Normalizing “Gaza” in Jerusalem: Toponymic Abjection and Ontological (In)Security in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

This article extends the “material turn” in ontological security (OS) studies to include the OS politics of toponyms (place names). It does so by critically unveiling a crucial overlooked aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The process whereby “Gaza Street” in Jerusalem, a “benign toponym” with a functional meaning, became an “abject toponym”—an ambiguous object that elicits anxiety and ontological insecurity since it blurs the boundaries between “self” and “other” and disturbs existing political and social orders. Integrating “walking as method” and “participatory IR,” ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, and textual analysis in an extensive six-year study, the article further delineates the various formal and informal ontological security-seeking strategies—ranging from elimination, distancing, and normalization to humor, denial, and integration—that diverse actors (street residents, business owners, municipal bureaucrats, passers-by, and civic and political activists) adopted to manage and contain the ontological insecurity emanating from this “abject toponym.” However, despite considerable efforts to “separate Gaza from Jerusalem” by overlooking, erasing, or replacing the connection between “Gaza Street” in Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, the article demonstrates that the toponym “Gaza Street” prevails in Jerusalem, and Israel and the Gaza Strip remain intimately connected. The article concludes by highlighting its contribution in developing a new conceptual framework for studying toponymic abjection, and offering a novel typology of diverse OS-seeking strategies utilized vis-à-vis everyday abject objects, which can be applied on different scales (global, national, local) and across diverse political and geographical contexts.