East Jerusalem is like for its Palestinian population and the stark differences between East and West Jerusalem.

This episode was recorded on December 19, 2017 and edited by Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig.

_Note: At 4:30, Leena Dallasheh says synagogue when referring to the site at Mamilla Cemetery. She intended to say cemetery in this instance. _

Leena Dallasheh is an assistant professor of history at Humboldt State University.  She received her PhD in the joint History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies program at NYU. Her work focuses on the social and political history of Nazareth from 1940 to 1966, tracing how Palestinians who remained in Israel in 1948 negotiated their incorporation in the state, affirming their rights as citizens and their identity as Palestinian. She has published serval articles and book chapters, including “Troubled Waters: Governing Water and Struggling for Citizenship in Nazareth,” which appeared in IJMES 47 (2015). Before coming to NYU, she received a law degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Dallasheh is currently in Jerusalem for six months, working on her book manuscript, “Contested Citizenship: Nazareth’s Palestinians in the Transition from British Mandate to Israel.” The project is a communal biography of the Palestinian Arab city of Nazareth from 1940 to 1966, telling the story of this Palestinian community as it lived through the Nakba (the “Catastrophe”) of 1948. Through this, it presents a history of the early encounter between Palestinians who became citizens of Israel in 1948 and the Israeli state. The research during this period is supported by a fellowship from PARC-NEH/FPIRI.