ABSTRACT
Introduction Mass displacements, with their attendant traumas, and the politics of mobility and immobility, are dual instances of the cartographic violence that has unfolded in the Middle East over the past century. They point to an implicit and, at times, explicit vision of the region in which imagined ethnic-sectarian, and perhaps tribal, affiliations and identities are isomorphic with particular spaces. On the ground, this suggests that while the formula associating space, territories, identities, and cultures has come un-done in anthropological thinking, it is alive and well and indeed is a conscious political project. Invasions and occupations with their projects of dismantlement are attempts to re-write local and regional geographies, craft new ethnic-sectarian and national spaces, impose external dominance, and squash the idea of resistance. These projects are well underway in Iraq and Palestine, each with its local variant and particular forms of violence. In both projects, territorial impulses and sentiments have engendered large numbers of displaced people. They are the human side of imposing imagined spaces, boundaries, and social entities. Indeed, in both cases, one can speak of a humanitarian disaster.
