Enclosures from Below: TheMushaa’in Contemporary Palestine

This article traces the declining fortunes of themushaa’, a once‐prominent Levantine culture of common land. Palestinians managed to resist attempts by the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate to break up themushaa’.Under Israeli colonization, the remaining commons are now subject to another type of appropriation: individual Palestinian contractors seize hold ofmushaa’land and build on it. This article introduces the concept of “enclosures from below”, whilst looking at the dynamics of seizure of the commons by Palestinian refugees, who once were peasants practisingmushaa’on their lands and are now landless, some having become expert contractors. I show that the contractors consider their actions to be a form of resistance against the settler colonial project, manifested in the advancing of the Wall and settlement expansion. This is described through a case study of the Shu'faat area in Jerusalem. Changing uses ofmushaa’land reflect wider tendencies in the Palestinian national project that has become increasingly individualized.