Urban environments are often disputed over issues of class, gender, ethnicity, and race. Urban citizenship within such spaces has been found to be fragmented, or even 'dark.' Intermediary organizations that represent spatially concentrated communities often operate under these contentious circumstances. This paper focuses on the role of intermediary institutions in the contested city of (East) Jerusalem. Building on in-depth interviews and site visits, we suggest that CCs implement a limited form of urban citizenship via a range of functions that vary from service provision to political representation. We explain the process by which this form of urban citizenship is created and operated, and highlight the precarity of the concept in a non-democratic context where most people are stateless residents. Through this case, we seek to enrich the literature on urban citizenship and CCs in contested cities with an emphasis on the multiple urban and national logics that operate in space.

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Do the leaders of minority communities in divided cities influence group members’ expressed willingness to engage politically with rival groups? Studies typically link group members’ willingness to engage with rival groups to direct contact between individuals from opposing groups. However, such contact is problematic in divided cities, wherein opportunities to interact are scarce and frowned upon. Focusing on the contested urban space of Jerusalem, we find indications that the diverse nature of community leadership in East Jerusalem can influence Palestinian residents’ attitudes towards political engagement with Israeli authorities via municipal elections. The ‘middlemen’ role can explain community leaders’ influence in divided cities. They facilitate indirect contact between their constituents and the other group’s members or institutions. Our analysis employs original data from a public opinion survey conducted among Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem immediately prior to the Jerusalem 2018 municipal elections. It has ramifications regarding urban governance for other divided cities.

The complexity of planning and implementing peacebuilding processes has been discussed using various approaches, for example, adaptive peacebuilding, and the “local turn” in peacebuilding. These theories argue that peacebuilding is a nonlinear and contextual process, contrary to the linear, static conception of the liberal peace paradigm. This paper contributes to this field and seeks to learn how peacebuilding processes can be planned better, by integrating the concepts of adaptive and urban peacebuilding. Using action research and organizational ethnographic analysis of an EU-funded peacebuilding process between Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem, this article lays out four general steps to improve planning for future peacebuilding initiatives: (1) integrate flexibility; (2) balance inherent asymmetries; (3) “localize” planning; and (4) plan for indirect alternatives. In conclusion, we discuss the implications for peacebuilding processes in other contested and settler-colonial cities.