Attentional apartheid: spatial filters of ethno-national identity in Palestinian and Israeli mental maps of “Al-Quds” and “Jerusalem”

Abstract

What do Palestinian and Israeli Jerusalemites see and unsee in their city? What epistemological prisms are used to construct and reify their ethno-national view of place? How do these attentional frames “filter” the spatial information? Tracing the phenomenological visibilities, invisibilities, and boundary-works in local sketch-maps and mental maps of Al-Quds and Jerusalem, the present analysis uncovers two predominant epistemological prisms, which serve as attentional filters in local perceptions of place: the residential templates of “village” and “neighborhood” and the cardinal directions of “east” and “west.” The observed prevalent perceptual reliance on these semi-neutral lenses in mental mapping authoritatively naturalizes the attentional foregrounding of spatial elements associated with one ethno-national identity and conversely reinforces the attentional backgrounding of spatial markers associated with the Other ethno-national identity. This emerging pattern of attentional apartheid reflects an extremely polarized, asymmetrical cultural classification of reality.