Squaring the Israeli nation: politics, poetics, and performances of dominance in Safra Square, Jerusalem

This article is devoted to analysing the design and symbolics of the Safra Square ( , Kikar Safra) and City Hall complex, Western Jerusalem. Built around the historic Town Hall of the British Governate, and inaugurated in 1993, the City Hall complex is strategically located along the bustling Jaffa Street, just west of the Green Line, and immediately north of the Old City walls. This threshold location is replete with historic and political significance, as narratively and visually expressed in the design and decoration of the square: its multiple memorials, artefacts, and other spatial interventions celebrate a ‘unified’ Jerusalem under Israeli administration (post 1967 occupation). This article introduces an inventory of how the design and spatial practices of the square relate to visual, narrative and political-performative dynamics. We discuss how the overarching narrative takes shape through an intertwined mechanism of petrification and mundanization, and show how Safra progressively has taken shape as a representational space in the heart of the city, saturated with particularist narratives that link the meaning of space to the legitimacy of military, political, and administrative control.