Archaeo-politics in the making of a Palestinian National Spatial Plan

The thesis explores the dynamic relationship between place and space, and how they are transformed cyclically by archaeo-politics. It highlights the process of de-historicizing a place, re-appropriating a space, and rediscovering it as 'our place' through the deterministic approach to technology chosen by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to assert and defend its nation-state-building efforts.<br><br>The thesis challenges the deterministic and delusional premises of the PNA, which sidesteps physical sovereignty and monopolistic control of the territory for a 'state of the art' technology, and its neo-liberal promises of prosperity and development of landscape, archaeological, and cultural heritage in exchange for political 'stability' and external international validation and acceptance.

It aims to expose the NSP as the admission ticket to consider Palestine as almost already achieved and normalized internally and, therefore, ready to be accepted as normal externally.<br><br>On the other hand, the Israeli colonialist process is equally manifest and powerful with its implicit agenda of annexation and segregation. As a result of these adversarial and collaborative forces, the PNSP has been and remains obstructed.