ABSTRACT
After more than sixty years of contestation, the “Question of Palestine” arises as the iconic model of geopolitical spatial dilemmas that has marked both the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. Even now, over sixty years later, it is difficult to comprehend how, between 1947 and 1948, over 400 Palestinian villages were systematically emptied and bulldozed, and an entire territory was confiscated in creating the new state of Israel (Sheik Hassan 2009). Not only is this conflict over space, and not only has it created new and extreme spatial configurations within historic Palestine; its impact has extended beyond these borders. The Nakba of 1948 and the Naksah of 1967 generated the largest and longest-lasting refugee problems in the world: currently more than 4 million Palestinians are refugees. As the late Edward Said (Said & Mohr 1999: 11) observed, the paradox of living in exile has remained a major element for Palestinians both outside and within the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT) since 1948.
