The city does not stand still. Urban rhythms move so fast that Jaffa has changed even since the publication of the book. Some trends accelerated while others are gradually transforming into new formations of conflict and cooperation. The main tension lies between ethnonational categories of difference (Jewish vs. Palestinian-Arab) and class. However, in the process, categories of identity and urban spaces metamorphose. Thus, the Andromeda gated community has recently seen the entrance of some well-to-do Arab residents, where few would venture before. Also, the category of the “Jewish gentrifier” itself is changing and now we see not only Ashkenazi Jews but also Mizrahi Jews caught up in the “Jaffa bug” of real-estate speculation. The power of urban capitalism seems to blur ethnic indexes. But beneath the surface lies a deep structure of exclusion, one which forces Palestinians to move out of Jaffa as it drives the frontier of “affordable” gentrification to other formerly disinvested neighborhoods in South Tel-Aviv (such as Shapira and Hatikva). With no political movement to speak of, gentrification allows a dialogue between the wealthy—Jews and Arabs—leaving behind primarily the struggling Palestinians but also Jews without means.

These conditions call for a normative framework and direct political action. As a theoretically-inclined political anthropologist and urban ethnographer, my intent was not to propose a detailed normative strategy or policy recommendation for conflict resolution. Rather, I sought to first attain a conceptual and empirical understanding of the troubled history of the present, without which any social movement is futile. Baron’s critique, however, is well placed and it’s high time for activists, policy-makers, and scholars to come together and rethink the “conflict” in relational terms of interdependence and mutual reciprocation. I hope the book will be read as an urgent call for action and as an invitation for others to take off from where my analysis ended.

Baron’s critique, which addresses “our ability to develop a normative argument in regard to the normalization of everyday violence,” is problematic in one respect. Normalizing everyday violence is precisely what is taking place in Jaffa and other ethnically mixed cities in Israel. What needs to be done is rather to point to the abnormality of violence, in a situation of profound injustice that should be altered rather than normalized. Institutional and urban violence cannot be contained and managed without treating the root causes that keep reproducing it. Seeing like a city is indeed the first step to be taken, in order to recognize the effect of scale in mediating social relations. Rethinking the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the bottom up, as a question of scale, could open up a space for binational political obligation from the city and resistance to the exclusionary logic of the state.